Wednesday 16 December 2015

Week 50: Party

Fine liners and photoshopped to add colour and produce repeat



Week 49: History

2 images

History repeating itself




Evolution of the waistband

Week 48: Warm

Cold hands warm heart
Watercolour


Week 47: Play

Wacom tablet in Photoshop

Week 46 - Endangered*

Two images
What is missing from our world? Manners and respect, in a nutshell!
Handwritten and then tweaked in photoshop



And then the obvious threat to the natural world cannot be ignored.
Paper cutting and collage
*this was selected for the picks :)

Monday 16 November 2015

Week 45 Peace

Everyone found this week hard. There are so many parts of the world where there is no peace. This prompt was timed to coincide with Remembrance Day and WW1, which was known as the war to end all wars.
My first illustration depicts Egyptian Christians protecting Muslims as they prayed.
Half way through the week, there was a terrorist attack on Paris. All the world's media was focused on Paris and other parts of the world faded away. My second illustration was deliberately not just about Paris, the story of it is with the picture.


Both drawn on a wacom tablet in photoshop

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth."

Japanese tradition says that if you make 1000 paper cranes you can make a wish.
This is an illustration of a statue of girl called Sadako. 
She was two when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, as a result she developed leukemia. Before she died she decided to make 1000 paper cranes: her wish was to live.
A book written about her says she made 644, her family say she made more. Either way she has become a symbol for children who died as a result of the bomb, and for world peace.

Saturday 7 November 2015

Week 44 Scandinavian

Three images

So many ideas! But in order to avoid the obvious, I asked a couple of friends for advice. One is Scandinavian, living in England. The other is English, living in Scandinavia.

I researched lots of their ideas and in the process, learned quite a bit about Sami culture. 
I didn't end up drawing any people or reindeers and not a hint of snow! 
Here are two of their suggestions.
(*Update: I caved, keep scrolling, there is another illo!)

Land of the midnight sun
Oil pastels, about A5 size on pastel paper.

Draugen Oil Platform
Fineliner on A4 copy paper






So, I caved towards the end of the week and drew Sami people after all. 
Fine liner, A4 copy paper

Week 43 Monster*

Three images

All I could think of was Nessie and I REALLY didn't want to draw her. I asked facebook land to offer suggestions, which I used for the first two. After that, I was able to make a choice of my own, I dug out a favourite story book from my childhood: 'The Book of Monsters' by Ruth Manning Sanders. 

All three were drawn using a wacom tablet in photoshop. 


Vincent Price as Dracula

An American Werewolf in London
*This was chosen to be in this week's picks!

I loved the illustrations in 'The Book of Monsters', as a child but on reflection, not all of them match the descriptions of the monsters in the story itself. So, my last entry is Monster Horista from 'Pentalina'. This monster has the head of a wolf, the body of a gorilla, a long tail, boots and sharp claws. 
In my illustration he is lifting a pregnant woman from a swamp in return for her unborn child, of course he is, he's a monster in a traditional tale!













Week 42 Instrument

2 images

I dithered this week, having made two similar illustrations, I put them up together as a collage instead of individually. I prefer them separately so that's how I have uploaded them here.

I went to an Egyptian dance workshop today focusing on Baladi dance. 
Our musicians were Guy Schalom (darbuka & band leader), Gamal Awad (accordion) and Ahmed el Saidi (Saxophone). Gamal was my best model! 
I drew them based on photos I took, using a wacom tablet in photoshop.




Week 41 Sweets

This week I opted for traditional sweets in a sweet shop.
I pared down my design so there are no labels, no shelving to speak of and no real detail in the lids.

The final piece is digital because  I just wanted more jars than I was prepared to cut up sweets for. Honesty is the best policy!
I took a few photos and collaged them together. Once in a collage I changed the background colour of a couple to make it less repetitive.


Sunday 11 October 2015

Week 40 Carnival

3 images

I really didn't want to do feather clad women in teensy bikinis - it seemed to obvious. So I wracked my brains and one day Saint Saens', 'Carnival of the animals' popped into my head.
When I was feeling very keen, and hadn't realised what a busy week I had in store, I thought I would do all the animals...
Well, the swan was all I managed. I did a lot of research and learned lots in the process. The only thing to show for all that learning, in this blog post, is that Anna Pavlova's 'Dying Swan' in 'Swan Lake' was choreographed to the Swan movement in 'The Carnival of the animals'.
I watched her on youtube and looked a lot of her photos. I then drew five, five minute sketches with a brush pen. I used ink as a nod to #inktober.
The large one is the one I posted, but I have included the others because I wanted to share all of them.

