Breaking things

Cartoon of a rat dragging a toy rat onto a charging pad. Drawn in ink with watercolour pencil. A6 sized.
Cartoon of a rat dragging a toy rat onto a charging pad. Drawn in ink with watercolour pencil. A6 sized.
iRat – a rat grimly drags his mate onto the charging pad. A6 watercolour pencil on card.

So I was trying some new website software and broke a few things. It’s been a long time since I did my last “nuke from orbit” website re-install, but there are times when it’s just quicker to uninstall everything and restore backups. Yes, it was that bad! My apologies if you’ve been visting the site recently and it looked like a mess.

I put this blog on pause when I was moving up to Scotland and then it just slipped down the priority list while I got unpacked, settled and set up things like my new Society 6 shop. At one point I just got into the habit of popping pictures up on Twitter instead of blogging, but I’m going to try my best to blog regularly again.

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Week 4 of Inktober 2017

It doesn’t feel like I’ve done a month of drawing, but here we are. My third year of Inktober completed. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, and also the social side of it too. I’m already looking forward to Inktober 2018!

Path in Black Park - Inktober day 22
A pathway through the beautiful Black Park.

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Week 3 of Inktober 2017

Drawing of a howling wolf in pen and ink

Here are my pictures for the third week of Inktober. I’m still having a lot of fun and satisfied to see my sketchbooks filling up nicely too.

Tree stump - Inktober day 15
The official Inktober theme was mysterious and I really couldn’t think what to draw until I spotted this tree stump photo I took at Black Park. At the front there is what looks like a tiny face, so I thought it was something different for the theme.

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Week 2 of Inktober 2017

Pen and ink drawing of a zebra

Week two has been great fun – especially seeing all the amazing art others are doing. It really inspires me to keep drawing and developing my own skills.

Ewe and lamb - Inktober day 8
Two of my parents’ sheep with attitude. The spotty lamb was a fun texturing challenge too.

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Week 1 of Inktober 2017

2017 is my third Inktober, though having recently moved house it’s probably the most chaotic! I’m between houses so I can’t really unpack anything for a while yet, but I have opened the art supply boxes. Because priorities.

I’m posting quick photos of my work each day to my Twitter account, so if you want to get an earlier look at my new drawings and illustrations, that’s where to look. Proper scanned pictures get posted to Flickr the following day.

If you’re doing Inktober I’d love to hear how you’re getting on. If you’re not, don’t be shy joining in or looking on social media at what others are doing. I think most are using #inktober and #inktober2017 hashtags.

 

Pen and ink drawing of a deer
Day 1 – Deer sketch – Turned out paler than I was intending, but still fun and a good warm-up drawing.

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Poppy sketches in ink and watercolour

ink and watercolour sketch of some poppy flowers
ink and watercolour sketch of some poppy flowers
Poppy sketches

Some practice sketches of poppies. A5 pen and ink drawing with watercolour.

Hyacinth illustration – ink & watercolour

Top down illustration of a hyacinth plant and flower bud, ink drawing with watercolour paint
Top down illustration of a hyacinth plant and flower bud, ink drawing with watercolour paint
Hyacinth bud – ink and watercolour

From above this hyacinth looked fun to paint, so I decided to use ink and watercolour together again. I worked with a limited palette – leaf green, ultramarine and cadmium yellow.  Everything came together exactly as I’d hoped which is always satisfying. Continue reading

Sunflower in ink and watercolour

Painting of a sunflower in ink and watercolour
Painting of a sunflower in ink and watercolour
Sunflower in ink and watercolour

This is a sketchy watercolour painting of a sunflower with some details added in ink. I’m trying some different combinations of watercolour and ink.

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Chaffinches in watercolour

Watercolour painting of two birds - a pair of chaffinches on the ground

A pair of chaffinches were visiting our street this week so I decided to paint a picture of them.

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