EMG Sketch Fest – Page 4 – Ellen Million Graphics Blog

EMGSketchFest 99 – After Action Report!

Another #EMGSketchFest has come and gone, and we had a grand creative weekend! We had 29 participating artists and 99 sketches – which, given it was Sketch Fest #99, we feel is rather apropos. And there are 19 pieces of art available for purchase, from original full-size and ACEO sketches to limited edition prints. You should really do yourself a favor and have a whirl through our gallery if you’re in the market for some art.

We also welcomed two new artists this month: RCoots and NickyWolf!

Let’s take a final turn through some featured illustrations before putting Sketch Fest #99 to bed:

Inspired by Tara N Colna’s prompt “coffee time,” Maria J. William creating this alluring sketch of “The Curator.” You can purchase the graphite and white charcoal original on 8×10 toned paper for $40 or pick up some prints for $7-$10.

NickyWolf’s first Sketch Fest drawing is the adorable and fluffy “Fairy’s Big Pet“! Here’s what they had to say this about their digital drawing: “I rarely do quick sketches so this is good practice. I hope you like it!”

We can’t help but grin when we see Amy Sue Stirland’s 5.5×8 watercolor of a “Pig Fairy!” This wonderful when-pigs-fly what-if was inspired by Heather Kilgore, and Amy says: “I’m tickled with how the flowers turned out.” You can grab the original for only $17!

Kim Turner’s woman wearing “Amethyst and Pearl” is effortlessly elegant! Here’s what Kim says about her: “This was really a quick one, but I can imagine going back to it as a painting and bring out the pearls and amethsyt sparkles…” We hope you do, Kim!

Even in it’s partially-sketched state, Tricia Danby’s “Strawberry Fairy” has out mouths watering for some fresh strawberries!

Patricia Bowne created this digital art sketch of a “Meeting” between water and air, inspired by Julie Rabischung’s “fairy and mermaid meeting on the beach.”

“The Littlest Mouse” by Nathalie Reinholz

This teeny tiny ACEO from Nathalie Reinholz is the cutest littlest mouse we’ve seen!

Rowan Lewgalon drew on Katta’s prompt of a “meditating nature sprite” to create this magical and provocative illustration. About “Meditation,” Rowan notes: “I took the background from one of my other paintings, so I could already finish this one.” You can purchase a print for just $15.

Our last featured illustration for this Sketch Fest is this lovely portrait from Linzi Fay, a delicate response to Julie Rabischung’s prompt, “Flower’s enchantment.” The original 5.5×8.5 drawing is available for purchase.

We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s set of features, and our #EMGSketchFest 99 weekend. We’re planning our 100th Sketch Fest right now and it’s going to be AMAZING – follow us on Facebook or Twitter so you don’t miss our upcoming announcement!

Enjoying Sketch Fest Sunday?

#EMGSketchFest 99 may be over, but that’s no reason to stop the party! If you wander over to the gallery, you may still find new art – and you’ll definitely find something fantastic! You may even find a piece of art to buy, and you should absolutely leave some comments for our participants!

Let’s do some featured illustrations:

“Dragon and Sleeping Fairy” by Afke van Herpt’s Cousin Susan

“Unicorn of the Sea” by Afke van Herpt and her Niece Ronja

First up, we have these great illustrations done by Afke van Herpt’s cousin and niece. “Dragon and Sleeping Fairy” by Afke’s cousin Susan is blamed on Ronja! For “Unicorn of the Sea,” Afke wrote: “My niece Ronja did another collaboration with me! I sketched the horse part, and she did all the rest.”

“Blue and Orange Stockings and the Green Dress” by Heather Kilgore

Heather Kilgore created this dancing beauty, the evocation of a summer breeze in her green dress with sand-and-sea stockings below!

Monika Holloway is putting us all in a vaudevillian frame of mind today with her fancy-free depiction of a nurse.

Founder of our Sketch Fest feast, Ellen Million took Mayumi Ogihara’s prompt “Unicorn of Shadows” and ran with it to create #Junicorn 16: “I loooooved this prompt. See more details about my #junicorn project here!”

Katta went three dimensional and sculpted this adorable earth dragon, resplendent in green and showing their belly and holding on to a brown stone.

The glory of the night sky emerges in “Stardust” by Mayumi Ogihara. This illustration is mixed media on 7×5 toned paper, and you can even purchase the original! Just $27!

