Three Lions

Here's a sudden extra (goal)post!

So it's the World Cup, and this year I've decided to follow it a bit more again after missing the last few. Watching the England matches has given me a positive focus, in spite of the usual not expecting too much of them at this particular tournament! Whatever happens next... England will always be
the team I support. (Who I will urge on when England go out, I'm not sure yet.) I've also been listening to more England football songs over the years beyond the more obvious and that's been fun.
So here's my nod to England football for the World Cup 2018, but also in general, so whatever may happen next, the support is still there for other times! Knowing I needed to get it out asap ideally, I got a sketch formed and scanned and coloured all within a short space of time, not looking to make too much, but just enough to get the idea across. Went for a more graphicy illustrative approach here, and back to the songs... the words on the picture are a nod to the 'We've Got The Whole World At Our Feet' England Football Squad song for the World Cup '86. I do like a catchy tune.

Coat Of Many Colours And Spots

The 'coat' connection came just now...

For light-hearted purely traditional doodling after some illustration work (more on that soon), I decided I wanted to draw on A3 paper exactly 101 dalmatians, because I thought the effect of all the spots together and not much colour otherwise would be interesting. But also because Dodie Smith's 1956 novel is one of my favourite books to come back to, as it is written in a very charming way. Of course the Disney film(s) is so well-known there's no way of not getting influenced by it, but I have tried to make it closer to the novel with the inclusion of the liver-spotted adults and such. I spread drawing this out over a few days and only pencilling and pen-ing a few at a time so I could ensure I was keeping count. I believe there is 101! The nature of how I drew it, wanting little pressure with it as possible, means the appearance of the dogs and how much concentration into them does vary quite a bit! Again, just a bit of fun that I finally decided I might as well upload here, along with the following piece.

Seeing spots...

Another one of my favourites that I'd been meaning to do a picture for is of the musical by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. A coat of many colours splayed out was something I wanted to create. (Quite the contrast with the other pic.) I drew Joseph with curly hair as a nod to the Joseph that I went to see some years back now -- Lee Mead. I selected all the colours for the coat that are mentioned in one of the songs, which meant looking up various colour codes to get the best accuracy I could (at least with how I see the colours). I didn't actually look up references of how the coat generally looks in the stageshows; I just went with the flow. As ever I really like the lift that adding a texture gives to the final piece. It's fun to experiment with drawing humans in different ways when I don't draw them generally as much as animals. I'm pleased to have finally given this colourful coat image a go! EDIT: made a few minor changes since first posting this picture.

Thanks for looking.