My Bella

Inspired by watching Sky Portrait Artist of the year this evening, I decided to pick up my charcoal and sketch my 5 month old lab puppy Bella. I'm hoping this will become a series of studies as she grows up. I love this shot of her but the perspective is difficult to achieve in the drawing without a background.

Drip and Splash

The latest in my never ending quest to try new techniques sees me tackle a more 'gothic' style of life drawing. I took a long brush and a mixture of Indian inks and drawing inks and spent the evening creating more expressive paintings I the life model. I quite like the effect!

Shabby Chic inspiration

So I'm now channeling my own Interior Designer vibe and have been on a making spree this past week!

I've been on Pinterest looking for Shabby Chick pieces to tart up our loving room and house in general. This has filled me with a desire to create and subsequently I threw these bits together last week! Some (affectionately named) 'Wall Cushions' and a Pin board.

Stretching the mind

Some tougher poses tonight at Life Drawing class. I'm still working with pastels in a looser way. Though I'm now a little worried that I'm falling into a safe zone with them.
The blue and orange one I tried not to 'draw' the figure too much and initially started by blocking in the tone. However this proved a little difficult once I ran out of major tonal sections!
I'm going to try some different techniques next week and perhaps use pen and ink...eek! This could be good to stretch my brain even more or it could be a disaster as i realise that the pastels are actually really forgiving of minute mistakes. We'll see what the damage is next week!

Spring birds

This is my latest piece if bird inspired mixed media. As (I thought) spring was on its way it seemed appropriate to use one of my favourite little birds in a piece.
I'm happy with the collage and mixture of marks on the birds themselves. But I think the background needs to he lighter and perhaps evened out, it's a complementary grey/purple colour but its too rich. I'm considered cutting the birds out on their little trees an transferring them to a background of warmer climes!

Faces

This evening I went to my local Life drawing class, something I haven't done for over a year!
We focused on faces for the whole evening, which was interesting especially as when I normally draw figures I focus very little on the face.
Here is 'Roy' and 'Caroline'. They were both 10 minute sketches in charcoal. Roy was easier, being a standard profile. Though I think his ear is a little big! Caroline was a challenge which I set myself. I asked her to deliberately sit partial profile, so that I could see the line of the nose but also the cheek the other side. About half way through I nearly gave up, but I persevered and it paid off, just! I need to re-work the cheek on the right, make her cheekbone higher, but it bears some resemblance which isn't bad!

Little Birthday Wren

Wrens were one of my favourite little hedgerow birds growing up. We had a nest of them in the ivy outside our dinning room window and would watch them every morning while eating our cereal. They would return to the same spot year after year, until later on when my parents built a conservatory on the back of the house!

I've started thinking about how to use my drawings in greetings cards so this little fellow has donned a party hat to go with his excitement at the balloon that appears to be caught in the branch beside him.
I scanned the image into Illustrator and had a little play around, but I think he looks a little flat like this.

Recent Illustrations

I've been trying (here and there) to produce some newer artwork and am trying to find a specific way of working which will enable me to produce a series of similar styled pieces of work. This is one of my latest pieces, which was actually made onto a greetings card. The drawing is a straightforward line drawing with an ink pen, alongside some collage and printed shapes.

It's going to go up in a frame in my living room for now as it works with the colour scheme we have. Actually looking back on it, the sketchbook pages that I produced for this piece really show the process of how I came up with the idea. Especially as I toyed around with continuous line drawings. Glad I when back to a standard sketch effect. I think the marks work well in the tail. I may try this again soon.

The Birds

As I start to gather all my work (and hopefully start producing more!) here's a little snippet of my love for small winged things.
I got married last August and being the true designer that I am, wanted to create my own wedding invitations. The little bird I designed on Illustrator and converted in to TechSoft 2D design so that I could laser cut it out of card on the laser cutter at work. I then dotted the spare birds around onto thing like the table plan.