“Trinkets and Tentacles” by Natacha Chohra

Inspired by Selina Fenech’s great prompt, Natacha Chohra created this provocative and playful drawing: “Trinkets and Tentacles” is a 5×7 graphite sketch and you can purchase the original for only $40!

Our last featured illustration for today is an untitled piece by Kir Talmage. Inspired by Edward Cammarota’s prompt, “Blue warrior women,” Kir commented that she’s “just drafting some idea” in this pencil and colored pencils sketch.

That’s it for a super-sized Sunday Sketch Fest featured set! Don’t forget to check out the full gallery, and come back here tomorrow for our After Action Report – completed with more features and our announcement for #EMGSketchFest 100!

Swords, horns, and rayguns: just another Saturday night!

Feeling a bit bored this Saturday night? Perfect reason to jump into #EMGSketchFest! Sign-up is free and you can choose either to inspire our artists, become one of those artists (create anything! it’s not just for drawing!), or both.

We’re having an amazing Saturday night, full up with a sword-wielding flower, a unicorn girl, a zero-g raygun-wielding scoundrel, colorful fairies and so much more – just check out our featured illustrations!

Selina Fenech spent 40 minutes creating this gorgeously atmospheric digital sketch – she used her Cintiq and Photoshop. Riffing on Mayumi Ogihara’s prompt “Sword and Flower” with this illustration, Selina commented, “I kinda forgot about the Rose part… I guess she could be the rose?” Sounds good to us! After all, a rose must have at least one thorn.

“Unicorn Girl Sketch” by Kathryn Whiteford

Kathryn Whiteford jumped in today after seeing Sarah Alden’s “Unicorngirl” prompt. Here’s what she wrote about her sketch: “After a week of writing very boring official documents, I needed some fun sketching time. Also, it’s been way too long since I took part in Sketch Fest, so here I am! 😀 This was the first prompt that really captured my attention. I’ll be adding some watercolour to this soon, but it may not be before SF ends. At least I did the sketch in time!” We’re so glad you had the time to join us, Kathryn!

We love the creative angle Becca “Boo” Moore took with her “Space Girl” illustration! Edward Cammarota prompted artists to create a “space girl doing a backflip shooting at an attacker” and this was Becca’s interpretation. “This was fun and challenging!” Becca noted. “I like the anti-gravity feel this ended up with!”

We love this brief sketch of a “Stone Dragon” done by Jools62 today, inspired by Rebecca McCullough’s prompt.

“Red Stockings, Black Dress” by Milkycat

Milkycat drew “Red Stocking, Black Dress” inspired by Edward Cammarota’s prompt, and captured a magical moment full of possibility – a sparkling backdrop, a swanky party, and a pensive expression all make you wonder what the story is here.

That’s it for tonight’s features! Now that you’re excited, don’t forget to visit the full gallery and leave some comments for our participants. Encourage someone’s creativity! And don’t forget to use our official hashtag, #EMGSketchFest, when sharing your favorite Sketch Fest moments on social media.

Welcome to Your #EMGSketchFest Saturday Afternoon!

It’s Saturday afternoon, y’all, and you know what that means – it’s another Sketch Fest Saturday! We’ve been having a grand time over in the Sketch Fest gallery, with folks sharing a belly-baring earthdrragon, unicorns galore, sexy ladies, a sleeping moon princess, and even a hippocampicorn! Don’t believe me? Take a look at the featured illustrations below and then dive in to Sketch Fest #99!

This is RCoots’ first Sketch Fest, and they submitted this exciting and promising sketch. Here’s what they said about “Sun Queen“: “Thought more about the sun as stars than our sun in particular. When I give this shade and color, she’ll have dark skin with stars scattered over her shoulders and solar flares as her ‘clothing’. She’s holding stars in each of the major color/temp classifications over her head.”

From Julie Rabischung: “To celebrate the opening of Sketchfest and yesterday’s Summer solstice/ First day of summer ! Thank you Heather for the lovely prompt.” Julie’s sun fae is resplendent in colored pencils, markers and ink gel pens on 4×6 bristol. The original sketch is available for only $12!

Kathy Nutt’s first sketch this weekend is of a “Queen of Bees” from Julie Rabischung’s prompt, a gorgeous and sweet beginning of royal flora and fauna. This is a WIP and she uploaded a high contrast digital copy of her pencil sketch.

