It’s time for another YouTube video! In this one, I am working on my “St John’s Wort” horse, the 5th in my “Medicinal” series. I decided to do something different with this video and tell the story of how I got into horses, how I met Glory, how she became my horse, and how I started my horseback riding journey. Please let me know if you like this type of video more than the ones with just music! If so, I’ll do more like this.
We had a scare with Glory this weekend where she wasn’t acting like herself and it was really scary. So instead of the blog post that I wanted to write, I have only this video to offer. I hope you enjoy it! If anyone wants, I’ll blog about the health scare on Wednesday. It was really awful and I was afraid I was going to lose my horse.
What’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to your horse? Let me know in the comments!
Sometimes making a video or a piece of art can take a while… in this case, it took me about 9 months to actually sit down and record this video. Last summer I ordered 6 items from Wish.com, all “free” items, to try making one of my horse artworks with. The video below shows the results!
But I hope that this video shows you can make art even if you don’t have the most expensive supplies! Where do you like buying your art supplies from? Let me know in the comments!
Echinacea was definitely a flower that I needed to include in my medicinal series, especially in these times! Echinacea is said to boost the immune system. The Echinacea plant has complex active ingredients, some of which are said to be anti-microbial. It also contains compounds called phenols, which have antioxidant properties.
While I’ve been making these medicinal horses, I’ve been spending time during the creation of each one just thinking about the properties of the plants, what effect they’re supposed to have, and trying to put that energy into my thoughts as I create the drawing. I hope that by concentrating on the benefits these plants have, it will put that energy out into the world in some way. At the very least, I hope that creating these images and sharing them brings a smile and a ray of light into at least one person’s day!
Please stay safe and healthy out there, everyone! I love all of you and am thinking about you!
I made a custom notepad this past week to get my work days organized, and got a lot of questions about it on social media! So I filmed a tutorial. It’s a really simple project and you can use any papers you like to do this with. I hope you like the video and that you have fun making some custom notepads!
Yup, DINOS ARE COMING! I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for almost a year now, but last year was so crazy that I just never got to it. I grew up with three older brothers, so we were all dinosaur-crazy growing up. I was 10 years old when Jurassic Park came out and I remember going to see that movie several times in the theater. I also saved my allowance for a few weeks so that I could get the “battle damage” Triceratops toy because Triceratops are my faves.
I am also crazy over “Tyrannosaurus Sue” and would love to get to Chicago someday and see her in person. So that’s why I decided to start this new dinosaur series with Sue! These dinos are drawn on maps of either where a famous fossil was found, or where the dinosaur roamed in the world. Since Sue was discovered in South Dakota, I chose that map for her background.
Also, sorry about the video quality on the above. I got a video camera for Christmas and this was my first attempt at doing an art process video with it. Obviously I need to either figure out what’s up with the exposure or I need more lighting on my art desk, because that entire video is very, very blue. I’ll figure it out! I got the camera so that I can do more art videos and other videos for YouTube, and I’m loving having something dedicated to film on instead of using up space on my iPhone. So let me know what kind of videos you want to see in the next year!
I hope you all had a safe and happy new year’s eve. I can’t wait to spend 2020 with all of you. Looking forward to another year with all of you!
I’m not one of those artists that can sit around in silence when I’m in my studio. I need music, a YouTube video, movie, or a show playing in the background pretty much every minute of my day. I can’t stand silence most of the time, and it’s very rare that I’m creating without anything playing from either my computer, tablet, or phone. Here are my top picks for what I listen to while I’m working away in my studio!
Music
I have a very eclectic taste in music, and I judge what I like on a song-by-song basis. This means that though I don’t like Country or Rap as entire genres, I do like certain songs from those genres. My most important criteria for music is whether it has strong lyrics. If I can connect with the lyrics and they move me or make me think of an experience in my life, or they tell a story, then I’m more likely to love the song.
My top favorite musical artist right now is an independent band called Icon For Hire. I stumbled across them randomly on YouTube one day and have been to two of their concerts, am a member of their Patreon, and participate in several of their Facebook Groups. Icon For Hire is fronted by lead singer Ariel Bloomer, an amazing song-writer and just an amazing human in general. In the beginning of 2019, she released a book called Turn Your Pain Into Art that I not only own multiple copies of (including the audiobook and a signed copy) but I have purchased it for several friends who deal with mental illness and self-hatred as well. I could write an entire blog post about this band and the impact they’ve had on my life, but maybe I’ll do that in a future blog! Instead, here are links to a few of my favorite songs from Icon For Hire.
