Tag Archives: illustration

Mad Experiments with Blobs

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.

weird thing stage 1 lores

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.

weird thing stage 2 lores

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…’

weirdest blob ever lores

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?

Bird Blobs

blob birds lores

Lunch break bird blobs.

Felt tip, watercolour pecking and white acrylic flecking.

Experiments with Blobs (part 4)

Here are some of the coloured blobs from a week ago.

An assortment of mutts, birds and abominations.

First the mutts.

girly mutt

Sickeningly Girly Mutt

glum scruffy mutt

Disappointed Mutt

little mutt

Cheery Puppy Mutt

miserable mutt

Gloomy Mutt

sniffing mutt

Sniffy Mutt

wirey mutt

Wiry Mutt

Then the birds

cheery bird

Cheery Bird

moulting bolting bird

Moulting Bolting Bird

silly bird

Silly Bird (Hugo’s favourite)

silly owl

Opera Owl

And a few Abominations

strange snail

Salvador Snail

strange piggy

Political Pig

bunny in a box

Bunny in a Box

Portrait of Dexter

Our old boy, who sleeps with his tongue hanging out now. (But not with his eyes open…)

Pencil sketch with digital wash.

Experiments with Blobs (part 3)

Well here they are! Some mixed results. drama colour blobs comp levels I will include a few close-ups of the more interesting ones. suitcase lady B4after girl on buffalo B4after People blobs! Can you believe it? smiling creature B4after seamonster B4after Assorted terrestrial and aquatic monster blobs. sad rabbit dad A sad rabbit blob round bird B4after predator B4after  flying handbag bird B4after flecked duck B4after elephant bird B4after 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 :-) blobs from drama lesson comp levels lores 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.

Experiments with Blobs (part 2)

Here are the ‘second pass’ blob creatures. There are also a couple that didn’t make the grade with the first pass and are now so much improved that they are going up after the second pass.

dino 2

This dino is as corny as ever :-)

 

elephant trousers 2

Little Elephant is messier but richer for his second layer of colour, I think.

little bird2

I like Little Bird much better for his red head and little tail feathers.

stork seaside 2

Stork looks much better now to me. He’s having a ball at the beach.

Untitled-1

Thoughtful bunny was not a success to my mind. The patches were a mistake, but you never know until to try.

windy creature 2

 

I like this guy now he has some autumn leaves bothering him. Lots of movement now. I could have painted his coat actually…

beckoning dog 2

This funny little beckoning dog didn’t go up first time. He’s better with a bit of shadow. (Do you recognise the cloud over Stork and the autumn leaf here? They are all close neighbours on the same page)

parrot 2

Finally, a parrot who didn’t make the first cut. I like his feathering now that he has a bit more colour. Ticking in feathers or fur really does something for me. I love it.

grey blob creatures composite levels lores

And here, to finish up, a whole page of weird new blobs. We shall see what happens when I add a touch of colour to some of them. It’s a different effect of course, over grey; the colours are subtler, less pure. But this is what I did with the bookmarks originally.

And now it’s back to my Thunder work for the day.

 

Experiments with Blobs (part 1)

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.

 

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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The Wrestler

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.