Serval Eye And Seahorses

Hi - I'm still around here. Already December of 2021! What?!

A quick-ish post before another following shortly. Was intending to include this one some other pictures, but those will have to wait a little longer.

A few months ago my mum had an opportunity do an online course by skilled wildlife artist Ian Coleman on sketching a serval's eye. I had a watch of some of it (and kind of went my own direction with my completion of it). Here's my result:

Also, fairly unrelated, a quick piece using up an old ink bottle with marker pen addition:

Next post coming very soon.

Inktober 2021

Finally a moment for another post! This October I returned to official Inktober. As ever, I wanted to not be too pressurised by it and if I don't want to do anything intricate, well that is fine! I'm not sure what else to add at this point, but will edit if necessary. I haven't included my thought process this time, but again, will add if I feel I should include more.

1) Felt tip, coloured pens, brush pen and markers. 2) Coloured pen. 3) Black pen and markers.

4) (Didn't scan very well - argh.) Brush pen and black pen. 5) The reference for 'Raven' from the early '00s CBBC show I used wasn't too clear and likeness not as there as I wanted: Black pen and markers. 6) Spirit from the Dreamworks' film 'Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarillon': coloured pen.

7) Coloured pens. 8) Watch the watch and the cat watching the watch: Black pen. 9) Bookworm: felt tip.

10) Black pen. 11) Marker and felt tip. 12) Coloured pen and markers.

13) Felt tip and markers. 14) Virtually all my felt tip and markers. 15) Actual inks from a bottle!

16) Felt tip and coloured pens. 17) Made up creatures: coloured pens. 18) Biro. 

19) Brush pen. 20) Sprout Olympics...: Brush pen and coloured pen. 21) Fuzzy Felt! (purposely pretty kiddie): Felt tip, markers and brush pens.

22) Black pen and coloured pen. 23) Felt tip, markers and brush pens. 24) Thylacine: Black pen and marker.

25) Inks. 26 & 27) Made up creatures. Drew for 'connect' then realised also went with 'spark' - is that cheating?: coloured pen. 28) Black pen and markers.

29) Based off a character of mine: black pen. 30) Middle a bit messed as was across two pages: black pen. 31) Ink and marker.

Thanks for looking.

In another bit of news, I've also now joined Etsy, and hoping to post again soon with more info on that...

Cats In Barcelona

Holidaying abroad? What's that??

One of the suggested exercises to do from those who ran the course I did (which now seems quite some time ago!). A fun prompt of cats having a citybreak around Barcelona. Now I've been to Barcelona, back in 2005, on a school art trip, and thought I'd like to do something with some of the photos I took then - regardless of the quality (being taken with a single-use camera and then scanned into the computer). The more of my own stuff I can use, the better! Each part took time as I needed to edit out other people from the photos, and then of course replace with a few cats, all having a good time. I sketched them out, some pretty wobbly and sketchily, and scanned in to colour. As the photos were taken in 2005, then I guess the cats were visiting around then, too, in case some things shown are no longer there! I haven't drawn much in the way of transport nor buildings/architecture in a while, so it was interesting to have a go again and not worry about colouring or even sketching it all up neatly. The overall piece I wanted to give something of a bold, bus tour flyer or similar look to it, with the colour choices and layout - it's not supposed to look like any polished illustration in that sense. I kept the image fairly large, but I do feel the photos would ideally be seen yet larger to properly see each cat! Whether it's strictly the kind of thing that would have been wanted... it was a fun experiment!

I'm sure I've forgotten a few points again...

Pets Memory Match Game

My final course assignment design piece from June - a fun one: a memory match game themed on pets. Feels quite a time ago now to think about my thoughts and processes on it. I left off uploading for a bit with a hope of finishing off the set (only a few being necessary for the document). Well, I haven't quite had the moment, but I'd still like to soon. As it needed to be designed for ages three and up, I wanted to make the cards bold, uncomplicated and cute, and hopefully distinctive enough for a successful family-friendly game of memory match. 