Unicorn girls just want to have fun, and this rainbow unicorn girl doubly so! Or, as artist Elisa Ferguson put it, “Some girls are out for fun, this girl is out for tons of it. Unicorns make everything magical.” She’s not wrong!

ElmaBree drew this quick little gem inspired by Julie Rabischung’s prompt “Pearls and Amethyst.”

That’s it for now, and we hope you enjoyed these featured illustrations! Tell the artists what you think and head on over to the Sketch Fest #99 gallery to comment on their artwork. You can also register to suggest some prompts of your own, or even get creative with us!

Just remember: when talking about Sketch Fest on social media this weekend, make sure you use our official hashtag of #EMGSketchFest! And click back to our blog later to enjoy some more featured illustrations.

Move It Creatively on #EMGSketchFest Friday Night!

Are you staying up sketching on this June Friday night? We are! You can join us over at #EMGSketchFest 99, happening right now. Come to play, come to inspire, come to admire – all are welcome. Just click this way.

The first sketch added to #EMGSketchFest 99 was this movement study by Afke van Herpt! Here’s what Afke has to say about it: “I am participating in #DrawEverythingJune 3 on deviantart, and I’m behind, so this is the perfect prompt to spends some time on one of the poses. 😉 Drawn with Free ink roller.”

That’s your sneak peek for tonight, but be sure to hop over to the gallery and browse the works already there. And come back to the blog tomorrow for more featured illustrations!

Have a great night, and don’t forget to use our official hashtag – #EMGSketchFest – when talking about Sketch Fest on your social media of choice.

Counting Down This Sketch Fest Sunday

#EMGSketchFest 98 will soon come to an end, but that’s no reason to cut short your creative jam! Come on by, claim a prompt, and upload your creation once an hour’s up. It’s perfectly allowed.

Let’s do a few featured illustrations to inspire you!

Mayumi Ogihara drew this “Oceanid” with her pensive eyes and expression nearly yearning. Col-Erase brown, white charcoal, and acrylic on 5″ x 7″ toned paper. You can purchase the original sketch for $27.

Sketch Fest is for all types of creations – artwork, jewelry, sculpture, and even dolls! Amy Sue Stirland started work on this charmingly excited vampire doll: “18” bendable muslin doll. I didn’t get as far as I wanted to in the hour and I might have gone over. Those darn ears. Still to come. Dapper outfit and a flow-y cape.”

We love this weird, disturbing “Angler Fish Mermaid“! Inspired by PeggyB, Kathy Nutt drew this in Micron pen.

This happily “Snoozing Cheetah” was drawn by Afke van Herpt in white and black ink on 2.5″ x 3.5″ colored card. You can pick up the original for $17!

Inspired by Mayumi Ogihara’s “Mermaid wearing historical Asian jewelry” prompt, Maria J. William drew “Before Monsoon” in colored pencil, white charcoal, and white acrylic on 6″ x 8″ toned paper. You can purchase prints or even the original – starting at $7 and going up to $40 for the colored pencil drawing.

Are you inspired? Click over to the gallery to discover more, and contribute something yourself! If you don’t feel like creating, leave comments to cheer on our participants.

Don’t forget to check back on our blog tomorrow – we’ll have one last #EMGSketchFest 98 post and announce next month’s Sketch Fest dates!

Late night expressiveness with EMGSketchFest 98!

We’ve come to end of this Sketch Fest Saturday! We’ve had more felines show up as the day wore on, along with a vampire doll and an amazingly disturbing angler fish mermaid.

Let’s jump in to tonight’s featured illustrations:

My Fractured Heart by Katerina Koukiotis

Katerina Koukiotis drew “My Fractured Heart” in color pencil, pastel, and lots of sparkles. Her “little mermaid with her bubbly fragile heart” was inspired by a prompt from Camille Chandler. You can pick up a limited edition ACEO print for only $6! You can also purchase the original 5″ x 7″ sketch for $25.

“Bewitching Smile” by Tricia Danby features, well, a truly bewitching smile. We can’t wait to see this sketch continued!

Monika Holloway’s enthralling sketch “I Wish” was inspired by Edward Cammarota’s prompt “I wish someone would look at me like that.” This sketch measures 6″ x 9″ on 300gsm ivory paper.

Who can forget the Toad Prince? Finley Mac didn’t, and drew this spectacular “handsome and perfect little boy, smeared ink and all.” 9″ x 12″, ink on mixed media paper. This is Finley’s first Sketch Fest, and we couldn’t be more tickled!

Shadows in the Dark by Peter C.M. van Herpt

Peter C.M. van Herpt turned a piercing eye to the night and drew “Shadows in the Dark” in pencil and charcoal.

Those are all our featured illustrations for tonight, but be sure to give the gallery a wander before bed. Then come on over and create with us tomorrow!

Summer vibes in #EMGSketchFest 98!

It’s been a wonderful day at #EMGSketchFest, and many of our participants clearly have summer and MerMay on their minds! You’ll find many interesting mermaids in the gallery, along with flower fairies, attentive dryads, and tiger ladies.

Let’s take a peek at the gallery!

Ellen Million, the founder of our Sketch Fest feast, began sketching this “Tiger Lady.” As she says, “big cats are such fun to draw.”

ElmaBree shared this rough sketch of a mermaid wearing Asian jewelry, inspired by Mayumi Ogihara’s prompt!

Kir Talmage created this inspired ribbon motif twisting and turning with the words of a twisted tale! Ink pen on paper.

Becca “Boo” Moore drew a nymph and her tree in spring (as prompted by Edward Cammarota). She says, “Nature Nymphs are known as Dryads (sea/river nymphs are called Naiads) and boy are they fun to draw!”

Elisa Ferguson was also inspired by Edward Cammarota’s spring nymph prompt. In “Small One,” she says, “A nymph has decided to help a small tree grow!”

That’s it for now! The #EMGSketchFest 98 gallery keeps growing, so check it out and drop off some prompts for our participants. And if you have some time, get creative this weekend with us!

Staying Up Sketching On a Friday Night

It’s Friday night, #EMGSketchFest 98 just launched this afternoon, and we already have over 100 excellent prompts to inspire our participants!

This month, the first uploaded creation goes to Julie Rabischung! She drew on Lorna Cowie’s prompt, “dandelion dance,” and sketched this enchanting fairy:

“Dandelion Dance” is a fresh summer breeze and a carefree fairy making wishes in the wind. This ink sketch on drawing paper measures 5.8″ x 8.3″.

That’s your taster for the night – hop on over to the full gallery if you’d like to browse more art before tomorrow. You can even register, leave prompts, and start creating with us – we’d love to have you!

Don’t forget to use our official hashtag, #EMGSketchFest, when posting to social media this weekend.

Saturdays are for Sketch Fest

We’re back with the first installment of our Saturday highlights from #EMGSketchFest 97! Have you been creating today? We’d love to create with you! Just head on over to the full gallery – explore the art, leave some prompts, and create art (sketches, jewelry, whatever you make) of your own!

Let’s take a sneak peek at what’s hanging out in the gallery, shall we?

ElmaBree, inspired by Mayumi Ogihara’s prompt “Mermaid dress decorated with the most beautiful mermaid scales,” drew this well-dressed mermaid. She adds that this is an unfinished sketch to be completed later.

It may not be sweater weather anymore, but Heather Kilgore sketched the fabulous “Miss Fuzzy Sweater.” You can almost feel that fuzzy sweater! You can purchase the original graphite drawing on cream drawing paper for just $25.

Tricia Danby’s “Shy Fairy” promises to be a lush illustration in all the fresh colors of spring. We can’t wait to see her completed!

Janna Prosvirina drew this fresh-face fairy crafting a “Chain of Daisies,” and it’s soon to be a coloring page! Here’s what she said: “For those who enjoy coloring I will make this image available as a digital stamp /coloring page. It will be available through my Etsy.” You can pick up the original ink drawing on office paper for $12!

Our last highlight for this afternoon is “Jellyfishie” by Nathalie Reinholz! This gorgeous watercolor of a jellyfish absolutely glows. “No ideas how these are fish,” Nathalie wrote, “but I took this as an opportunity to follow Stephanie Law’s instructional video on patreon on how to paint jellyfish.” If you fancy snagging the original watercolor painting on Hahnemühle Cornwall paper, it’s only $35!

Now that your appetite has been whetted, head on over to the full gallery and wander through the marvelous works waiting for you. Don’t forget – share your thoughts and your artwork on social media with our official hashtag, #EMGSketchFest.