Celebrations, Handlettering, Inspiration, Mixed Media Ventures, Mou's Art Journal, Mou's Sketchbook, Online Workshops, Seasons, Tutorials, Video tutorial

Watch for FREE through January 2021

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To celebrate their 5th Anniversary of Daily Practice workshops, Creativebug is offering FREE classes for you to watch throughout January!

Here are my classes that you can watch:

Gratitude Art Journal: A Daily Practice
Daily Observations: Drawing Objects from Life
Daily Mixed Media Challenge

Enjoy!

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Handlettering, Illustration, Life, Mou's Sketchbook, Tutorials

‘A Leisurely Tea’ Illustrated Recipe

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While the quarantine has put some restrictions, it has also opened up some blessings – the time flexibility, for instance, to make an elaborate, almost ceremonial tea for mt myself every morning! The recipe is very simple but it certainly is a soul soother amidst all the home schooling.

I have made a complete materials list (with some affiliate links) for you.

Materials:

·       Castell® 9000 Graphite Pencil Design Set – Tin of 12 – #119064

·       Goldfaber Aqua Watercolor Pencils – Tin of 48 – #114648

·       Goldfaber Color Pencils – Tin of 48 – #214748

·       Kneadable Art Eraser – Assorted Colors – #127321

·       Deluxe Water Brush – #770306

·       Creativity for Kids Connector Watercolor Set

Let’s start by looking at the ingredients.

Start with a light sketch of the ingredients using the Castell 9000 pencil 2B on watercolor paper. Nothing needs to be an exact copy of the actual object. It’s more fun to draw them in your own style.

Start coloring the elements with the Goldfaber Aqua Watercolor Pencils.

Blend the colors with a deluxe water brush.

TIP: This water brush is particularly helpful because there’s no spill risk when you are sharing table space with others as I am right now.

Dip your waterbrush in the Connector Paint of your choice and brush letter your recipe title.  

Once the colors are all dry, write the ingredient list and the recipe itself with a Goldfaber Color pencil to finish.

I hope you enjoyed today’s tutorial as much as I enjoyed creating it. Stay well and stay creative!

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Illustration, Mou's Sketchbook, Seasons, Tutorials, Uncategorized

Bird’s Nest Nature Art with Mixed Media

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A nest full of eggs speaks to me of hope. Here’s a nature art tutorial for a bird nest using water soluble pigment sticks and color pencils.

I have made a complete materials list (with some affiliate links) for you.

Materials:

·       Castell® 9000 Graphite Pencil Design Set – Tin of 12 – #119064

·       Gelatos® Translucents – 15 Piece Set – #770176

·       Goldfaber Color Pencils – Tin of 48 – #214748

·       Kneadable Art Eraser – Assorted Colors – #127321

·       Clic & Go Water cup – Lime green – #181570

Start with a light sketch of the nest with eggs using the Castell 9000 pencil 2B on watercolor paper.

Start coloring the nest and eggs with the Translucent Gelatos colors.

Blend the colors with paint brush dipped in water.

Once the colors are dry, start adding details, texture and more colors using various shades of Goldfaber Color pencils.

Create an egg-shaped background using the Goldfaber Color pencils to finish.

If you wish to frame your bird nest, trim the paper to 8 x 10 inches and place it in a matted picture frame as a reminder of hope.

I hope you enjoyed today’s tutorial as much as I enjoyed creating it. Stay well and stay creative!

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Behind the scenes, Inspiration, Life, Mixed Media Ventures, Mou's Art Journal, Mou's Sketchbook, Online Workshops

A Creative Approach Podcast

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Toward the end of 2018, I was interviewed by Karen Poirier-Brode for A Creative Approach Podcast. We talked about life and how it led me to where I am at in my artistic journey. Here’s the link to the page where she highlighted what stood out to her in our conversation –

48: Approaching Art Mindfully for Greater Inspiration with Mou Saha

And you can listen to the podcast episode right here –

Listen to “48: Approaching Art Mindfully for Greater Inspiration with Mou Saha” on Spreaker.

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Mixed Media Ventures, Mou's Art Journal, Mou's Sketchbook, Seasons, Shop

Sweater Weather!

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It’s mid-October and the temperatures have dropped to the 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Every day this week, we woke up to cloudy cold mornings, not feeling like getting out of our warm blankets. I feel like sleeping all day like this little fox from my Hello Fall coloring book. But of course, that’s not possible, so I am just making more time to make some art using the Hello Fall coloring book images. If wasn’t recovering from surgery, I’d step out more and walk on the crunchy leaves down our beautiful neighboorhood streets under the colorful trees. But for now, I’m doing what I can to enjoy my favorite season of the year!

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Behind the scenes, Celebrations, Illustration, Mou's Sketchbook, Seasons, Shop

Hello Fall: All Image Collections on SALE

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Today is the first day of Autumn and it’s my favorite season! To celebrate, I am offering 15% discount on ALL my downloadable and printable coloring books/ image collections this weekend (9/22/18 – 9/23/18) only. Prices are adjusted, no code needed.

