Author Archives: Judy Watson

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About Judy Watson

Book illustrator and artist. Find me on Instagram at @JudyWatsonArt

The Feast

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The Fast

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The Curse of the Black Tongue

This evening was the Drama Class night, when I take my two plus one more to a drama lesson at a big leisure centre. We always enjoy the evening despite the slightly rushy nature of eating early straight after school and then getting to the class on time, when nobody can find their shoes, or their book for the car or remember to go to the toilet until we are about to drive away… the usual stuff. They are a happy bunch of three and I enjoy their nutty company. I also enjoy the slightly-less-than-one-hour of free time at the centre when I can draw just for fun.

This week’s 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme is ‘feast’. It’s not a theme that lends itself to time poor folk because it conjures up mental images of banqueting tables, rife with imaginative and mouth watering detail. Forget that.

Having grabbed the nearest half-stocked ‘art backpack’ as I went out the door with the mad ones, I found that I had limited supplies with me. (You were wondering what that subtitle The Fast was all about, weren’t you?) I had a vintage book to draw in and a box with pencils, fine point felt tips losing their inkiness, a brush tip black pen (also fading), one deep terracotta red crayon and a small paintbrush but no water receptacle.

Thinking I’d hopefully find a pithy quote to illustrate in the vintage book – something that brimmed with feastiness, or failing that, feistiness –  I found it was all about a family during the Gold Rush and that Hugo had used the first half to practice scribbling with thick black texta.

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Not to be deterred, I found a page with a description of an extravagant breakfast. I set to work illustrating it using a pencil and the first subject that came to mind: a chicken serving breakfast. Unfortunately the chicken was so long and elegant of neck that she obscured the text she was illustrating, so I swiftly moved on.

I found the page above and quickly drew Mrs Pym in her kitchen with the fading brush tip. She’s okay. But remembering that the brush tip is water soluble I found I hankered to deepen the tone with a bit of water. No water. Aha! Yes! You guessed it. The Curse of the Black Tongue!

I confess I glanced around me to see that nobody was deeply offended, as I proceeded to use the nearest clear liquid to hand… or mouth.

I had half a drama class still to use… what could I find? After a few minutes of fruitless searching, I gave up on wasting time looking for food references in the vintage book. I thought I’d draw a pelican with a border of fish leaping around him on the page. And so I did. But the fine point markers kept running out on me as I drew, so I kept changing, keeping to a .5 or below.

FEAST pelican lores

 

Although a real pelican  would be more likely to feature blue legs I think, the red crayon came in handy here. And once complete, I was just left thinking how much I’d like one more colour to highlight the fish with. If only!

Oh happy pelican! As I resorted to the Black Tongue again in a not-very-hopeful kind of way, thinking that this time, the ink was waterproof, I found to my delight that all but the bird’s body and one wing were drawn in fine point markers that were water soluble and which when wet became green!

I am quite pleased with my pelican page. But I can still taste that ink on my tongue.

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Blobs

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blob birds lores

Lunch break bird blobs.

Felt tip, watercolour pecking and white acrylic flecking.

Mood Blobs (experiments with blobs – part 5)

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I could’t help noticing that these blobs painted late last night when feeling tired and a little low, all have one thing in common.

Despite the fact that they all were generated from random colour blobs, they all look downward to the bottom right of the page.

contemplative cassowary

contemplative cassowary

Scott pointed out that this fellow looks Muppetish. A compliment :-)

pondering purple person

pondering purple person

preoccupied parrot

preoccupied parrot

Ptentative Pterododal

Ptentative Pterododal

No wonder this Ptreposterous Pterododal is Ptentative… His wings are ridiculously inadequate for his size. I’d stay on the ground, if I were he.

 

 

Experiments with Blobs (part 4)

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Here are some of the coloured blobs from a week ago.

An assortment of mutts, birds and abominations.

First the mutts.

girly mutt

Sickeningly Girly Mutt

glum scruffy mutt

Disappointed Mutt

little mutt

Cheery Puppy Mutt

miserable mutt

Gloomy Mutt

sniffing mutt

Sniffy Mutt

wirey mutt

Wiry Mutt

Then the birds

cheery bird

Cheery Bird

moulting bolting bird

Moulting Bolting Bird

silly bird

Silly Bird (Hugo’s favourite)

silly owl

Opera Owl

And a few Abominations

strange snail

Salvador Snail

strange piggy

Political Pig

bunny in a box

Bunny in a Box

Portrait of Dexter

Our old boy, who sleeps with his tongue hanging out now. (But not with his eyes open…)

Pencil sketch with digital wash.

