First of all, how great is the Sorting Hat quiz over on Pottermore?
Second of all, Ravenclaw represent!
Last year, I found myself in need of a very special Christmas present for a very special person. And what do broke artists give as Christmas presents? That's right, art, obvs.
So. Many. Dots!
The more attentive of you will notice immediately that this is not a digital drawing! It's right, I don't venture into traditional art that often, but one of the styles I like to do is called Pointillism (or sometimes also dotwork).
It is created by making lots of tiny little dots close to each other. Because the human eye tends to see those close dots as one surface, you can create darker colors by clustering dots closer to each other.
I like it a lot because — similar to digital art — you can layer shading on top of each other. Start with a light grey color and then build up more and more dots on top of each other until have you have exactly the shade you want.
That way, it's easy to go back and make a certain area of an image darker.
The downside of Pointillism is…well.
There's a metric !@#$ton of dots to make!
I didn't look at the time while working, but this picture must have taken more than 20 hours to make.
Working on this artwork showed me again how important it is to take care of yourself and your hand. Pointillism requires a lot of precision because one out of place dot is something you can't take back.
And holding your hand in a constricted pose and making the repetitive motions required to make the dots will bang up your wrist faster than you can say Episkey.
What I'm saying is, if you're doing art, please take care of yourself and remember to stretch often.