The course might have finished, but I will definitely be taking away some good lessons and portfolio piece ideas from it. Definitely worth doing the 'Bootcamp Assignment'!

I'm sure I've forgotten some obvious things to say... will edit soon.

Hitchhikers Guide Illustration Set

Following on from a few posts' ago with the link to the first 'Crown Players' Hitchhiker's Guide video I provided the drawings for, here's a small snapshot of every picture I created for the six episodes. To view a larger size, naturally these can be seen on the videos! Quite a few here; what a great and challenging opportunity to create a sequence of images for THHGTTG!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEmkffR_hp8

Well Played The Comic

The May assignment to design a graphic novel page gave me even more to think about: working out a story from a few selected photographs and objects, which writing styles to use, best colour choice - all colour? black and white? - and more. Every stage had a lot of consideration behind it and fortunately I had the time to do this within the two weeks! Naturally it's not smoothly polished up, but it was fun to do the comic-style - used to do quite a few on and off growing up and it was interesting to do this 'more serious' and more experimental version. After all the deliberation, I decided to make it entirely hand-drawn with some very minor alterations digitally. I had the idea of warm colours for the music and in the end decided limited colours would be best for me overall. 

Redcoat and Gryphon

A couple of 'for fun' rough drawings on A3 I got around to giving some colour to. 

The golden retriever is based on a British redcoat soldier of Napoleonic times - or just before, seeing as you look up red coat soldier on google and you get a variety of uniforms... I'll look for more direct accuracy next time; with this one I just wanted to get it coloured before May was out in the end! Purposely bigged up his head, thinking of those kind of humorous Georgian illustrations. Just got inspired to doodle quite a dynamic picture, running from a battlefield explosion, along with my desire to draw some more historical-setting pieces. I still shy away from putting too much into them for now, knowing that it does want that extra bit of research to get a decent level of accuracy with how this and that would have looked! 

To avoid waffling on too much more, well the second, totally unrelated, you can see is a gryphon, and I coloured it up pretty quickly once I'd pieced the A3 back together after scanning. (A3 scanner something to think about now...)

A rather different piece for my third assignment for my course follows shortly.

Amanda Gorman Be It

Second assignment on my 'MATS' Illustration course was to create a piece on poet and activist, Amanda Gorman, who recited at the US president's inauguration - and include some words of her speech. The course is really giving me more thought into the design of the writing to accompany the imagery. Quite different to the last picture, and yet I think you can see a similarity of colour method and style; although this time fully digitally coloured where I felt suited the editorial-style more. Another interesting assignment to do!

Beach Journal

In March I began an online Illustration 'bootcamp' course with a different market to design an illustration for each month, for a few months. Already it has given me plenty of food for thought in my approach to illustration and as a career - and so has been well worth doing. The first assignment was to design a journal cover, and with some colour suggestions, I leant very much on a summer theme from the start - Covid might prevent it, but can't forget about those summer holidays! It was a good chance to experiment for me and I wanted to be braver using hand-coloured methods for a final piece rather than opting for an entirely digital colour finish each time! Also not to play it 'safe' and do something a bit different to my usual approach. I'm looking to try out some more journal covers in other media soon to build my portfolio in that way further. :)

The second assignment has now been finished and I will shortly also post that here.

Hitchhikers Guide

 Just before the month is out - and I am trying to get a post (or preferably more) in every month - here's one of the various things I have been working on the past few months: Illustrations for a newly-recorded version of the original The Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy script by Douglas Adams, for non-profit and put together by 'The Crown Players' amateur theatre group. Episodes one and two have already been posted and see the link below! They've done a great job of selecting voices for this and putting it together, and it's been great to be a part of it.

It's also been fun and great practice to illustrate through a story in this way; which scenes to draw and how to present them and also considering time-limits. Sci-fi themes are not something I go to often and Hitchhiker's itself a humorous world I haven't explored in depth, although I had read the book and seen the film before. I was keen not to make any outrageous mistakes with how the characters and places could look, whilst still going in my own direction - so there have certainly been challenges with it. I should say a bit more on this in a post soon, and work out how to show all the images separate to the video for portfolio use - but for now, if you'd like to have a listen and a watch...

