Tag Archives: animals

ATTEN….SHUN!!

ATTEN–SHUN! (Even Lassie came to see me. It must be an emergency.)

I have received a few nudges lately.

Yep. I’ve been lost in a world of moving house; a barrage of bills and boxes; a wilderness of wrapping. I’ve been so pooped, I can’t even alliterate for more than one sentence and ‘moving house’ doesn’t count.

Inane Squirrel Dog running hither and thither. This is not me, you understand. NOT me.

But I’m paying attention now. I’m here. Thank you to the nudgers one and all, for hauling me out of my box… or boxes.

I visited a friend the other day and sat down to do a few harmless blobs over a very nice G&T. To make it even easier, I made them dog blobs. Dog blobs are the easiest blobs, unless you count stay-as-they-are blobs. (Chickens can do those without even trying, so with all due respect to chickens I don’t count them as proper blobs.)

In the spirit of the whole blob thing, where the blob leads the whole story every inch of the way, I promise to include each and every blob in this post, even the ones that are SO WRONG!! All blobs measure around 2-3cm across so it’s really quite impolite to be enlarging them this much. A bit like looking up somebody’s nose.

Okay, I need to get this one out there. It’s hanging over my head and it is SO WRONG!

So so so so wrong!

Phew! All I can say is

THE BLOB MADE ME DO IT!

Irish Terrier x Bull Terrier in a bad mood (from a very nondescript blob.)

Dog breeders would say that this blob is all wrong as well. But I don’t mind him. He has a muscular, hardy look and may be useful carting boxes.

Perplexed Irish Soft-coated Wheaten Terrier born on the wrong side of the breeding box.

Being Blue-with-Brown-Spots has proven challenging for this Wheaten Terrier. It reminds me of studying the theme of ‘between cultures’ when I was at school…

A victim of perspective

Reminding us all that one’s situation in life is all a matter of perspective is this young Springer Spaniel x Staffordshire Bull Terrier. With his back half shown from above in the Stafford position of repose and his front half shown from the side in full Springer Spaniel spring, he could see himself as either getting somewhere or going nowhere.

Reg, the Space Dog

I have never seen a flop-eared dog do this before. His ear defies gravity. But perhaps Reg is in an anti-gravitational chamber and is practising to become a space dog. Luckily these days space dogs get to come down to earth again… I think.

Quite wrong. Pretty wrong. Almost certainly wrong.

This is Graham. Graham is undergoing hypnosis treatment, but not the kind you pay for. The hypnotist is an alien who has landed in the back garden and Graham was in the process of confronting him when an eerie light was switched on and began to swing slowly backwards and forwards… After that it was all up for Graham. I hope the alien is just going to take botanical samples from the garden, and not canine samples.

lickety-split

Lickety-split means fast, pell-mell, gangbusters, like a bat-outa-hell… well maybe not quite as fast as a bat-outa-hell. So I think these two dogs are engaged in a contest to see who can clean themselves more quickly. They are fairly evenly matched for size and white areas, but my money is on the brown and white dog because his tongue is larger. Stands to reason. Also the black and white dog looks like he is losing his cool a bit. He may be trying to wash his tail. If I were he, I’d leave it until last and trust to it’s being black. Nobody’s going to notice.

Emerson, the Blob Dog of Discontent

This blob dog is the smallest of all the blobs. Emerson was squished into the top left corner of the page. Perhaps that accounts partly for his disposition. Or, indeed he may be suffering from worms. (His posture is suggestive). But in fact, I suspect he was born this way and has been inflicting his testiness on everyone around him since puppyhood.

Even a dog biscuit would not help here.

Federation Square drawing and chatting tomorrow (13th June)

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.

Week 50 Christmas

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Catching up

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Hello! I’ve been a bit absent! Thunder is finished and off to the printers! I’m looking forward to seeing an advance copy in early January. It’s taken a few weeks to just get myself into drawing again. That’s not something I anticipated. And there are a lot of other things that I need to catch up with now that I’ve finished that mammoth project… including Christmas!

I had a great day with Ann James and Justine Alltimes last Monday, designing a poster for Jackie French, our Australian Children’s Laureate. Her project Share a Story will revolve around the ideas on the poster/calendar which will be available for free download by Christmas.

Ann James is a well known and skilled Australian children’s illustrator. Justine Alltimes is one of the hardworking and capable Laureate Project Managers. When the three of us get together, the ideas ping about like pinballs. After Ann had drawn and painted some images, I was able to alter them digitally to make new, and hopefully intriguing combinations, that will work well together on the poster and spark the storytelling imaginations of children, teachers and parents. The challenge was to avoid the literal interpretations of words like Slurp a Story and instead to come up with images that were open-ended or suggestive. We want starting points for stories, not stories in themselves.

More on Share a Story when the poster is released.

Other work in progress includes an illustration of Phar Lap for the front cover of a colouring book for the Melbourne Museum to match the dinosaur one I did a couple of years ago. As always with work done for Museum Victoria, I learn heaps along the way as I research the topic! Glad to find out that Phar Lap was probably not deliberately or even accidentally poisoned. Not that it made much difference to the poor horse, but he most likely died of colic related to a rare disease of the intestinal tract.

The 52 Week Illustration Challenge forges on towards the finish, but will return next year. I wasn’t feeling like drawing for this either, for a couple of weeks. So I’ve missed Week 47 New York, but I may go back to that. Although drawing New York itself holds little attraction for me, the New Yorker and its famous cartoons hold enormous appeal for me. So I think I need to do a New Yorker style cartoon. But of what?…

A page from ‘Tim and Tig’

Above is an illustration I did for Aussie Nibble – Tim & Tig many years ago. I illustrated Tim and Tig just after receiving a copy of the Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker; a fantastic book that had a powerful influence on my drawing! Many of the illos in Tim and Tig, I’d wish to do again and much better, but this one I still like.

