Tag Archives: altered book art

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

I might see you at Federation Square, if you are Melbourne based. Please say hi, if you are in the area. I’d love to see you.

I’m bringing a small number of limited edition prints to sell at the book stall along with signed books.

Below are some prints from the actual book, that will be for sale. And following them you’ll see some altered book prints which show the inspiration for the medium that was used in the book. But they also show the difference between the artificially created cream and the natural vintage book parchment.

The parchment is naturally a much dirtier colour… which appeals to my inky nature, but the Allen & Unwin book designer Sandra Nobes very rightly recommended a clean cream for the book itself, and this is where PhotoShop was my ally. Thanks Sandra and PhotoShop.

Little Cats (or patience is a virtue)

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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.

Flying by the Seat of my Pants

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Fleering … Shakespearian for grinning. Who would have thought? Do you know that you can paint in the bath using your ArtGraf water-soluble graphite block in its handy tin and a brush. Just add bathwater.

My apologies for my long absence from posting. I have been flying, not fleering.

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair was an eye-opening and fabulous experience. More on that later.

Elizabeth Honey, Ann Haddon and Judy Watson enter The Fair

Puglia was beautiful, and the trulli were as lovely as I could wish them to be. More on that later too.

trullo with red doors and grapevines

While I was flying to Italy, my husband Scott bought a house for us at auction and when I returned home two weeks later, I was thrown into a whirlwind of preparation for the sale of our current house. Whirlwind notwithstanding and with our auction two weeks away, it’s back to work today. And this is a marker post!

Leonard here I come.

Holiday doodles at Sorrento

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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.

Continuous line drawing with halftone

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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?

Two more balloons for Balloon Week

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Train trip home from the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show with balloon and show bags.

Overlooking the country show with a stray balloon found in the hills.

Tentacles

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Wednesday night. My night of indulgence. Kids in drama lesson. Me drawing for an hour. I remembered to take some water containers this week.

No I didn’t. I got them out. Then left them behind. But I did get a plastic cup from the cafeteria which I could have done last week if I hadn’t had a secret desire to eat ink.

The 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme… OCTOPUS. I was feeling reasonably comfortable with this, since I’d done an octopus/ squid that I liked back in SIMPLICITY week. (below)

Nice and simple. Oh well. I couldn’t put him in because he wasn’t done freshly for the Challenge theme. So I drew a few more.

First this.

I liked working with all the reds and wishy washing them over each other. That was nice. But I shouldn’t have tried to do the eye ‘realistically’. It’s most unattractive. (Unless you’re an octopus. Then, I’m sure it’s wildly sexy.) I bumped up the colour on this one before posting on Facebook. So he looks like this now.

I preferred my second go. It was very quickly drawn in the old Calculus book, with a bit of wash added after the Prismacolour artstick.

He’s got a little more life to him. And I like his eye which looks quite focused and intelligent.

The next one (groan) was painted after I got home and I thought I’d do a semi-blob treatment starting with grey ink. But he was awfully drab and then I added soft pastels to liven him up. It partly worked. But I was too lazy to hunt out the full collection of pastels and the colour around the eye is yucky! (Very typical of me to stay put on the high chair and use only the colours that are within reach at the drawing table. A shocking vice which may have had something to do with my ink eating last week…) Also the eye is awful again.

Finally I did another using the semi-blob treatment using coloured instead of grey ink. And I changed the eye treatment. I came up with a cute little red octopus on his first date. He is sitting on all his tentacles so as not to accidentally embarrass himself. I like him, but I really don’t like the girlfriend I whizzed up for him. Maybe it was a kind of jealousy. I wanted him for myself…

But I should be kind. Good luck little red octopus. I hope she’s the one for you.

Small reader

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If I thought that a small Watson reading Tintin in an armchair in his pyjamas might be less wriggly than a child doing bombs at the pool… I’d be wrong wouldn’t I?

Well, he was slightly less wriggly.

And a bit drier.

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