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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!

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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 :-)

Some Fishes

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I recently looked up the correct usage of fish vs. fishes. I was pleased to see that fishes is the correct term when referring to different varieties. There’s something nice about the word fishes and it goes nicely with swishes and wishes.

If you happened to be a fisherman and you caught 25 fish they would all have to be  of the same species.

These fishes are not of the same species. Some might say they were not drawn by the same artist.

Sometimes I worry that I should have a single, recognisable style; that all my work should be instantly recognisable, like a trademark. You can always recognise a Quentin Blake, a Mondrian, a Mitch Vane, (to take a more local example).

Other times, I say to myself… whatever comes out, comes out. Art is a lot about the process of discovery, the process of play, imagination, exploration, invention. And when I wander into new territory, with an insatiable curiosity for (and delight in) new artistic approaches, I am glad to be a wandering artist… I learn new things all the time and that is a great thing to find in life.

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Detailed, or static styles are not, and never will be my strong point. I’m too impatient (and ambivalent) to invest much time in details, so my ‘detailed’ work never stands up by comparison with the work of those who specialise in that area. But every now and then I come back to it, and play around and there’s something satisfying in the process, even if the result lacks both the liveliness of my quicker work and the detail that would seem to be required. Often the honesty of the piece redeems it.

In this case, the vintage Collins Dictionary (with pages disintegrating and falling out) seemed to ask for a static approach. I think the single artwork above is unremarkable. But if I were to fill the book in a similar manner with various artworks, the book itself may become a thing to treasure one day. The fish will be swallowed by the larger beast.

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Here is a return to my much quicker approach. The prismacolour artstick strikes again. It may be partly inspired by political weariness… the idea of the dangling lure… leading to what?…

But mainly it was a very rapid experiment in the power of transforming a sketch with PhotoShop colour. I’ll be using this technique in my next book, so why not?

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Finally, a very quick sketch with watercolour. The first watercolour experiment I did (not shown here) was deader than a doorknob. This was a 10 minute exercise in proving to myself that I could do the same fish with a bit of life. Not sure what he is up to. I think he may have the same kind of determined expression I adopted when drawing him…

Thunder Gulls

A fragment of a Thunder endpaper.

Prismacolour artsticks are great to use. I’m enjoying the corners and flat sides to get sharp and gravelly effects, all rather rough and imprecise, which is a good thing when you have a tendency to over-detail things as I do, in the context of illustration work.

Spunky Skunk

I did this in response to seeing some of nine year old Ricki’s skunk pictures. (see below) Some of them are very stylishly dressed. Others are pure pattern and form. Some are cartoon characters. She has covered the full spectrum of personality and style I think. Or if not, she soon will.

As my own skunks were very naked by comparison, I opened up a cabinet card portrait of a snake charming carnival performer and stole her costume for one final skunkette.  She doesn’t have the lively energy of Ricki’s drawings, but that’s how it often goes… sigh.

Here are some of Ricki’s wonderful skunks via her dad’s phone.

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These are some little skunky fellows sketched for somebody’s skunk-loving child. I drew these while we were watching (or in my case semi-watching) Disney’s Frozen on DVD last night.

It seems as though Disney’s latest favourite animation trick is to make all the hoofed animals into pretend dogs, tapping into all the most recognisable and well-loved behavioural characteristics of man’s most popular pet. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. The characters are fantastic. The brilliant white horse in Tangled, was really a horse-shaped hound. (Completely hilarious.) In Frozen, the minor horse character is treated in a similar way, but also the reindeer Sven. Having said that, one of his most endearing moves is to cavort through the icy danglies in the forest in a stiff-legged, pouncy, playful way and getting his antlers all tangled up. I have seen playful cattle make this same move on many occasions so that may well be a uniquely ungulate urge :-)

Do people realise fully grown cattle can be playful?

Well that was a bit of a side-track… No wonder my skunky sketches ended up being stuck in the spiral binding. I clearly had my mind on other things….

 

Whispering in the Wind

Peter, Moonlight and Greyfur, from Alan Marshall‘s classic Australian fairy tale ‘Whispering in the Wind‘.

Thinking of my puppet characters again, but also a final horse for the 52 Week illo challenge.

Equine Soliloquy (continued)

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I haven’t touched this project for a while. But the 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme for this week is ‘horse’ so it seemed a good reason to do some more doodles in the horse book. Most of these were done in brush pen during the hour of the kids drama class, but I’ve worked them up a little more at home today.

Horse alive, horse dead

Horse alive, horse dead

snowy squiggle horses

snowy squiggle horses

The front horse was drawn with photographic reference in front of me. The rear two emerged on their own. I like the freer, more pattern-like quality of the rear two horses, but quite like the very typical attitude of the foreground horse’s head. The two types don’t really go together but it’s a point of interest for me.

I enjoy this squiggle style of drawing. I find I do it more and more. It’s fun to let my hand (seemingly) control itself and wander very rapidly all over the page.

equine soliloquy hunched horse

Little scraggy wild horse

This is the brush pen I used quite a bit for the Cornish Soliloquy. I must buy a couple more. They are very interesting to work with. The ink doesn’t flow very quickly so they tend to get a bit affronted by my drawing style. I draw pretty quickly and the ink flow goes on strike and demands a breather every minute or so.

wild horse, captured horse

wild horse, captured horse

I was really pleased with the way this little sketch worked out. I strangely like the way the gutter interferes with the horse’s hind quarters, and I  liked the cream, blue, burnt umber colour palette.

Anzac Day war horse

Anzac Day war horse

This was an accident really. I was dissatisfied with the original sketch on the left hand side of the skeleton horse spread, and cut this black horse silhouette out very quickly to place over it. In the meantime, I painted out some protruding bits on the other page to give myself a fairly blank canvas. But this led to a new sketch on that page, and hence no need for the cutout horse.

So he went onto a new page, and I started randomly embellishing him. I started with the halter, but war horses and Anzac Day were at the back of my mind and I started putting tassels and other structures into the picture (from an outdated botanical diary). Before I knew it the background had gone smokey, fiery and the final touches were some poppies and botanical bombs in the air. The bombs also remind me of a holy trinity of sorts, but since I am not religious, they are primarily bombs… or just fruit.

I seem to have returned to muted tones for the time being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journeys with Birds – playing with colour

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The mad colour theme continues this evening. It’s the last day of the school and Easter holidays proper. (Although the school has a curriculum day tomorrow so the boys will be home for one more day.)

This is another bit of playing around for the 52 Week illustration Challenge. It’s not a very serious endeavour and I didn’t try to make anything perfect. I think it’s great to have the chance to do this every now and then, because the pressure is definitely on to get the paid work perfect. (By this I mean that I pressure myself, not that author, editor or anyone else pressures me.) So this kind of play is quite enriching and definitely relaxing. Although the red version was the one I posted, I think it’s the one I like least now.

This is probably more interesting if you see the original daggy drawing (below) that I manipulated into the book covers, with an hour of twiddling in PhotoShop and then Illustrator. Although I drew this unremarkable little bird doodle, even I have trouble seeing the resemblance between the original and the resulting bird. It’s like that shameless re-making that advertisers do with fashion models.

But I do appreciate the flexibility of the software tools I have to hand, especially now that I have plenty of good paint-and-mess time at the drawing board as well. I miss it badly if I’m not getting messy in the paint.

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