Not only that. I am also launching my newest image collection ‘Hello Fall’ TODAY!

Sweater weather, pumpkin spice flavor and glorious colors all around – that is autumn where I live and I love every bit of it. This gorgeous season inspired me to draw the colorful leaves, the pumpkin gingersnap pie scented candle, the crab apple sprigs, the squirrels that so actively gather acorns, the back-to-school supplies, fall outfits for picture day, the puffy cotton flowers, the strangely shaped gourds, the sunflowers bigger than my daughter’s head, the Halloween decorations, the wreath I made myself for Thanksgiving  and many more. I put these line drawings together in a downloadable and printable collection that you can color as well as use as collage images in your art journals, mixed media art and more. You are also going to get 15 bonus pages with ideas for coloring and art journal pages. Because you can adjust the print sizes of these images, you can even use them in your planners. Print as many times as you need to embellish your personal art projects. Whatever you choose to create, these images will do the hard work for you!

This printable image collection is about all things FALL. You can instantly download the printable PDF following the completion of your payment. You can download the PDF UP TO 3 TIMES just in case the first attempt fails.

No shipping fee, no waiting for the mail.

You can print and reprint as many times as you want!

You would normally pay anywhere between $1.67 and $5 for a SINGLE printable coloring page on Etsy after scrolling for hours to find one you really like.

My goal is to make this easy and affordable for you.

** This is a digital product that you will download. No physical product will be shipped.

**NO REFUNDS on this product.

** Copyright © 2018 Mou Saha. All rights reserved.

You can print these drawings only for personal, non-commercial use. Restrictions include but are: not limited to the following: you cannot resale these drawings, sell them as finished paintings or any art derived from them, submit for publication, teach classes using them, copy and/or distribute them in any form without my written permission.

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Family, Illustration, Mou's Sketchbook, Travel, Vacations

Vacation Memories Preserved in Watercolors

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The 2017-18 winter is still dragging its feet here in Jersey. It snowed again this morning. It’s still bitter cold and the wind still bites. We lost count of the number of snow days we had this season. The school year got extended and spring break was cancelled. But we had already made plans and decided to have our spring break trip anyways. So, on the 23rd of March, we packed up and flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Our home for the week was a penthouse apartment in the Aquatika BNB in Loíza. We had arrived in the wee hours of the 24th and had fallen asleep. We woke up hungry and drove out to get food. As we drove, the El Yunque rain forest in the distance played hide-and-seek with the clouds.

When we reached El Yunque, we tried asking the Ranger. He explained in fluent Spanish with a hearty smile and gave us a map. As none of us speak much Spanish, we relied on the road signs. La Coca Falls was our first stop.

For the next few days, whichever way we went, we crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande de Loíza at least once.

On one of the days, while we were filling gas in Loíza, I noticed a guy with a can of beer, leaning on the gas pump, smoking nonchalantly, apparently indifferent to the fire hazard. I wondered if I should caption that scene, ‘Huh, I laugh at the face of danger!’ I guess when one survives a natural disaster like Hurricane Maria, one gains a more fearless perspective on life.

From the time I loaded bags in our rental Kia, I was impressed with the little fort image on the license plate and had googled it. That led us to the Castillo San Cristobal in Old San Juan. This was my favorite gem from this trip. Boy, I could have spent my entire vacation sitting there drawing the fort from various angles. I LOVED the watch towers. They were incredibly beautiful to me!

As we walked through one of the dimly lit tunnels in the fort, with Nini ahead of me, I paid attention to the ground to keep from tripping and then looked up and saw this – light at the end of the tunnel and she was stepping into the light. That moment will remain etched in my mind forever.

Vibrant bougainvillea and hosta overflowed the colorful doors, fences and walls of the houses in Loíza and other towns we visited. Cats and dogs lazed under their flowery shades, only lifting an ear as an unknown car drove by.

After we got back each day, we finished dinner and cleanup and spent the remaining waking hours, each doing our own thing. I painted scenes from the day sometimes till 4 in the morning and then slumped into a slumber.

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Illustration, Inspiration, Mou's Sketchbook

A study of strawberries

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As I am going through with my daily sketch exercise this year, I am starting to explore a variety of surfaces and tools to see which combo I enjoy the most and also to see if anything distinct emerges for me stylewise. I felt that the differences will stand out the most to me if I studied the same subject. So, I started with a small glass bowl of strawberries with the intention to graze between somewhat realistic to more deliberate distortions. Along the way, I had a few unexpected realizations that were pretty intense and did not stay within the simple bounds of paper and tools as I set out to explore originally!

I started with a HB 2 pencil (the yellow ones kids use in school) and sketched the simple lines of my object on copy paper. What may seem obvious and something I tend to forget often is that staying with super basic supplies takes away any fear or guilt of making mistakes and actually frees me up to experiment. It is also an excellent warm up.

I usually like to draw things out with pencil but decided to go straight in with my Faber-Castell Ecco Pigment Black 0.1 pen on 75 lb smooth white cardstock this time. The pen glided beautifully on the paper as long as I didn’t hesitate. Whenever I felt nervous, my lines quivered. The lines mocked me and I had to add some quick touches of watercolor – LOT of water, very little paint.

