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A Field Guide to Birds of the Universe

I finished a spread for Thunder today, so it was fun to sit down this evening and splash around some watercolour paint to create a cheerful parrot (not of this world) and put him onto a book cover for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge. The theme this week is BOOK COVER. It’s a subject close to my heart, and normally I would spend longer than this on it… lovingly tweaking and twiddling each letter and feather. But a quick job is a good job until I am up-to-date in all areas. So here it is.

I don’t think I’ve got that craving for colour out of my system yet… who knows where it might lead…

Beards are back in fashion, right?

I know the background pattern could be so much better. But any drawing is done rapidly around here at the moment or not at all. Perhaps I will edit him later on. It would be easy enough, as he is coloured digitally.

I was feeling inclined towards strong, flat poster colour when I set out to colour him. In fact, the original choice was for a plain red background, which looked good, in a more serene way.

…But then I really liked the combination of manly strength, curling beard and floral pattern.

He’s originally inspired by a cabinet card photograph of a wrestler with a much more realistic beard. But this illo was done quickly for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge on the topic of DETAIL. I felt I should have a go, even though detail is really contrary to my natural habits. But it didn’t take me long to do this.

Blackboard drawing

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blackboard doodler – indian ink, watercolour, soft pastel

This was another sketch done the same night as the washy girls. She’s not entirely successful, but was an enjoyable experiment, and I’m finding it fun to just draw or paint whatever I please on occasion as a brief interlude between cooking dinner, organising holiday activities for the kids, catching up with overdue accounting and Illustrating Thunderstorm Dancing. I had food in the frying pan as I was painting this so I couldn’t afford to be too pernickety :-)

Dip brush, run to kitchen, stir food, run to drawing board, stir paint, drink paint water. Oops!

washy people

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washy little girls

I painted these figures loosely, intending to add detail afterwards. It’s a thing that Alexis Deacon likes to do in various ways. It’s a great idea and I’ve been meaning to have another go at it. But once sketched in, I felt they were finished and didn’t want any more detail. So here they are.

The Three Demon Cats

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If you mentally rotate this 90 degrees anticlockwise, and imagine the faint grey wash without the black ink details, you will be seeing what I painted a few weeks ago for page 14 of Thunderstorm Dancing. They were shadows on the floor for the cat I’m calling Thunder.

I picked up the piece of paper with three grey blobs on it today and looked at it in bemusement. ‘What are those three weird, rounded-yet pointy-blobs? They kind of remind me of something, but I’m not sure what…’

After working out what they were for, and given they are no longer needed, it seemed a shame to waste a piece of perfectly good paper. So I turned them into demon cats.

I could have turned them into nice cats. But their shape was somehow not really wholesome… more gothic. But don’t be alarmed. I will keep them in an iron-bound book and they will be unable to escape. (A small nod there to The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea.)

The Three Demon Cats

The Cat Called Thunder having a bad day

Those demon cats may be related to the storm cat below. He kind of accidentally appeared when I was drawing storm tendrils… or whisps… or wisps.

The Storm Cat – King of Tempests

Small reader

Wet waiting again

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I’m waiting for the boys at their last swimming lesson for the term.

As usual, a freeze ray would come in handy. but in the absence of one of those (perhaps for my birthday?) here are: a goggled boy about to jump in the deep end, a Chinese dad with his gleeful baby in the pool and two kids with very different body types.