here are some ACEOs that are on my desk that I still need to finish someday ....

Lanikai



Raelin

Well here is the top one all finished!

From this:


To this:

Ooooooooooooooooooo and I FINISHED Raelin last night - and she is a double-sided ACEO - so she is EXTRA speciall all the way around.

And she looks SO pretty in color - I am floored - I held off finishing her because I didn't like her much after I inked her - and now I think she is one of my absolute favorites!! LOL!

I also did another mermaid ACEO that I think is rather nice - I will scan them tonight and share, I promise!

Sweets, Lanikai is wonderful!! In fact, she looks familiar to me... must have her displayed somewhere!! Now Raelin... when ya gonna show US?? I am just in awe of your talent... you are so skilled it just makes one feel good to see one of your paintings...

Ohh I am just a fledgling painter - honest, I wish I was half as good as most of the painters I run across!!

Lanikai was posted pretty much everywhere when I listed her - I tend to post in every place that it is appropriate, so it's possible you ran across her somewhere out there.

No Way!! Faerydae, Your stuff is beautiful and seems so professional & EXPERIENCED!!! ok, what is your medium? how do you do the sharp lines? Maybe when I do it I'm going about it all wrong!! But my background is in oils so when I switched to watercolor, I did it much the same way... lmao... maybe I need to take watercolor classes!! (that would be fun!) but... dang... I've been trying to illustrate my children's book and get frustrated cuz its not that vibrant sharpness that yours have... funny... I used to use a perm marker when I was a kid and everyone critizised my sharp lines and now I want em back!!

Okay I was the EXACT same way - and really what opened the door for me waqs watercolor pencils.

My other half surprised me with a set (not realizing that I had two sets that I never touched somewhere in my stash), and it was SUCH a sweet gesture - that I decided to play with them a little.

And OMG! Okay I NEVER "got" pan watercolors. But the watercolor pencils? THOSE I "get". So I started out there - and I've only been playing with them since last fall.

FAEforum has given me a ton of tips - and they are a fabulous group of lovely artists - definitely a forum to check out if you are exploring 2D art. The girls there also have created some amazing watercolor tutorials and there are a lot of watercolor tutorials online too!

Wetcanvas also is another good forum for most mediums to get tips from.

What I've been doing, is penciling the work, and then inking it with waterproof ink - I started with the Sakura Pigma Micron pens but for me - they BLEED or smear - though many artists seem to swear by them ... they no likie or workie for me.

Finally in frustration I bugged the girls on FAE and someone suggested the Faber-Castell PITT pens, and those work REALLY nicely for me! They also will smear if I add a LOT of water or rub too hard, but I can usually fix it and I try to keep myself from doing that lol.

Then once the inked image is dry, I start to color. The watercolor pencils lay down color nice and they were a LOT easier for me to control the water and the pigment ... now I've branched into tube watercolors and because when I squirt paint from the tubes onto like a paper plate fpor a palette - if they dry - then they are like super soft pan - which work very nicely for light washes I have found.

So I guess that's what I'd suggest since it worked for me to get comfy - get a basic set, like the one my other half got me which was a 24 pencil set of Staedtler Karat Aquarell Watercolor Pencils ... they really were much softer than I thought they would be and they lay down color nicely.

And if you poke around you can get them for around 20 bucks on eBay - and they will usually pay for themselves fairly quickly I think.

Here is a set listed right now for like 14 bucks and 9 bucks in shipping:
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayIS...0045350306

they do sell other types of watercolor pencils and I have NO idea how those are - I would fully recommend the ones I had though that look like this:

But that's pretty much it, though I do seal them afterwards. Oh and after I paint, I tend to go over the lines one more time if the paints have dulled it at all so they are more crisp.

Hope I didn't ramble too much in my reply to you above Des! LOL

Finally got my scanner to behave and scan her correctly ...

She went from this:


To this:


And then the back side:

OH MY GOD! Dangit!! Ya know, on my gravestone they should probably put: OMG, you can DO that? lmao... dangit.... I am so dumb... I swear, for a creative person, I surely don't trust myself much... so many times in life I conformed and never realized that was what I was doing... but yes, I would do something loving it, whether my writing, art, my music, anyfreakinthing, and then, someone would say you can't do that so I'd stop, or I'd see that nobody else was doing it that way so it must be wrong... now, 30 years down the line I SEE that all those things I USED to do, were what set people's art apart!! dumb...
ok, I pretty much have all those things... but maybe different brands... good enuff to start out with then graduate to spending more money... lmao... my input has far exceeded my output (sales) for way to long, so gotta make money before I buy more!! lmao.... but my space has just about anything you could imagine from all these years. I even took printing (etching on metal plates to print copies of art) and still have many of those... incredible... Its strange too since I used to teach children's art classes from my home and our motto was this song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVC5Jt2Gu8
omg... 1981 was the last time I heard that and it made me cry so much that it became my motto for art... yet, here I am, realizing that I indeed did exactly what I set out to not do... conform. and now, seeing that damn song again now, what? 27 yrs later? I'm blubbering like an idiot!! lmao... oh man!!
ok... I am going to drag out all my stuff and sit on my bed & go back to how I USED to do this... and just have fun... and my question was, do I HAVE to do them so small... but I DON'T CARE WHAT THE ANSWER IS CUZ I WANNA DO EM BIGGER!! LOL... Hugs babe... you don't realize how important this group has been to me in the last two days! Michelle with her jewelry and porceline has me yearning for what I REALLY want to do, which I think is what my sister meant when she said my art was so much better if I'd get back to my roots!! I'm goin back to my roots... hugs to you both!!
Desiree`

Well the nice thing about ACEOs *is* that they are small - so you know there is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less pressure - if it doesn't turn out, so what? You can *always* sell it for a buck, or heck, turn it into an ATC and trade another artist for an ATC from them!

But Maigan does *really* well with her 4x6 paintings, and she starts hers at I think 49 bucks and she sells them regularly (though I am sure it took her some time to develop a following), so you know there IS a market for small work that isn;t as small as an ACEO.

The other nice thing about ACEOs - is that they are sooooooo cost effective! And I would encourage you to NOT sell ANY ACEO for less than 4.99 unless it is a print. But for a small output of cash or supplies you can turn around and make that stuff pay for itself, and even a little bit more besides.

Here's my latest WIP ACEO: