Hey guys,
I am currently writing this post on Christmas! There has certainly been a lot of crazy weather this week so far. I drew my mom’s dogs in costumes for the holidays. I draw all of my artwork on this blog with Procreate on the Ipad. I like filling up the canvas with different patterns or little details surrounding the subjects in made-up backgrounds. I am excited to get back to campus for the new semester!
Happy holidays everyone!
Marissa 
Hey guys!
I hope all is going well for everyone. I wanted to create a drawing this week that reflected how I feel instead of the regular cute things! It makes me so nervous when I see the “your grade has been posted.” This has been a super fun semester and I have been lucky to make a lot of friends in my classes. I am excited for next semester, I am going to be taking classes on pottery and fiber construction so I am super excited about that! My main medium for art right now actually isn’t illustration, but fiber! I like creating things out of yarn including clothing, looming, etc. Previous to my transfer to UofM I studied illustration at a different college. I submitted my artwork to a student exhibition and I’m eagerly waiting on the results!
I hope you all are having a good break!!
Marissa 
Hey guys!
I’m writing this post just as I get back from Thanksgiving break. I have a lot of things to be thankful for! This is a drawing of what a typical Thanksgiving layout would look like at my house. It is still missing a few items! I was fortunate enough to be able to see most of my family over this break. I was even able to see my long-distance best friend for a few hours. Thanksgiving is a really important time for us college kids to connect with our families that we may have not seen in a while. I hope everyone had a restful break. We are getting ready for finals!! Only a few more weeks left in the semester. Luckily, Christmas break is right around the corner!
See you next week !
Marissa 
KHEPRI-1B
SPECIES NO. [ 009 ]
ARTICLE ARVHIVED FROM [ MARIAH BERGGREN ]
ARTICLE NOTES:
[ These streamlined, omnivorous creatures seem to spend most of their time gliding and soaring at high altitudes in the atmosphere of Khepri-1b. Their body structure is rather unusual; they have three pairs of translucent, thin wings; two large, simple compound eyes — one dorsal and one ventral; a dorsal, ventral, and tail fin for flight stabilization and steering; a small beak-like mouth at the anterior. Most of its body is covered in fibrous hair- or feather-like material, which lightens in coloration from top to bottom. They are clumsy when grounded, only able to maneuver by pushing with its second pair of wings and its short, stiff tail. ]
We’re finally bringing back the pen reviews this week, so get excited!
This week we’re taking a look at the Monami Plus Pen 3000:
Before we get into my opinions, let’s introduce these guys. The Monami Plus Pen 3000 (I know, a bit of a ridiculous name) is a fine tip pen. It’s also a felt tip, although I would argue it’s closer to a plastic nib (for felt tips, think Papermate flairs–these are a lot sturdier and skinnier). Even though they have a fine tip, they have enough give to them to act as a pseudo-brushpen if you want them to. I use these more often to color in small things or write, though. You can see some different ways to use these in the picture I included. One thing to note about the ink, though, is that it can be a bit splattery. It’s not juicy enough where it will leak or splatter enough to stain things, though, it’s just worth noting because sometimes it can be hard to get clean lines.
The pen body isn’t my favorite–these guys are really tall and thin, and feel kind of cheaply made, which makes sense because they’re known for being super affordable. They’re also known for coming in a huge color selection, including a lot of pastels, fluorescents, and muted colors. The set of twelve I have is mainly just classic bright colors, but I’m obsessed with the case it comes in–it’s super satisfying to unclasp it for some reason, and it’s super convenient to keep in my bag.
As for purchasing information, I got this set for around $6 on stationery pal (great website for affordable stationery stuff). If you want some for yourself, the site is currently having a sale that puts this set at $2.60, which is insane, so definitely check that out!
Overall, this set isn’t anything that stands out a lot to me, but they’re still nice pens, and the super cheap price and color range sets them apart enough that I’m definitely glad I added them to my collection. I would highly recommend these to any beginners or people who don’t want to spend a ton of money on pens, as well.
As always, thanks for reading and have a lovely week!
Hi y’all! Hoping everyone had a good Halloween and enjoyed the lovely fall weather today 
Instead of a pen review, this week I thought it would be fun to talk about my artistic process. So, as a way to welcome the new month, I’m going to show you how I made this piece.
I don’t have a super strict way of doing things, so my process usually involves a lot of experimentation. But, to start, you need a concept. Sometimes these come to me super quickly, and other times I need to exhaust my Pinterest or Instagram feeds to get a spark of inspiration. Either way, I usually come up with the word first, and then the visuals. Today I kept it pretty simple with “November”, and once I picked the word, I knew I wanted to involve autumn leaves and stick to a fall-themed color palette (warm, earthy tones).
I started by testing colors and playing around with how the leaves and letters interact. I liked the idea of using negative space, so I experimented with that for a while. As for the pens I used, I found that wider tips worked better for coloring in the large leaf areas, so I mainly stuck to Tombow Dual Brush Pens, Staedtler Marsgraphic Duos, and Pentel Fude Touch Pens (let me know if you’d like a review on any of these!).
Once I had a concept, general plan, and a satisfying set of markers, I began the actual finished piece. 
First, I drew in the letters with pencil. Because this is just for fun and all freehand, it took me a few tries to get the spacing right. After that, I drew in outlines of a bunch of different types of leaves. Using references was really helpful here! As you can see, adding in the leaves kind of created a jumbled mess, but I was able to fix that a little bit through erasing. 
A bit about erasing: it’s important to erase the pencil lines because once you color over them with marker, they’re permanent. But, you don’t want to erase so much that you can’t see the lines at all. To do this, I like to use kneaded erasers (they have a texture kind of like silly putty) because you can erase by just pressing it on the paper instead of rubbing back and forth. 
This way, you can lighten the graphite without getting those streaks or worrying about erasing too much.
After all that, it’s finally time to color! This part took the longest, mostly because I kept getting confused about which leaf was what and how it all connected. I also tried hard to make sure the colors were dispersed evenly, and that there weren’t any big empty spaces. But, after an episode or two of Vampire Diaries in the background (guilty pleasure), my work was done! Finish up with some extra erasing, cleaning up some lines, and there you have it! Here’s the unedited finished product (with kind of bad lighting, apologies) which you can compare to the edited final at the top.
I hope you enjoyed a sneak peek at my process! If you’re also an artist, I’d love to hear about your process too!! See you next week
