Announcing Never Grow Up's "Frozen" Blog Party!!

Hey everyone!  Sorry you haven't heard from me all weekend.  Things have been busy and I've had a lot of computer issues.  I'm still fighting with my desktop daily, but I'm going ahead with the blog party as planned.

Also, a huge thank you to the three of you who nominated me for the Liebster Award.  I'm hoping to get to those questions soon, but I wanted to go ahead with my plans for the week while I had the chance! :)

I'm very excited to announce that today is the official beginning of Never Grow Up's Frozen-themed blog party!!  We're starting today in celebration of Frozen's release on Blu-ray and DVD, which I will be buying later this afternoon. :D  I have a great week planned, including giveaways, questions to fill out, and posts in keeping with the theme! :)

For starters, I thought I'd share a mini tutorial of my fan art I drew for my header:

 

I started with some Frozen Valentines and a very rough sketch...  

 ...then started filling in the details, slowly but surely.  

 

I was thrilled with how Elsa turned out! :D 

 Here she is next to the Valentine I used as a reference.

 

I erased my temporary features from my rough sketch of Anna and then started again.

 

I was pretty pleased with how she turned out, too.

 

I changed the position of her pupils because I wanted her looking at Elsa in my drawing.  Anna's head angle was a rather difficult angle to replicate.  I definitely found it more challenging than Elsa.

 

Here's the finished sketch...

 

...and then a closer look.

 

As always, I did the "backwards test" (looking at the picture backwards against the light).  They still looked pretty good, so I knew I hadn't done too badly with my proportions. ;)

 

I recently purchased a set of art pens at Michael's which I have been thoroughly enjoying. :)  Here's the one I used to trace Anna and Elsa.

 

Here they are, all traced and ready to be cleaned up with an eraser.

 

I was a bit disappointed with Anna's mouth and nose, and I also ended up giving her an extra chin line.  My problem was I doubted myself and changed her look while I was tracing (not usually an advisable thing to do).  I knew I'd have to work that into the shading somehow so I wouldn't make her look too odd. :}

 

And here they are with all of the pencil erased.

 

A closer look again.

 I ended up using a combination of colored pencil and markers this time around, basically because I didn't have the right skin tones for the girls in my markers.

 I also liked using the colored pencils to give Elsa's eye makeup and facial features a softer look. 

Her hair was a bit tricky, but I finally decided on using a tan-colored marker and a blue colored pencil.  I think it worked out just right. :)

 Even after adding color, I was still disappointed with the way Anna turned out.  Between my flub on her chin and messing up her lips, she just didn't come out quite the way I had hoped.  I almost wish I'd kept her as a pencil sketch...I liked her much better before I traced her.  Oh well, live and learn. ;)  This is only the second time I've drawn Anna, so I'll figure her out eventually. ;)

 

It was really fun playing around on Ribbet.com with all of the special effects and such.  I'm quite pleased with the way the header turned out, and I can't wait to try out more Frozen fan art! ;)

And while we're on the subject of art, I have to head out to my art class, but stay tuned for more fun!  I'll be announcing the giveaways and putting up party questions within the next day or so, and I will also have a blog button for the party up as soon as I possibly can.

Talk to all of you again soon! :)

 

As always, here's a copy of my previous header. ;)