Advent Calendar 2012

My 2012 calendar is now complete. Another year of words and pictures for the Advent season.  Along with drawing and coloring, this year I experimented with some bits of colored paper, as mentioned here.

The drawing spaces are small (about 1-5/8" high), so you may want to click on the image for a better view, especially if it looks a bit fuzzy above.

Click here for my friend Sybil's beautiful and prayerful 2012 Advent calendar, in a very different format from mine.  You can read her thoughts on her first week here and her second week here on her Praying in Color blog.

For my previous Advent calendar drawings, click as follows:

• Here for 2011
• Here for 2010
• Here for 2009
• Here for 2008
• Here for all of my Advent and Christmas-related drawings and posts

For more information about the calendar and the template, click here for my template post.

For a listing of words, sources of words, Copic colors, and other materials used,  see below (or click on "read more" to see it)

2012 Advent Calendar Update - Final Posting

For my subscribers - I've posted the final version of my 2012 Advent Calendar drawing, including Christmas Day. It's an update to the original post, which you may not see in your reader or feed.   You can find it here.  Wishing you all the blessings of the Christmas season!

2012 Advent Calendar Update - December 16

Just a note if you're a subscriber wondering about new posts for my 2012 Advent Calendar work in progress.

I've been posting it every few days, but as updates to the original post, which you may not see in your reader or feed.   You can find my current drawing here. 

Advent Calendar 2012 - First Day and Notes

Here is the drawing for my Advent calendar's first day.  For the Sundays in Advent, I like to draw candles, lighting one more candle each Sunday like the traditional Advent wreath.  In my church, blue is the color for Advent, so my candles will be blue, except for a pink or rose colored candle for the third Sunday.

For 5 years now,  I've started my calendar with the words "We are leaving ordinary time..."  These words remind me that Advent is a special time of year, looking forward to Christmas and the birth of Jesus.  And it's a fact that "ordinary time"-  the long summer and fall church season after Pentecost - has now ended. 

This year on my calendar, I decided to try something different.  I'm planning to add some bits of paper to my Copic drawing and coloring.  I've had so much fun making cards (posted on my other blog, Mostly Markers - Cards) that I thought it would be interesting to experiment with colored card stock and die cuts as part of my Advent drawings.  

Today's drawing is about 2.5 x 1.75" in size.  Click on it for a better view.  It includes some Papertrey Ink card stock - blue stripes, green leaf print, and a solid yellow-orange.  The star inside the candle flame is a hand punch, and the green wreath shape and yellow candle base are oval die cuts.  I also added some dots and lines of Copic marker - YR27, YG63, and B45. The blue words and outlines are done with a cobalt Copic 0.3 multiliner.   The calendar is printed on Neenah solar white card stock.

For more information about the calendar and the template, as well as links to past years, scroll down or click here for my template post.  And I wish all of you a joyful holiday season! 

Advent Calendar Template 2012

Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent, and once again, time to start my Advent Calendar drawings.  This will be Year 5.  Each year I wonder if I'll do another one.  And then I do.  So here is my 2012 template.

This year, Christmas is on a Tuesday.  Instead of a five-wide drawing space for Christmas Day, I decided to give an extra block to each of the four Sundays, for my Advent wreath and candle drawings.  The weeks progress diagonally down the page, and I deleted the day labels from the top row.

I will post my calendar here throughout Advent, at least weekly, and maybe more often. After my first year's Advent calendar, I wrote a post on what I learned from it, and it does a good job of explaining why I've continued.

For my previous Advent calendar drawings, click as follows:

• Here for 2011
• Here for 2010
• Here for 2009
• Here for 2008
• Here for all of my Advent and Christmas-related drawings and posts

My friend Sybil also has posted her Advent calendars in past years in her prayer-drawing blog, Praying in Color.   Click here for her 2011 calendar, or click here for earlier years. I'll also link to her 2012 calendar as it appears.  Edited Nov. 26, 2012 to add:  Click here for Sybil's candle and tree templates... very different from my grid format.   