Other musical artists that I like, in no particular order: Linkin Park, Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Katy Perry, Halestorm, Above Only, Against the Current, ONE OK ROCK, P!nk, Poets of the Fall, The Glitch Mob, Fefe Dobson, Mary Fahl, Disturbed, Savage Garden, Meghan Trainor, Breaking Benjamin, Beth Crowley, Owl City, Lindsey Stirling, Taylor Swift, Korn, Kesha, Avril Lavigne, Paramore, and so, so many more.
YouTube
I have a confession to make: I am a YouTube junkie. Right now I have two monthly subscriptions, and one of those is YouTube. I subscribed to it so that I could turn my phone screen off while a video is playing, and so that I wouldn’t have to sit through ads all the time!
I’m subscribed to lots of channels, but when I’m working on art I like to have longer videos (thirty minutes or more) on so that I can get lost in what I’m doing without having to change the video a lot.
I LOVE true crime and documentaries, so a lot of what I watch on YouTube is in the true crime genre. My favorite true crime YouTubers are Stephanie Harlowe (well researched, multi-part videos about cults and true crime), Danelle Hallan (focus more on missing person cases and solved cases), and Kendall Rae.
I also like listening to The Mile Higher Podcast, which is about an hour-long or more and covers all kinds of topics from current events to true crime to the paranormal.
My favorite horse-related channels are The Budget Equestrian and YourRidingSuccess. Obviously I need to find more horse channels to follow! If you know of any good ones, drop a comment and share it with me! I used to follow Evention TV, but they haven’t put out new videos in a long time.
I follow a ton of other channels that are a mish-mash of movie reviews, video essays, business advice, anime reviews, legal videos, and a bunch more.
Movies and Shows
So if you hadn’t yet noticed, I have eclectic tastes in just about every facet of my entertainment. It should come as no surprise that I have a wide variety of movies and shows that I like to have on while I’m working. Just like with YouTube, I like to put something on and not think about it for awhile so that I can get lost in the art that I’m doing. This is why I also tend to pick things that I’ve already seen so that I don’t have to concentrate on what’s going on with the plot.
I like all kinds of movies, from animated to sci-fi to fantasy to comedy and more. To list out all the things my husband and I own on DVD and Blu-ray would take forever, so instead I’ll list out a few of my favorites and concentrate on mainly what I have digital copies of in Movies Anywhere (because that makes them easily accessible back in my office from my computer browser, phone, or tablet). I’ve written already that my favorite horse movie of all time is Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken (DVD). But also in my frequently watched are Krampus, Big Hero 6, The Croods, Pacific Rim, Deadpool and Deadpool 2, Spider-man: Homecoming, Wonder Woman, Ghostbusters (2016), Zootopia, Inside Out, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Thor Ragnarok, Into The Spiderverse, and Hocus Pocus.
Shows are tricky since I don’t have Netflix anymore, so I’ve been mainly limited to shows that I can find on YouTube. For YouTube shows, I like Hoarders and I Shouldn’t Be Alive. But, when I get my Netflix access back, I’m going to be back to watching my other favorites: Heartland, Criminal Minds, Free Rein, Voltron Legendary Defender, Trollhunters, Queer Eye, and Parks and Recreation.
This week I was asked to make a video about coloring in Manga Studio 5. This is just my method, and of course there’s a million ways to go about coloring. Hopefully some of the methods I use in this video will help you!
In this video I take a cracked pattern for a video screen and then show you how to save it as a material and use it over again on multiple panels across many pages. Using materials for tasks such as this helps with consistency in your story and saves you time!
This video will show you how to make a custom speech balloon in Manga Studio 5, and then save it as a Material that you can use over and over again in future projects.
Posted on April 14, 2014, this tutorial video will show you how to make a custom page template in Manga Studio 5. I used the Kablam page template here, but you could use it for any paper or strip size! I go over Finish size, Default border, Canvas size, and how to set a material to the page template. Then learn how to give it a name and save it for use later on!