(Not sure if this'll work - probably better to click to watch straight in Youtube at a larger size.)

River Otters

 

Getting in one more picture before February's out. I drew this on A3 a few weeks ago and finally coloured up the other week. Another underwater scene, with some otters and - a little different - an eel. A bit of an experiment with black lines and no lines, which has me thinking about how far I should go with taking away lines.

Pet Portrait Commission

Getting a February post up in time! Putting my artist hat on...

To keep the explanation short, in December I had the opportunity of -- and managed to squeeze in -- creating a painted pet dog commission (my first try of such) for some individuals. The canvas was smaller than A4 and medium used was acrylics. When I can spend the time with traditional painting, something I still am only doing now and again, it really is very satisfying to work with, building up and building up the layers like that. I wasn't quite happy I was really capturing the eyes right throughout the process, but apparently it was liked, so... 

I took a few photos of the progress to share here:

I've been pretty busy with drawings for various things the past few months, and such examples and reasons will be included here in time...

Penguins And Company

 A few more pictures from last year for the moment, whilst I work away at other things in the background...

Can you remember a time before the first lockdown? Back in January or February, and the usual art group exhibition was coming up (let's very much assume that is not to happen this year) and I was starting to get inspiration from a few more of my wildlife photos for pictures. (Another reason for doing this did not materialise, no thanks to the virus!) The following two were drawn in this time, though not ones that I chose to put in the exhibition, but they can be displayed here instead.

Ring-tailed Lemur from Jersey Zoo, on A5ish green card, pen, chalk and a little coloured pencil:

Owl butterflies; I must confess I cannot for this moment recall where these were - Jersey Zoo or before? - need to check and edit. I at least managed to convey just why they are called owl butterflies... A5 textured card, pen, with a little colour added in Photoshop:

And now for a piece I was working on during the first lockdown, which I then stopped and hadn't looked at in months until now. Will definitely get back to this again when the time is right. I couldn't seem to get a photo of this where it didn't look a bit blurry and the colour has been sucked out a bit - the many trivialities of drawing on A3 and getting to the online world... Was again keen to do a solely traditional piece and larger, like the anteaters. So this is inspired by a lot of African penguins I saw at Bristol Zoo, and a few different photos I took. For the moment it is just pen and coloured pencil:

Hopefully should be something more to show soon.

New Year 2021

 It's 2021...

and we're in lockdown again. But still, here's to a more optimistic New Year.

As you will see, I've been working on further changes to this site (and others) to shift my creative direction a tad; hopefully for the better. Layout and colour has now changed, supposing I'm still happy enough with the colour scheme in a few weeks. The banner will also change after all these years; I am very attached to my little robot, but as most other things were changing, I thought perhaps an update there, too (not to mention the blog name is now inaccurate).

Let's start off with a wintry - dare I say festive - theme before it gets too late. I don't usually upload pictures I've created for my relatives, but the odd one will be fine! I've taken to creating images with cut out paper and card, kind of making it up as I go along, in recent years to give me something a bit different to work with than usual pen and felt tips/markers. Wonky phone photo alert:

Second, a background piece I did early December, based off a verse from a lovely someone's poem. Sole background pieces I don't tend to do so much and it was a fun little change. Pencil, scanned and coloured digitally:

'...Next, a shimmering purple sent waves of peace, crashing against the black rapids of despair.'

On another note, it was a very much appreciated little boost for me when I saw that in December Creativepool itself on Creativepool Liked my Young Writers' illustration from 2019, and it came up on their front page which I just had to screenshot!☺:

I aim to have a more of a particular focus on what I upload this year, to help me concentrate and improve with certain styles of illustration. (Naturally, pictures shown in this first post are a bit different to one another!) We'll see how it goes...