If you'd like to try this activity for yourself, you're welcome to use my 2012 template.  It's sized to print on 8-1/2 x 11" paper.  Click here to download the PDF file, or click here to download the Word version.  Both are on Google Docs.

Sparse Landscape

A sparse landscape with trees.  Few leaves, muted colors, a late November feeling.   Just a little warm-up sketch, but I like how it turned out. 

• Copic marker colors used: YR24,27, Y28, YG91,95, E23,84,87.  The drawing has more variation of colors than is seen in my scan. 
• I dabbed on colorless blender solution ("0") with terry cloth to make the mottled effect.  
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 5x7"

Berry Flourishes

Doodled lines - Flourishes with berries and leaves.  Drawn with 0.3 Copic multiliner and just three marker colors. 

• Copic marker colors used: YR14, YG95, BG57
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 5.5 x 4.25"

Tall Heart Stems

A black-and-white doodle, drawn with Copic 0.5 multiliner.  Tall stems of hearts.

For this week's Illustration Friday word, "tall."

With color added, this drawing also makes a nice greeting card, posted here on my cards blog, Mostly Markers - Cards.

Doodle with Rickrack and Chevron Lines

I'm not feeling well today, just a minor bug I'm sure, but not much energy or concentration.   Ideal conditions for drawing some lines and coloring in between them.  I enjoyed playing with the shapes and patterns. 

The idea came from a question posted by Ashley on the Papertrey Ink forum.  Since only forum participants can see it,  I'll recap the question here:  "Anyone ever use certain dies for tracing? I just thought how tracing the shapes of certain dies would make a cool background." 

So I gave it a try with the Papertrey Ink XL rickrack and chevron stripes border dies.  Aside from user error (of which there's been rather a lot today!),  it worked very well.  Nice smooth lines to trace around.  Great shapes.  And I like tracing around things, so it will be fun to use the dies that way.  Ashley, thanks for the idea!

Note: the gray is background, not part of the drawing. 

• Copic marker colors used: BV04, BG53,57, Black 100 (dots)
• Drawn with Copic 0.3 multiliner
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 5x7"

Landscape with Space

When I saw Illustration Friday's word for the week, "space," I thought of a landscape with white space in the middle.  I enjoyed drawing these simple leaf, tree, flower, and cloud shapes.  I like the colors and the white space to imagine more of the scene.  

• Copic marker colors used: B45, G14,46, YG03,05,61, C1,3, E33, Y38, R08 
• Drawn with Copic 0.3 multiliner
• Paper: Neenah, cut down to 4.25 x 5.5"

Lenten Prayer Calendar (2012) - Finished

Since February 22 (Ash Wednesday), I've been drawing daily in my Lenten prayer calendar.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and I've finished my honeycomb of drawings. Simple but satisfying to my eye and heart. Click on the drawing for a better view.

For more information and a link to the template, see my previous post (scroll down or click here.)

• Paper: Neenah

Lenten Prayer Calendar (2012)

For Lent this year, I'm drawing a honeycomb of daily prayers. Each hexagon is 1-1/4" wide, point-to-point.

• If you'd like to try something like this, please click here for my friend Sybil's template to print or download, with daily blank drawing spaces. (Thanks, Sybil, for the hexagons!)
  
• Click here for my 2011 Advent Calendar. Its drawings are more complex. I will probably keep my Lent drawings pretty simple.
  
• Click here for my 2010 Lenten Calendar.
  

Frond in Greens and Blues

Just a doodle. My hand wanted to draw these curvy lines today. It looked like a frond, or maybe a feather, so I colored it that way.

I airbrushed the background, and the splotchy effect was created by airbrushing with the brush end of the Sketch marker.

• Copic marker colors used: G17,28, YG23,95, BG49,53,75,93, E87
• Copic multiliners: Olive 0.3, black 0.1
  
• Paper: Neenah classic cream, cut down to 4.25 x 5.5"