Now that I think of it, I did do some quick doodles for Week 46 Circus. (Oh dear. What a rambling post.)

The Twisted Princess tidies her tresses

This doodle was on the bottom of a Thunder illustration. You may see a wee peek of the washy water top right, and it ran completely off the page. It started as a doodle and then I got mesmerised by the leotard pattern. Actually, this led my mind off in the direction of a series of paintings I’d like to do…

This brings me to last week’s theme. Week 48 Fox. In a shocking twist of fate, I found that the topic had long ago been changed from Chicken to Fox! Horrors!

I did some fox doodles while I was waiting for the kids to get out of drama class and below you can see them.

Deadly Maggie

This was a fennec sketch in an old book. I added some digital colour experimentally (even though fennecs are creamy in colour). It’s not entirely successful but there are elements of it that I like, including the scratching into top layers of colour; a Thunder habit that may continue for some time. Perhaps lead into interesting new areas.

A very innocent young blob fox.

By contrast, this little blob fox is not deadly. This was my protest on behalf of my chickens.

Contortionist fox

I liked the tail hatching on this one, and also the two tone retro feel, but it was certainly rushed. Not what you’d call finished work.

The Fox with the No.6 Tattoo

Lastly, this fellow. The fox with the No. 6 Tattoo. I liked his eyes and expression. He seems to have a canny and sophisticated air about him. I added some very flat colour panels in Photoshop trying to keep it sympathetic to his stylised and simple form and I like the result.

The Bird Lover

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Okay, this post came down. Now it’s going up again because I hear some people have linked to it. Sorry about that. Decided I wasn’t keen on it. But here it is again. Have posted plenty of warts-and-all experimental doodles before now, so why not this one?

Strange little doodle fellow with a Tove Jansson Groke nose…

For my bird loving Mum. (I know your nose doesn’t look like this, Mum.)

Furthermore… (in for a penny, in for a pound) here’s the earlier version of this pic. Which I decided was too dark. But it has a different, more raw and slightly spooky quality. Kids could have a go at something similar to this combining scraper board techniques with collage.

Big, Little and Middle Siblings

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The Three Billy Goats Gruff reminded me of these illustrations I did for Frances Watts’ book The Middle Sheep. It was one of the books I most enjoyed illustrating. I’m not a middle animal, but I’m one of three siblings. Possibly not as cute as I should have been. Ha ha!

Here are some of the sibling animals who featured in the book.

Siblins snails: sensible big sibling snail, cute little sibling snail and poor, overlooked middle snail.

Sibling snails: sensible big sibling snail, cute little sibling snail and poor, overlooked middle snail.

sibling rabbits

sibling mice: some siblings are too disgustingly cute.

sibling goldfish: it’s not easy being the middle of seven sibling goldfish.

Maud’s sensible big sister Doris

Maud’s cute little sister Mavis (here pictured on Nanna Gail and Pa Ray’s front doorstep)

Here’s Maud, in a spat with Ernie. A Middle Sheep can get very frustrated.

Middle Animal Superhero Sidekick tryouts, run by Maud

Cover art for The Middle Sheep

The Middle Sheep is suitable for the six to nine-year-old age group (give or take a birthday) and can be purchased online here or here or ordered in by your favourite local bookseller.

Putting Thunder Cats into Perspective

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Here’s a little peep into the book illustration process for Thunderstorm Dancing as roughs are edited on the fly while final art is being produced. For this spread, the Cat Called Thunder, needed to be inserted into the veranda scene, and I played around with various poses and movements until I found one that had the right character and jaunty expression.

…I realise Cornish Rex cats are not really characterised by jauntiness in the face of a thunderstorm. But this particular one is a Picture-Book-Cornish-Rex. And they are a specialised breed.

The problem was that the little fellow I liked is in full profile, and the illustration required him to be viewed partly from above. This can be a tricky adjustment to make (especially with drawings of people). But I usually give it a whirl by dotting in some rough suggestions of where the skeleton and joints might be, and take it from there. It puts the character into a three dimensional space in my mind.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer's angle of Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

My improvised sketch to alter the viewer’s angle of the Cat Called Thunder and my guesses at the location of the joints. I was wrong about the shoulder as I found out later.

Here’s what I came up with to shift the view point. And I was happy enough with that to move on to inking stage, and to add in any further detail during inking.

A cat skeleton showing the position of the shoulder joint at the front of the cat, rather than up around the area we would call the ‘withers’ in a horse.

Looking at the skeleton above you will see that my shoulder joints were in the wrong spot, but as it happens it didn’t really affect the drawing. My made-up shoulders took a shortcut from the top of the scapula through to the elbow joint, skipping the humerus. (Very efficient, methinks;-)

The Cat Called Thunder struts across the decking as the storm approaches.

The Cat Called Thunder trots across the decking as the storm approaches.

Here’s the Cat Called Thunder redrawn in ink and in position against the un-inked veranda. I think he’s sufficiently jaunty for the most demanding of viewers, despite his overbite which would make orthodontists blanch.

Brian, the greyhound with an overbite

Here’s Brian with a similar jaw. I think the overbite gives these two a bit of an ‘oops’ expression.

Experiments with Blobs (part 3)

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Well here they are! Some mixed results. I will include a few close-ups of the more interesting ones. girl on buffalo B4after People blobs! Can you believe it? Assorted terrestrial and aquatic monster blobs. A sad rabbit blob 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 :-) 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.