Experiments with Blobs (part 3)

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Well here they are! Some mixed results. drama colour blobs comp levels I will include a few close-ups of the more interesting ones. suitcase lady B4after girl on buffalo B4after People blobs! Can you believe it? smiling creature B4after seamonster B4after Assorted terrestrial and aquatic monster blobs. sad rabbit dad A sad rabbit blob round bird B4after predator B4after  flying handbag bird B4after flecked duck B4after elephant bird B4after And a range of birds in varying degrees of preposterousness. Including the rare elephant bird. Are you sick of blobs yet? I don’t think I am quite. Here is a sheet of blobs done during the kids’ drama class on Wednesday evening. A ran out to the car with a page of still wet blobs to play with when we got there. It is quite a stimulating way of spending a few minutes, and more fun than sudoku for me :-) blobs from drama lesson comp levels lores The dogs were the things that worked best here I think. I extrapolated a lot more than I have previously too. Because some of the blobs suggested just part of a face.

Experiments with Blobs (part 2)

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Here are the ‘second pass’ blob creatures. There are also a couple that didn’t make the grade with the first pass and are now so much improved that they are going up after the second pass.

dino 2

This dino is as corny as ever :-)

 

elephant trousers 2

Little Elephant is messier but richer for his second layer of colour, I think.

little bird2

I like Little Bird much better for his red head and little tail feathers.

stork seaside 2

Stork looks much better now to me. He’s having a ball at the beach.

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Thoughtful bunny was not a success to my mind. The patches were a mistake, but you never know until to try.

windy creature 2

 

I like this guy now he has some autumn leaves bothering him. Lots of movement now. I could have painted his coat actually…

beckoning dog 2

This funny little beckoning dog didn’t go up first time. He’s better with a bit of shadow. (Do you recognise the cloud over Stork and the autumn leaf here? They are all close neighbours on the same page)

parrot 2

Finally, a parrot who didn’t make the first cut. I like his feathering now that he has a bit more colour. Ticking in feathers or fur really does something for me. I love it.

grey blob creatures composite levels lores

And here, to finish up, a whole page of weird new blobs. We shall see what happens when I add a touch of colour to some of them. It’s a different effect of course, over grey; the colours are subtler, less pure. But this is what I did with the bookmarks originally.

And now it’s back to my Thunder work for the day.

 

Experiments with Blobs (part 1)

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Naturally, after playing with the grey blobs on the weekend, I was tempted to whip up some colour ones late last night to squeeze some in for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge – week’s theme ‘Colour’ before the new theme today. (Themes change each Wednesday.)

It really was late at night. So these were ‘one pass’ illos. I nearly didn’t bother scanning them because I wanted to go to bed, but the photos were too awful. Here they are in their scanned, and unedited state.

beach swimming stork

Stork on holidays at the beach.

drama queen creature

Dramatic bear… koala… creature?  (someone suggested music conductor)

elephant pulling trousers on

Elephant unsuccessfully pulling on trousers.

little bird

Little bird

 

sentimental dinosaur

A sentimental dinosaur. I actually thought this was a bit too corny. Don’t know what came over me. Maybe Facebook-Peer-Pressure!

thoughtful rabbit

A thoughtful baby rabbit. I love the way the fuzzy edges and curves of the blobs can just summon a character into my head… if a character doesn’t appear fully formed in my mind’s eye beforehand, it generally doesn’t turn out well on the page. Of course the fuzzy edges on this coarse watercolour paper are quite suggestive of animals because they look a little hairy. But let’s admit it… there’s a bias there anyway!!

Today, I spent half an hour doing a second pass with more colour to enrich them… and to experiment of course. Some were improved and some were ruined by the second pass. I’ll see if I can find time to scan these and post them tomorrow or the next day.

 

Blobby bookmarks

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Last weekend was the Warrnambool Books Children’s Book Festival in celebration of the bookshop’s 30th anniversary. I was a guest illustrator on Friday and did a school visit at St Joseph’s Primary School before a book signing at the family owned bookshop.

While I was there, I decided to mix up two ideas from other clever illustrators. I have seen Jude Rossell giving out bookmarks with small illustrations on them at illustrator events. And Alexis Deacon has described his fun practice of painting or drawing blobs and then turning them into something here and here and most awesomely here.

I was just after something simple and quick to do in between signing books, so mine were pretty basic but the kids loved them. Here are some of the bookmarks I did the next day at home, simply because they were so much fun. In fact it was rather hard to stop!

photo 1

photo 3

photo 2

photo 2-1

photo 1-1

They take about one minute each.

• First paint a pale grey-brown blob with some interesting projections and bumps.

• Then paint a few more while the first one dries.

• Go back to the dry blob and add a few lines with a felt tip pen to turn it into whatever springs to mind.

• Finally, add a touch of colour if you want to. (I didn’t do this to many of them in the bookshop. They were very simple.)

My two boys joined in with great enthusiasm and did some fabulous ones. It is a good activity to do with kids, and taps into their wonderful imaginations. In the case of my two boys, it was fun to see how they formed an alliance whereby Arthur would paint the blobs, and then after they dried, would ask Hugo what the blob should be. Hugo, with barely a split second’s hesitation would say: ‘That’s a pig blowing a trumpet. That’s a fish with legs. That’s a cow shouting.’ And so on. Arthur happily drew them after that.

Like me, they found it hard to stop once started :-)