Not having pencil lines to guide me made me feel almost blind and anxious. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But that’s how I really felt.

Then I took the strawberries out and placed them at various angles before me and did a more gestural take using Winsor & Newton Artist quality Watercolors and soft round # 4 brush by Loew- Cornell on 140 lb Canson Watercolor paper. This 5-minute exercise helped loosen things up a bit for me and dissipate the discomfort I felt while using the pen directly on paper.

While my watercolors were out, I decided to do a full study, shadows and all. I stayed with what I saw before me in terms of lines, colors, details, light and shadow using the same watercolors, brush and paper as the gestural strawberries. If I wanted this to be perfectly realistic, I would have to spend a lot more time on it. So, I settled for more or less accurate and not overwork it to death.

Next, I pulled out my Faber-Castell ArtGRIP Aquarelle watercolor pencils and decided to deliberately push away from realism. I distorted the perspective of the bowl and the shapes of the strawberries as much as I felt comfortable doing. I had a lot more fun with coloring it in with the watercolor pencils and then blending with water. From the bowl to the seeds, I saturated the colors and made bolder marks and liked that it looked weird and still looked like a bowl of strawberries.

By now, I really wanted to eat the strawberries but resisted the temptation for just one more study using Faber-Castell ArtGRIP coloring pencils on Canson 50 lb smooth sketch paper. After a quick sketch with the HB 2 pencil, I started coloring. I wanted to find something in between the two watercolor studies I did, in terms of colors and shapes and this is where I ended up.

When I placed the studies next to each other, I saw the differences in the looks. I found that I like the colors soft, the lines steady and the reality slightly redefined.

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Behind the scenes, Family, Illustration, Life, Mou's Sketchbook

Where there’s a will…

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Toward the end of 2017, I got an email from Jamie Ridler and Meghan Genge. They had a wonderful plan. They were reaching out to artists to send encouragement to fellow artists who sometimes lose their way (don’t we all?). These notes of encouragement were to be send as emails at no cost to anyone who signed up. It was called Love Letters from Trail Makers and I was invited to create a Love Letter.

Jamie and I came to know each other after my first Creativebug Facebook Live class and she interviewed me for her podcast Creative Living with Jamie. When this invitation came, I didn’t know what to say in words. I wondered what would I tell myself when I get stuck. So I created a visual message: Trust your imagination! When I started creating this blog post about my location sketching, I began to think that maybe my story could make sense to someone and encourage her or him to hang in there, creatively speaking. Mine is an everyday kinda story of a girl who grew up in a traditional Indian family, fulfilling her parents’ expectations and then her husband’s and all along remained attached to a simple hobby of drawing which no one took seriously. Read on and maybe you’ll resonate.

There was a time when I was about 8 or 9 and I drew everything in sight in my homemade sketchbooks. No blank piece of paper was safe if I could get my hands on a pencil, pen or any mark making device! I was not shy and I had no care about what other people thought of my drawings. People carried cameras and I carried my sketchbooks. I sat and I drew. Hours would pass by and I would keep filling the pages of my drawing books.

Then there was the time when I was 13 or 14 and I was shy to sit and draw in public. I restricted myself to drawing what I could see through the windows and balcony of our flat in the city. That shyness evaporated when I visited my grandma in the country and the change of scene was invigorating. My aunt would complain to my mom that I brought with me so few clothes. There was no space in the suitcase after I filled it with all the drawing paper I could fit.

As time went on, life got busier and busier. In my 20s, it was no longer possible to set time aside for reading, sketching and the like. It was not possible to keep drawing without making all the new people in my life – my husband, in-laws, new friends through my husband feel downright ignored. And then bags had to be packed with diapers, several changes of baby clothing, food and more. There was no more space for sketchbooks. Life had expanded in fascinating ways and even though there was no time to sketch, the amazing experiences were marinating inside while waiting to find the thread back to the surface.

Before long, the babies grew up to be children and there were many commutes to places for them to learn to swim, dance, do martial arts, make things in STEM club and there was waiting. It was BEAUTIFUL – pockets of time that were solely mine on most days and right there was the other end of that lost thread. As I packed for the kids, I packed a bag for myself as well with just the basics – a journal, a pen and a water bottle.

As travel became a requirement for my work, I took a sketchbook along and I drew at the airport, on the plane, in the taxi, on the go. I narrowed my essentials down to a no-objection-from-anyone-content-and-size and I resumed sketching on location, aware and unaware of my surroundings at the same time.

I take my time to draw. I don’t always finish on location. I take pictures with my phone for reference if I have to. But I carry on. When I can, I listen to audio books while I sketch. I try to find ways to do all the things that I can’t not do without neglecting everything I must do.

And I don’t judge myself. Or compare with others. They are where they are and I am where I am. That is that.

Some drawings turn out okay, many don’t. I am happy for doing it. And that in itself feels like a gift – the gift of creative expression.

Here are some sketches I did on location.

If you resonate with my story or feel that it inspired you in any way, leave me a comment.

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