Carissa Conti (@Carissa_Conti)

One more picture.... Recently discovered alcohol markers via the usual "YouTube rabbit hole" where you look up one thing and wind up discovering other things.   Never heard of them before, but when I saw them I started to become *obsessed.*  Turns out they were invented ~1987-ish, so basically most of my life has been a lie since I had no idea.  🤣 So I'm a little late to the game, but then again I'm not an artist so whatever.   But for those who don't know, they're not really markers.  They come in a marker format, and are applied the way you do a marker, but they're able to be layered and blended in a way that you can't with traditional markers (or colored pencils, opaque paints, crayons, oil pastels, etc.)  The closet comparable medium would be water colors, but unlike water colors you don't need to add water and mix, and they're not nearly as difficult to apply. (water colors look amazing, but that's a very tricky medium to master so I haven't even tried.  !) After events of the past year I was inspired to reset things in my life in multiple ways and one of those things was to finally commit myself to diving into art.  I've been artistically inclined since childhood, used to draw a lot, but never had any lessons. Stopped actively drawing by junior high.  Betty Edwards, author of "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" pretty much nailed it when she said kids stop drawing around the age of 9-10, because they reach a point where they're now old enough to realize that they lack the skills to realistically recreate something, or translate the ideas in their heads onto paper.  If they're not given lessons to learn how to advance to the next level they usually just give up at that point. So recently I started with attempting to improve my drawing skills.  But once I accidentally stumbled onto alcohol markers that temporarily got set aside, and I started watching video after video about alcohol markers, seeing how they work, techniques for layering and blending, and what they're capable of doing in general.  I realized that THIS was the medium I always wanted. !!! Next thing you know I was utilizing Black Friday deals and purchasing a pack of 120 Ohuhu brand alcohol markers.  Bought a random coloring book on Amazon as a way to practice. Once I had it down in about 2 weeks I grew antsy as I always do with any new hobby I tackle and wanted to move up to creating my own more complex stuff, not just stay stuck in "beginner coloring book limbo" forever like many people do in those YT vids. (the whole "adult coloring book" thing is a thing let me tell you.)  Started with creating some ocean-themed bookmarks utilizing some of the big pile of fancy 3D, puffy and metallic tropical stickers I've had on hand for over 10 years but never used.  (the stickers I have are everything from tropical fish, jellyfish, starfish, whales, sea turtles, to coral, seashells, tropical umbrella drinks, palm trees, flamingos, hibiscus flowers, tropical birds, etc.)  Made a couple, and those came out great. Had the "blue green ocean" blending thing down pat.  But that was still too simple.  So then I was like.....let's expand to a bigger "under the sea" mixed media picture!   From there it just um.....escalated.  🤣 It'll be a coral reef scene with tropical fish and a jellyfish!  And it'll be attached to a magnetic backing, so we can put it on the fridge!! And let's make it oval shaped instead of plain old rectangle!! And use REAL beach sand that I'll glue to the paper!!! (I have several bags of white sand that I gathered up years ago from the Intracoastal Waterway here in Boca, dried and sifted clean.)  Mix blue/green glitter into the sand to connect it into the blue green colored water!!  And forget shell stickers, use REAL shells!!!  (I have a whole little collection of teeny tiny shells that I gathered at the beach here in Boca)  And what about sun rays streaming through the water?!  Is that possible?? Thought on it for a minute and came up with an idea for a technique that utilizes the Colorless Blender marker, practiced it, and it worked  And don't just have the plain sunlit water at the top, add seafoam!!  The project just kept getting more and more extra, is all I can say.  But I loved the challenge. And I was off and running, making it happen. So for fun I'm posting the final result.  Not claiming it's anything to the level of pro artists, trust me.  🤣  (The color in the photo isn't 100% accurate; it's more blue green in real life.)  But just something for fun that adds cheer to our fridge.  "Realistic cartoon."   It's a lot of work, and everything has to be done in a certain order. The water was made with 4 different colors, one of which was a Copic brand marker, layered and blended.  (That's a WHOLE thing, layering/blending multiple colors over such a wide area and get it to be so seamless, since alcohol markers dry fast; I had to figure out/teach myself the best way to tackle that.)   CONTINUED IN ATTACHED COMMENT 👇 👇 👇)