The walls round my desk are painted in a colour perfectly named “happy yellow”. I have some lovely shelves stained dark and covered in books, notebooks, many bottles of ink, paint and other goodies. They’re just above my computer so I rearrange things and change what’s on display to keep it interesting. Some things are there to make me smile, my supplies are close and lure me to play. There are books I want to read and a backlog of journals and notebooks remind me to write too.
An A5 watercolour cartoon illustration. That moment when your cat suddenly realises it didn’t quite manage to jump onto the table. You see a range of expressions followed by the denial face as they swiftly exit the scene.
I sketched the idea for this cartoon a while ago, and thought it would be fun to work it into a cartoon illustration. After playing with different pencil sketches of the composition, I simplified my doodle and the final composition focuses right in on the birds.
I haven’t used fine liners for inking before, I prefer brush and nib strokes, but it’s fun to play with a different outline style.
When you break jewellery, it isn’t always easy to repair. I enjoy recycling and up-cycling, it’s a creative challenge with an earth-kind bonus. Especially when you loved the original piece of jewellery. Continue reading
Two more drawings from my sketch book. The first was a close up of a squirrel eating. Around here the squirrels seem to divide their time between eating food, burying food, performing acrobatics to acquire food and playing daredevil with other squirrels and cats. Probably trying to guard their food! I wish these were red squirrels but I find it hard to dislike grey squirrels in London, they are such entertaining little creatures. Especially when they perform acrobatics above our garden at full speed.
Some of these rabbit pictures have already been posted in my gallery, but I wanted to gather them all together as a set and post about them. Continue reading
Another painting, this time it’s a rural landscape. I took a bit longer painting this one, just because I was sitting for several shorter sessions and not an afternoon of determined practice. But as I’m trying to loosen up, I’m going to push up the speed again. It’s really satisfying filling up my sketchbook with paintings and feeling my skills developing each day.
I’m also transferring my landscape practice into digital art too, to finish the background on a horse painting that has sat gathering virtual dust.
I will also be working on a series of cartoons, but more details on those once they’re in full production. Yes, I do tease, don’t I? mad grin
My first attempt at painting a narrow boat. Given that I want to live on the canal at some point, I thought I should practice my boats! And water… Reflections are fun but challenging.
This is an A5 sized painting from my sketchbook. I took time to draw a few different composition sketches and really plan the painting out. This gave me a great opportunity to sketch the boat a few times before I had to transfer the outline to my sketch pad.
It feels like years since I was scanning and posting pictures from my sketchbooks, so I hope this one makes up for my neglect!
It’s a small (A5) watercolour from my sketchbook. I’ve been working through some watercolour exercises to give myself a wee refresher course. I’m not usually a landscape painter, so it’s a chance for me to work right out of my comfort zone and see what happens.
The other thing I’ve been working on is my painting speed. That’s improving too, so I guess this means I’ll have no excuse for leaving it so long between posts in future!