Tag Archives: sketch

I am not a toy!

More of my doodles (not all poodles) for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge here.

The Bird Lover (take 2)

Here’s the same subject in a very different style. I couldn’t decide on the two skirt patterns you you can make up your own minds :-)

Bella will even be able to tell me what the fabrics are called. Is my girl a soft autumn Bella? I started off going for warm autumn and then my colour palette morphed…. (obsessively drawn to soft autumn it seems)

The fashion derives from circa 1840 and the applications of partial derivatives in differential and integral calculus.

Happy Friday!

The more demure, blue skirt print.

The lighter floral print skirt echoing the snowy overlays elsewhere in the scene.

Week 32: PSYCHEDELIC

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Cat trouble again

I don’t know if the cat is directly responsible for this little dog’s trippy bad dream, but she is certainly doing her best to mozz him.

Holiday doodles

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Here are some little watercolour blobs done while on holiday in Portland. Our holiday was short but very sweet…unlike Blob Bird No 3 who is short and short-tempered. These blobs are all just a few centimetres across. I forgot to take a fine brush with me, so I couldn’t get any fine feathering to work. I did birds first, as the 52 Week Illustration theme of the week is ‘feather’ and then I played around with dogs, monsters etc.

After we got home, late yesterday I did some more drawing in bed. I remembered that the shaggy hair on the lower legs of some breeds of horse (like the Clydesdale) are called ‘feather’ so I drew some Clydesdales, and then found myself drawing a Rebellious Teen Pony With Attitude, who also has feathered legs. I rather liked her.

Blob Bird 1

Blob Bird 2 – what a cheery fellow

Blob Bird 3 – a foul mood. He was drawn at the bottom of the page, and no room for a decent pair of pins.

Blob Bird 4 – Also in a foul mood despite his fancy trousers.

Blob Bird 5 – a bit mad I suspect.

We met a pair of swans in a park with a pond and little hire boats with outboard motors that the kids were able to steer. The swans were crazily gorgeous in a bizarre way, and very grumpy. I was watching them for a while and then drew them from memory later. We also saw Mortimer the Raven at the park, with his friend Edgar. I fed Mortimer from my hand and I saw up close that he really does have a hairy beak! Joan Aiken did not lie.

This is one of the cross swans, drawn from a blob. (Also cramped at the bottom of the page with his toes falling off the edge. I’ve added a bit of digital depth of tone to this one. He was pale grey)

One of the swans, from a blob. But he looks quite cheerful here, but I think he may have some goose blood in him.

A page of dog blobs. These worked better than the birds I thought as I had warmed up. (Maybe it was the champagne, or maybe it was the log fire…. hmmm)

Here are the Cross Swans again. These were drawn in bed last night after we came home. I’ve scanned them and coloured them digitally.

This is one of the bed sketches of a Clydesdale. Below is the Teen Pony.

Scribble Blobs (experiments with blobs part 7)

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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.

Lucy

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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?

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.