Just so that you know what those mysterious scribble blobs look like… here are a few.
One of them is caught in mid-mutation; turning into a poodle.
Not sure what I’ll do with that blob at the bottom of the page… Man! That’s what I call a tricky-messy-multi-scribble-blob.
Here’s Miss Poodle. She likes red.
She’s a digital sketch working from the scan at top. I like the effect of watercolour, but sometimes a quick doodle poodle is a good doodle poodle.
A few days ago I got around to joining Pinterest and have started to organise some of my work into boards. It is really quite a useful thing to be able to view a set of work at a glance. I’ve put some Thunderstorm Dancing fragments and working sketches on there too. Nice to bring it together and see what changes have occurred over 2 years!
Here I am if you want to visit me.
My altered Book art is there too. But there’s a lot in my cupboard! Only some of it is on Pinterest. I’ll update it over time.
These first two are grey blobs with red crayons scribbles in the middle of them. I have found they are harder to turn into things. The red crayon scribble is quite distracting! Who would have thought?
Blue Booby Baby Blob Bird Playing in the Snow.
Ink, red crayon, felt tip, watercolour, white acrylic, digital layering.
Old Dog in the Snow.
Also ink, red crayon, felt tip, watercolour, white acrylic, digital layering.
Search and Rescue Dog in the Snow.
This one has no digital layering. Thought I’d see what the white acrylic paint could do with the snow all by itself. I also skipped the red crayon scribble. Instead, this time I did a grey ink background wash with a red watercolour blob in the middle The red watercolour blob was what suggested the shape of the dog character and the rest followed from there.
I didn’t think I’d come up with anything for the ‘snow’ theme actually. It isn’t something I have much experience with. But blobs are a good way to start when you don’t know where to start. Then, just add some warm winter woollies and snow.
Winter has finally arrived in Melbourne. And the 52 Week Illustration Challenge theme is clouds.
I didn’t have to do anything extra for the Challenge this week really. I am working with clouds all the time for Thunderstorm Dancing, and although I can’t post an entire image until the book is published, I did post a fragment of the spread I was working on, which features approaching storm clouds (below). Froth, spatter, roar and hum.
This spread was finished until my Beloved told me that the veranda perspective needed alteration… the same veranda that the Cat Called Thunder is trotting across. So I will finish it (again) today.
I’m not saying I relate to that cranky terrier up the top. Not at all. Nope. And I do appreciate the help with perspective.
I did find myself wandering off to do cloud blob doodles to cheer myself up though.
Monster cloud blobs…
Wolf cloud blobs, crossing raging rapids…
Bird cloud blobs… one of whom just might possibly be a vulture cloud blob… (Should that be who or whom?)
And lastly this rather bizarre Cloud Blob Doodle which in fact I had done a week or two ago as a variation on the blob improvisation idea. Wherever that photo was taken, it wasn’t Melbourne this week.
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 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 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.
I’m drawing whippets over and over again until I get the expression just right for final art.
Sometimes, when I’ve drawn the dog several times over in the ‘pose’ (for want of a better word) required for the illustration, I still can’t get it right. Low growl.
Then I sometimes draw the dog (or cat, or person) in another way entirely and it gets my brain out of the gridlock.
Here’s Lucy telling me to play ball and chill out sister.
Ball anyone?
It’s a funny thing. When this book is finished, there will be tiny little fragments of it, like this one, only about 3 cm long, that I will really like. I think this is my favourite part of the book so far.
It has fat scribble and thin scribble, dancing together. They cross over each other in opposite directions.
I love scribble. And layering. And paint splatters. I wish all of the book were as loose as this. But it’s not.
Onward.
Now I know how Dr Frankenstein felt… It’s all good fun until you create a monster.
This is surely the Weirdest Blob Ever.
Firstly, I don’t know what this blob is made of… While the kids were doing their homework (boo!) and I was cooking dinner (actually it was cooking itself) I found a piece of paper in the kids’ art and craft drawer with this mysterious stain on it. It had no odour, nor any bloody fingerprints, so I assumed it was safe to use without notifying the police.
The first thing I saw in it (although I was looking at it rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise) was the shoulder, face and tiny wings of a beast. He had strong haunches and was clearly crouching on top of something (invisible) and looking down.
I drew him in. But what was the fragmented blob beneath him? He was not crouching on it. It might be something fighting him for the whatever-it-was in between them. Then I saw the woman’s face with the veil over her head. The woman was confronting the beast. So I drew her in. I decided she was some kind of Earth Mother figure and they were fighting for control over the Earth. So I drew the Earth in… and some decidedly weird explosions….
By this time the dinner was no longer cooking itself and needed some help, and the kids were asking questions and giggling and pushing each other at the homework bench. (That’s my lame excuse for the state of the Earth Mother’s hands… or claws.)
So I beat them all soundly and sent them to bed.
No, I mean I fed them, played Trivial Pursuit with them and sent them to the shower. (I lost at Trivial Pursuit of course.)
‘Now I’ll fix this weird blob with a bit of discreet colour’, thought I. ‘The colour will work its magic…’
I have no scan of the first coloured phase. Sorry ’bout that. But you’ll have to take my word for it that the colour made the blob look even weirder. Especially since the space fight was going on (at that stage) in a completely white environment.
I’m not sure why they are fighting as the Creature looks quite amiable and isn’t even raising a paw against the Earth Mother. Maybe He is trying to protect the earth and She is the one who wants to destroy it with storms, hurricanes, asteroids and plague. I would ask them if I could, but they wouldn’t hear me.
Then I added watercolour to create dark space around them but it wasn’t dark enough and the contrast became so low that the effect was one of a brownish blob surrounded by a larger greyish blob. I added some Prismacolour black pencil as a quick experiment in increasing the contrast. It succeeded to a small degree. Too small a degree.
I scanned the whole blobby mess.
In an act of insanity (given the amount of work I have to do right now!) I added a further layer of tone (purple) in PhotoShop which more or less addressed the contrast problem, and added some stars and magic sparkles. (How low can you get?)
Finally, as if to confirm that I have lost my grasp with reality, I wrote this post about the history and evolution of a nondescript and very weird blob.
However, now that it has been so thoroughly described, it can no longer be deemed nondescript… at least in the 17th Century sense of that word which is to say ‘not previously described or identified scientifically’.
I feel there are still some holes in the scientific nature of this blob though, so perhaps a thesis?
Here are some of the coloured blobs from a week ago.
An assortment of mutts, birds and abominations.
Sickeningly Girly Mutt
Disappointed Mutt
Cheery Puppy Mutt
Gloomy Mutt
Sniffy Mutt
Wiry Mutt
Cheery Bird
Moulting Bolting Bird
Silly Bird (Hugo’s favourite)
Opera Owl
Salvador Snail
Political Pig
Bunny in a Box
Well here they are! Some mixed results. 
I will include a few close-ups of the more interesting ones. 
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.
Judy Watson 