Exhibition 2019

Which was in February, and now it's October. And that's why I should always take my own camera/phone to such things.

Had two of my pictures up in the annual Nature In Art group exhibition for just under a week. As ever I was inspired by some photographs of mine to create these drawings. 

(Let) Sleeping Lions Lie

(a.k.a. 'Golden Syrup Lion')

It wasn't until the 'appreciation night' when it was brought up as reminding of by someone, that I discovered that this had come out a little like the 'Lyle's Golden Syrup' lion. Quite a fun coincidence there. I'd wanted to draw my own version of this lazing lion photo I took at... Cotswold Wildlife Park? for quite some time with various changes of my own. Hand-drawn on textured paper with black pen and coloured pencils. Something bothered me about the picture and I wasn't going to submit it, but then came back to it, scanned it and adjusted the darkness or so (can't quite remember a few months on) and somehow it just worked better. This was the secondary picture really to... 

Menorcans

('Original' image currently not available due to some computer issues. May add to post soon.)

Pleased this seemed to go down well. On a holiday to Menorca some years back we visited a place which had Menorcan horses and ponies and the main attraction was the show with these performing Menorcans (humans and horses). Here are some of the ponies outside. Hand-drawn on textured paper with black pen and then coloured in Photoshop. It looks quite comic book-like in colour style, which is fine with me. Adding the shadow was a last minute decision, as it can go so wrong... but thankfully it only seemed to enhance the piece. Phew.

Generally the last few months I haven't had a lot of time to really work on my pictures and what I have done has been more on the doodling side. Hope to start getting back in the swing again shortly. Talking of 'swing'... Inktober is also in progress. Which is definitely on the loose, doodly side.

Explore Horizons Young Writers 2019

Back in April I created a third poster design for Explore Horizons' Young Writers' Awards competition winner (well done, them!). This year the theme was very topical on the serious issue of plastics and pollution.

https://www.explore-horizons.com/blog/first-place-winner-2019-explore-horizons-writers-awards/

Again, there was a very small window in which to complete it, yet I felt it flowed (excuse the pun in relation to the water) more easily than before, from start to finish. With the time-frame you just have to work the best you can on the various limitations and I believe I managed to achieve a clarity to the piece, illustrating the story and the overall message: rubbish in the sea = clearly not good.

Frog-on-the-Blog

Did this a few months ago - naturally inspired by one of my zoo photographs - originally planned as an exhibit piece. It soon became apparent it was becoming too illustrative for the exhibition, so illustration it became. Only now does the yellow frog leap on to the blog (and actual exhibition pieces will come soon). A mixture of traditional and digital - you can really see the deliberate marker pen marks on some of the leaves. Drawn out first on textured paper I kept colouring a bit more traditionally before I was happy enough with the trad-digi balance. Another good chance to see what can work and what can't with my illustration styles.

May already? Yikes.

Happy Eostre

Easter pic! I recently read up a little bit about Eostre, who was a Goddess of Spring and Rebirth to the Anglo-Saxons. The tales of her links with a hare inspired me to this picture. As I planned this piece I had in mind giving it a hint of an Art Noveau style, and I also looked at a few Anglo-Saxon patterns to influence the border. The eggs in the corner I suspect are Cadbury's Mini Eggs-inspired. It was quite a nice one to work on with a bit more detailing again.

Edit! A few things I wanted to change on the picture.

Little Paintings

For want of a better title.

The art group I attend's 2018 Christmas gift swap was elephant-themed. I drew the close-up of an Indian elephant's face on a diddy canvas and ended up watercolouring and extending colour to the diddy easel. The second picture shows the tip of a mechanical pencil to display just how small the canvas was (bought from The Works). Pretty quick and quite fun. Can but hope it was appreciated!

Why is it so hard to get a photo to take close to the actual colours of a painting? Of the ones I took, I think this one may be closest, and it's still not perfect. I think this was drawn (way back) in January. A photo I took some years back, looking down at this countryside scene with steam train was from Corfe Castle, near Swanage in Dorset(shire), and I was really inspired to recreate it. I believe it was mainly watercolour, but perhaps also some acrylic. It was fun to vary the green used, but the lighter parts don't come up to well with the photos and it makes it look more patchy. Ah well... it was rather satisfying to do. As ever I am keen to try more painting and improve.

Either frog or post-exhibition pictures coming up next.

Year Of The Pig

Continuing the sort-of-tradition of doing a picture for the Chinese New Year - here is the Pig. It's not something I celebrate in any way, but as I probably said in the previous year, the use of animals for the new year/zodiac is interesting for me, and it's a good excuse to draw a pig again. I decided to change the colours of the line for variation from my usual black line, and the piece ended up quite pastel-y. Chose a 'dirty'-looking texture to give a kind of muddy pig sty feel. Didn't take too long to do and was quite fun.

Another exhibition coming up soon, and also more pics to post here before long...

Mentioning Mermaids

Here's another experimental illustrative piece... and yes I know I call most of my pictures experimental, but they really are for me. I hope I continue to progress with what I create -- or dare I say to fit the theme, making some waves with it.

I sketched out the picture, scanned it in and coloured digitally. Various textures were added after, using imagery of hair for the hair, etc., and then I entirely removed the pencil for a near-lineless pic. I wanted to create something which has a fun, colourful, slightly collage-y look to it and would like to create and development more in this style, perhaps depicting a scene from a story or so.

More to come soon.

And Then There Were None

... Yet another year passes. Hello, 2019.

In the September - October time I designed what would be the poster and flyer advertisement and programme for 'The Crown Players' an amateur theatre group, performing at The Kings Theatre in Gloucester. The group were performing Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (- and what a great job they did of it!).
It was a nice thing to work on - dipping my toes in an Agatha Christie theme, being of help to the theatre group, and designing and thinking about things I'm not drawing constantly in my art. It produces a challenge and it's pleasing to have the chance to give it a go... and hope not to cringe at the end of it all.

I followed closely with their visions for it - plenty of e-mails to and fro - and though inspired by some ideas of past covers, hoping to still give a new interpretation to classic elements of the story to stand it on its own. Once I sent it on, the writing and cast photos, etc. were positioned over it, which you can see from the photo below of the flyers and programme. One thing I did note for future pictures I create for print: my mac screen is lighter than the PC screens and my change in blue tones in the background which I saw clearly on the mac did not really come out in the printed version. Fortunately this was not a big problem in the grand scheme of things.

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Hooray for having 'hard copies' of things!
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Poster up on the website.