What's on Your Mind? Speech Bubble Tutorial

      Since people on Instagram have asked me how I make my speech bubbles, I thought what better to do than make a tutorial! Today I will be showing you how my drawings and doodles get from paper to finished product, using this Feminist bubble as the example. (If you haven't been introduced to feminism yet, it's wonderful, I highly recommend it) This is the method I use for my bubbles as well as my other drawings. 

You Will Need: 

+ blank paper

+ pencil

+ pen

+ picture-taking device or scanner

+ GIMP (download it here!)

      First, think of something to write or draw. It can be anything! Then, of course, draw it. (In pencil first). I've developed a habit of making an italic bubble font, but don't feel like you have to copy me! Look at other fonts and experiment with other styles of lettering. 

       It usually takes a few tries for me to get the letters and the bubbles just the right shape.

        Once you've got your drawing just the way you want it, go over it in pen. I love my micron pens but anything will do, as long as the ink is dark and consistent. Then erase any leftover pencil lines.

       Then, take a picture of it! (you could also scan your drawing but I don't have a scanner and I get by just fine). You can use a fancy camera or just an iPhone, just make sure the lighting is okay because grainy photos make the in-computer part difficult. 

       Transfer your photo to your computer, and open it in GIMP. Desaturate it to get rid of any bad white balance situations.

        Go to colors>curves and in the value channel, drag the curve so that it's pretty much a vertical line. Use your judgement to decide where that line is so that the lines you drew show up the right thickness.

       Next, use the paint bucket tool to color things in. 

       Continue doing this. (It was a bit more complicated with this multi-bubble drawing but it should be pretty simple if none of your lines overlap). Just drop "paint" on all the lines and empty spaces. 

        Keep experimenting with colors. It always takes me lots of tries to figure out what colors I want my art to be. Usually I look to my art and design board on Pinterest for color combo inspiration.

      Now I'll show you how to add the glitter overlay I often enjoy adding. (You can do this with any pattern or texture). 

       First, find a suitable texture for free online. (I just googled "free gold glitter texture").

      Next, go to the select by color tool and click on the region you want to cover. (As you can see, the text is selected here).

       

       Import your texture and resize it if necessary.
       + Go to layer> transparency> add alpha channel
       + Go to select> invert (or command + i)
       + Go to edit> cut (or command + x) to remove the pieces you don't want.

      

       In this case, I used the eraser tool to take the glitter out of every other letter.

   

       After messing with colors a bit more, I decided on a pale pink for the remaining letters instead of yellow. And there's my finished product! (sometimes I like to add a filter at the end too).

      If you make any drawings with this method, be sure to link to them below or tag me in your Instagram posts, I'd love to see them!

It's on my mind

      I do sincerely apologize for not blogging more, however, I don't have time to make posts let alone do anything blog-worthy. Quality over quantity.
       Lately though, I've been expressing my thoughts with speech bubble art things. (And I drew an orange too. It doesn't fit the theme but just accept it). I'm getting real into making these, and now that I think about it maybe I'll even do a tutorial for them! It's fun to be doing drawing/art again.

So, enjoy my candy-colored bubbles of teen angst!

Don't Worry

      I know this isn't much of a post but I'm still trying to stay active on my blog despite not having the time to think of many ideas let alone execute them! I drew this little bit out when I was trying to de-stress in the middle of all my homework. I went over it again on my computer to smooth it out and add colors and I'm pretty happy with the result. Makes me wonder why I don't draw more.

The One And Lonely

Here's my most recent piece, which is, as you can see, is completely different from any of my prior work. 

It stemmed (no pun intended) from an idea I had when I was trying out poses in the mirror. I initially wanted to have a plain white background, but this was the only light colored bedsheet in my house, so I just went with it, and seeing the flowers on it inspired me to add some more flowers as an overlay. 

And taking the pictures, I used flash. I used flash. I have never used flash before.

But after painting the flowers and putting it all together, I was really happy with the result. 

Little Doodle

   

      Since I forgot my camera-to-laptop cord at our last hotel, no new photos till I get home. Which is sort of a bummer, since I spent so much time editing pictures to occupy myself in the car. But with my re-sparked interest in blogging, I decided to channel my blog energy away from photos and towards some new things, inspired by some of my favorite blogs. (A list to come later!)

    Here's another one of my paper-to-digital illustrations, a quick one done with a doodle I did back in the winter, a photo from last week and some virtual paint. Excuse the pixelated-ness, it's fairly zoomed in from the original photo and my camera is not one with a very high megapixel count. But gosh, these are fun. I need to get back into drawing and art and sewing and DIY and all kinds of artsy bloggy things to have fun with.

     xoxo, Zophia

Oh, the Things you can Washi

I've seen a zillion things on Pinterest about what to do with washi tape, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I finally found some the other day and I'll admit I covered my phone charger with it before I even got home! I've used it for a few things, (phone charger, calculator, notebook), but there are probably more to come, unless this is another one of my short-lived passions. (I've had a lot of those). 

  xoxo, Zophia

Paper-to-Digital

I've gotten into drawing-to digital artwork just in the past week or so- I've been doodling people and things and banners during school, and adding colors and patterns on the computer at home. So far, it's been very cutesy-looking. I might take it in another direction sometime, though I never know.

I've been making them for the sake of my own entertainment, (And one to cheer up a friend!). But I've been getting requests from other friends to make doodles of them, too, so this sure isn't the last of it!