 

Week 39 Melbourne

I asked a facebook friend, who lives in Melbourne, to send me some photos which she thought summed up her home city.
I chose her picture of Flinders Street Station. She told me it was an iconic building and it's where many people meet. So this has a sub-title of, 'I'll meet you by the clocks'.

Fine liner, cartridge paper, A4


Thursday 24 September 2015

Week 38 Fauna*


1 image

I had so much fun last week with paper cutting, here's some more.
I asked my daughter for animals which started with the letters from my name. So, in case you can't work them out they are:
Kangaroo, antelope, T-Rex, hyena puppy, arthropod, rooster, iguana, narwhal, electric eel.


I cut them freehand, with no sketches or drawings.
Each was stuck onto an A4 sheet and stitched together in photoshop.
*edit: this was picked for the picks! Amazed again! There were so many completely awesome animal illos this week too!



Saturday 19 September 2015

Week 37 Geometric*

Week 37 Geometric

3 images

I like simplicity and what I have learned this week is...

Art does not have to be technically difficult to make an impact and 'speak' to people - sometimes the idea is enough.

I've had so much fun - no high art aspirations at all, just playing with paper, cutting and glue.
(Well, I did have some fleeting thoughts about using geometric shapes in clever ways, but these thoughts were quickly dismissed).

Here they are - 
The first one is inspired by the Dazzle camouflage of WW1 battleships. I've added colour and applied it to the silhouette of a London Black Cab.
More about Dazzle HERE







Circle fun!

*This was chosen for the picks. It was my warm-up act! 
One of the things I have learned is that when art comes from the heart or a playful place it resonates with people in unexpected ways.

Keeping it simple!


Week 36 Dance

Week 36 Dance
Several images!


I've learned to make a repeated pattern in photoshop!
I'm very excited!
More about these little girls below.











     

I used photos I took at a music festival to make sketches, above are my three favourites.
Below is my first idea of how I would arrange them, as you can see from the main picture I got a bit carried away and created something a bit more complex. 
And last of all is a digital sketch I did of myself dancing.







Week 35 Botany*

Week 35 Botany
3 images

I started this week late because I was totally in awe of the beautiful and technically amazing artwork which was popping up in the #illo52weeks challenge feed.
So I started with something simple, in order to build up to what I wanted to paint, which was one of my photos of nigella from my garden. My watercolours were calling, so I did a third piece - a quick sketch of Lapsana Communis.

Here is my marigold, from a photo I took against a black bin - a very handy prop as it turns out. This took about 20 minutes in all - literally to break the artist's equivalent of stage fright.
It was received very well by the illustration group members and was chosen as one of the picks!


Nigella
This is also from a photo in my garden, taken after the rain. This didn't work out quite how I expected - a tad darked and more spontaneous than I intended. I will have to work on taking my time with details!



When my water colours were calling I thought it was time to use a more traditional 'botany' composition. So, here it is in all its simplicity.






Sunday 23 August 2015

Week 34 - Japan*

For this 'Japan challenge', I am tempted to draw a doodle character in a kimono, but for now it is something new.
I don't know much about Japan but I wanted to avoid being too obvious. So I have combined two very obvious Japanese symbols with a Japanese art form.
It is called Notan. It represents light and dark, ying and yang.

Now, I am not very adept at paper cutting AND I couldn't find my best scissors, but here is my best efforts with the time and resources I had this week.
*Whoohooo! In the picks :)



Week 33 Mythology

One image

I chose the Mermaid of Zennor
Here is my interpretation of what she looked like based on a carving in the parish church in Zennor.
Photos of the carving and her story can be found on this link.


Thursday 13 August 2015

Week 32 Fabric

It's a busy week for me so I needed to stick to line work and not over-do the detail. So ideas of fabric collages went out of the window along with ideas of drawing super macro close-ups of  woven material in pencil or watercolours.

An alternative definition of fabric relates to the walls and roof of a building, and as it turns out there is a London nightclub called fabric. So, here is a queue waiting along the walls of the building.



I started drawing the people at the middle and worked right. When I came to finish the queue I learned that I can draw people better from left to right. Overall, the impression of people is OK even though I would have liked to have time to refine it.

