Category Archives: altered books

Fish Feast Update

This greedy little pelican, a doodle drawn for feast week in the 52 Week Illustration Challenge back in 2014, just returned from being on holidays at a friend’s beautiful retreat in Warburton, Victoria. (You can find the retreat here if you’d like to book a stay.)

As a result partly of the sunlight and partly of the unorthodox materials used to produce the drawing (for more info go here!), I noticed that the fish parts and wave pattern had faded to rather a nice sepia colour.

faded Pelican

I probably should have left it that way. But it seemed to be calling to me like this…

Judy, Judy, colour me in! Pleeeease colour me in, I beg you!

[repeat and intersperse with pitiful whimpering]

Being a soft hearted thing, and fond of pelicans, I did as I was asked with the following result.

pelican feast colour pencil

I’m pretty sure I prefer the original grittiness and I’ve got a bit of a tummy ache from the chips I was eating at the same time.

But boy was it fun!

Sketching at the Trampolining Centre

4 Replies

It’s school holidays, we’ve moved house recently, and I’m working on one of my most important projects: connecting my kids with new local friends before school starts at the end of the month. Today… PLAY DATE.

For those who think they have mastered sketching people at the swimming pool (hysterical laughter) the next challenge is obviously to sketch at Gravity Zone, one of Melbourne’s trampoline play centres where children and the occasional energetic adult bounce around in a state of perpetual motion and happy exuberance. So I took my sketch materials to the play date.

One of the children vomited as I was watching, but I didn’t sketch that. Luckily it was not on a trampoline but in the café area…

Below are a few of the more finished sketches of the morning. (I notice that I was using the same book for sketching as the one I had used a year ago at Sorrento in the Christmas holidays. How tidy!)

two boys getting ready to leap into the pit

Hugo stopping to pant after much bouncing with a basketball

a tweenager bouncing in a crop top

a tweenager having an argument with a friend on the other side of the floor

a Mum reading in the café

Another mum reading in the café

You will, I’m sure, have noticed a striking and curious thing. Only one of the sketches actually depicts a person in mid bounce!

I have a lot of work to do to get up to sufficient speed.

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

Little Cats (or patience is a virtue)

11 Replies

I was led off the trail of birds this afternoon. I had an important task to complete that was overdue. Lisa S contacted me many months ago to ask about my Cornish Rex artwork and she has been waiting patiently in New York for a signed copy of Thunderstorm Dancing for a long time. Boy is she tired!

Because she has been waiting so long, she got some little bonuses in her bundle. Some Cornish doodles. Lisa has two Cornish Rex cats. One is black (Nigel). One is white (Finley).

Check out Finley with my Cornish Soliloquy drawing from last year.

Here’s the title page from The Cornish Soliloquy

Here’s adorable Finley!

Today, I have finally wrapped up a signed copy of Thunderstorm Dancing for Lisa and it will go into the post tomorrow, bedecked with cats.

Tucked into the book:

White Cornish Rex on Endpapers JudyWatsonArt lores

A little white Cornish sketch painted on the endpapers of ‘The Book of British Villages’. I was going to paint him on a map of Cornwall, but I got engrossed in this one instead.

The little white cat with his friend the black cat, drawn on a (terrible) 1980s dress pattern

Thunderstorm Dancing all wrapped up:

Ready for the post bag

And finally, a doodle on the envelope:

parcel ready for stamps

When I was at the post office a few days ago, the only stamps they had were husky dogs… That’s not going to go down well! Fingers crossed there are some stamps there tomorrow that are more feline friendly.

Strong words

6 Replies

Proving that I’m back.

Another doodle from the bathtub on Saturday afternoon. Here’s a note from the back of a vintage Pitt Press Shakespeare edition of Julius Caesar.

Amaz’d is not the only word that was a stronger word then than now. Words and Christmas stocking fillers have suffered from inflation over the years.

Amaz’d – A stronger word then than now

Ophelia

3 Replies

Here’s Ophelia, my wee scrap of a girl who appeared when I was working on my Imago Mundi canvas. She found a home this evening on an even tinier canvas. This one is 7cm x 10cm.

Imago Mundi

11 Replies

**The Imago Mundi web site says:**

Art is born from a complex direct relationship with its surroundings and culture.
Imago Mundi’s ambition is to unite these diversities of our world in a common frame of artistic expression.

I am lucky that a friend opened the door for me to participate in this wonderful international exhibition. (Thanks Juliet)

Here is my tiny canvas for Imago Mundi.

‘Seen and not Heard’ (dedicated to Gillian Triggs)

I’m endlessly fascinated with vintage cabinet card portraits, so this came out of that space, and also from my interest in the cladding of women under layers and layers of ornament. There is a drawn woman under the coat. It’s a strange thing to add layers of clothing to a drawn woman and slowly hide her from view. (Something I explored earlier here.)

But I was also thinking of Professor Gillian Triggs trying to be heard in the Australian Federal Government arena as I made this artwork.

It’s made with acrylic paint, indian ink, felt tip, watercolour and collaged book pages on a very small canvas.

scraps of girls who will go somewhere else

#IStandwithGillianTriggs

Holiday doodles at Sorrento

5 Replies

This little guy was in the Sorrento shopping strip last week. Waiting for his Dad, he was inspecting the hats on the hat stand on the pavement. I was sitting in the car waiting for my husband and boys to return and was able to sketch him. He didn’t stay there for more than half a minute, but luckily the hats did.

This Strong-faced Woman was seated overlooking the sea in the park at Sorrento. My kids were running around on the playground and I was sitting on a picnic table in the rain, drawing. It was boiling hot and kids were playing in the park in their bathers, dripping wet, shiny. This woman barely moved a muscle, even when the rain got so heavy that I had to stop because the page was getting very wet.

Week 50 Christmas

5 Replies

Continuous line drawing with halftone

4 Replies

The theme for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge this week is ‘Black and White’. Not too much of a problem for me. Unlike last week’s theme, abstract. (aiiiiyh!!)

The boys and I went to the local hotel for a meal and took our sketch-books along. Mine was a dictionary of english phrases. I sketched the available people…. there weren’t many there! Then I scanned them, took out all the colour, and added some grey tone to give a bit of definition where my continuous line drawings were a bit ambiguous. But then I thought… black and white… not grey. So I converted all my grey to half-tone and I liked the effect. So that’s good! Trying something new with the altered books!

chatting girl b&w judywatsonart lores halftone

Chatting girl at the pub

This girl was as happy as anything and barely stopped chatting.

hoodie girl at the pub

This girl listened. And chatted a bit too.

curly sunglasses guy judywatsonart halftone lores

Curly Sunglasses guy at the pub

Curly guy was a bit pensive.

Do you like my continuouslinedrawingsignaturesjustforfun?

Judy, Judy, colour me in! Pleeeease colour me in, I beg you!

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Art is born from a complex direct relationship with its surroundings and culture. Imago Mundi’s ambition is to unite these diversities of our world in a common frame of artistic expression.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Art is born from a complex direct relationship with its surroundings and culture.
Imago Mundi’s ambition is to unite these diversities of our world in a common frame of artistic expression.