Week 31 Shakespeare*

2 images

Wherever do you start with Shakespeare? There are so many possibilities!
My first thought was to reproduce a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream I liked in a children's anthology, but I saw exactly that image done by someone else and couldn't bring myself to do it too.

Necessity is the mother of invention and I ended up doing two. The first are Malvolio's ridiculous cross gartered stockings rendered in watercolour on A3 paper. I was really happy with how this turned out, but it was my second one that got the best feedback from the group - and again was in the weekly picks!








Here are my doodle characters as Macbeth's enemies pretending to be Birnam Woods. A copy of this is winging its way to Australia - someone liked it so much she wanted to own it! So exciting for me!
*and my little doodles were picked on the challenge blog!!

Week 30 Portrait*

Self portrait time!
I wanted to do a 'teacher look', and not just an expressionless gaze out of the page. Taking the selfie to work from was quite a feat and very entertaining for my daughter!
I didn't manage to completely achieve what I was after, but it's on the way - and I was included in the weekly picks on the challenge blog (much to my surprise).

This is a photo which I heavily edited in photoshop, printed out, drew on it with pencil, scanned back in and edited some more!



Week 29 Love

2 images 

In a quest to keep it simple and avoid the obvious I did two illustrations this week - and I seem to be on a graphic theme with hardly any drawing at all.

I was feeling a little reflective with one son on the other side of the world and the other heading off on his first mediterranean holiday with his friends.

White pastel on black card, filtered in picasa.



I had many ideas linked to what love is, and words linked to love. I settled on combining a couple of song lyrics.
Created in photoshop.


Thursday 16 July 2015

Week 28 Winter

2 images

The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will the poor robin do then, poor thing?

He'll sit in a barn,
And keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing, poor thing!

A favourite rhyme from my childhood, brought to life back then by Brian Wildsmith. I was careful only to look back at his illustration after I had done mine. I'll add his soon x

Oil pastels on black card.
From my own photos - various robin photos and a very fluffy baby long tailed tit.



Another childhood favourite was, 'I am a bunny' by Richard Scarry. I have other Richard Scarry books which I also love, but didn't realise until I drew this that this was also his.
I really wanted to be this bunny when I was little. The book shows what the bunny likes to do in all the different seasons, it taught me to enjoy spring flowers, lie in the grass and watch the insects and birds, to chase and be chased by butterflies, all sorts of lovely things; ultimately once snow has come , to curl up in my hollow tree and dream about spring.

'And when winter comes, 
I watch the snow falling from the sky.'
Oil pastels on tinted paper




Week 27 Style

2 images 

I couldn't get past Audrey Hepburn iconic image in my head this week - but stylish as she is, it's not very innovative to recreate a version of one of her posters is it?

So this is what I did do:
A quick play on words in photoshop and a copy of the picture I did for childhood in week 22 re-imagined in the style of Miro. 
Line drawn on paper with colour and texture added in photoshop.



Monday 6 July 2015

Week 26 Land**

2 images

The picture I wanted to do, with a little doodle character landing after a parachute jump, I haven't finished. I just haven't been able to achieve the simplicity needed (yet!).  I shall have to return to it at some point.

So here we have a more successful doodle - a little pirate cabin boy up the crow's nest. 





And a view from above of me doing a buddy skydive jump two years ago.
I wanted to keep the colours limited, hence blue for the cloud outline, green for the fields and a contrasting colour for the jumpers - I would have preferred orange, but don't have it, so I settled for pink!



Just looking at the photo I used for this used to make me feel dizzy, but I'm better with it now!

Oh, wow! Both are in this week's picks on the challenge blog!

Saturday 27 June 2015

Week 25 Africa

Two images

I wanted to use Adinkra symbols but didn't really have time or inclination to create printing blocks. This way I was able to use a wide set of symbols, representing qualities relating to the spirit of the challenge:
love, security, safety, perseverance, peace, harmony, endurance, resourcefulness, charisma, persistence, support, cooperation, initiative, enthusiasm, learning from the past, humility, strength, wisdom, lifelong education and - of course - creativity.

Adinkra symbols collage
Made in Photoshop using Adinkra brushes - free download :)  from THIS SITE
and coloured in Picasa





I wanted to draw one of my doodle characters in an African onesie and as I couldn't get a particular song out of my head so the two ideas naturally went together - although  I didn't stick to the simple 'doodle' style this time.
Very, very quick water colour sketch and pencil to outline.