Sunday painters

A quick sketch this morning of some lovely poppies which have sprung up in the garden. 

Lil' still life

Mucking about with gouache last night, this was an unplanned sketch. Sometimes it's nice to just see what come out. My brushes are getting so ragged from all the drybrushing I've been doing, but it gives it some brushy nice texture.

Banana lounger

Sketchin

Trying out a different paper stock, it's very thick and textured. Wish I could remember it's name though!

Pink + ink

Sketching some things in my studio..

Got some 'esplaining to do..

I realised after I finished my 'bon voyage girl' that she looked fairly derivative of 50s/60s Charles Addams-esque imagery, someone looking at it might conclude that I just copied an old image. While I love Charles Addams' work I haven't looked at his stuff for a while, his work, like many others sits in the visual influences soup in my brain, at times sloshing out onto the page. I also get such a kick out of making images which look older, a sort of lust for the 'timelessness' of these images (more accurately a mid-20th-centuryness). So I thought I'd include the evolution of this image, to assuage myself a little, besides I always enjoy having a window onto illustrator's & artist's processes. 

I wanted to paint a bon voyage image and remembered this old flyer for a party I'd done back in 2007 celebrating my birthday and my sister's departure to Spain. 

At this time I was really into Edward Gorey and using fine nibbed ink pens. I liked how the figure was leaving the scene, pretty apt for a bon voyage card. 

So I did some sketching, thinking about having the figure leave through a door, I didn't know what to do with the other arm so conveniently ignored it.

Re-worked the image again, I envisioned the line cropping the figure as the edge of the card.

Another sketch, this time with two arms.

The finished image. 

Aaaand then I did a boy version too...

Took a while to get those legs right.

An old sketch

Found this today when I was tidying up, nice little sketch of Millicent Crow from our on-again off-again drawing group.

Busy little bouquet

Just an evening sketch, still using up my extra gouache from my Diverse City paintings. Fun to do something a little more folky.

Moist

Well the drought has broken and now all manner of mysterious mushrooms have been popping up, the weirdest was a sprinkling of small pale shrooms the size of lawn daisies which were all through the garden but then had disappeared an hour or two later.
This painting is a couple of months old but I thought it appropriate to post considering that there is currently grass poking through our deck and the aforementioned mystery mushrooms.

Quiet time

I'm trawling over new and old images of mine to make into prints for Chromacon. This new one is a reworking of this sketch from last year. Not sure yet whether to do it as a postcard or print....

Any suggestions of my old works to turn into postcards or prints would be greatly appreciated! 

Morning sketch

Today's lil sketch was a self portrait, done while listening to mine and Nigel's radio show(!). New heights of narcissism?
Done from my head and not from my reflection. Got my glasses all wrong cos I had to take them off to look at them then wasn't wearing them when I painted them on. Now that it's getting colder I will have a permanent red nose and warm ugly sweater until at least October

Good morning

I'm trying to loosen up my work, this lil' morning sketch was laid down in paint first (no preliminary pencil sketching, eeek!), with no idea of what it was going to be before I started. The colours are left overs from some recent paintings.

Gratuitous cat sketch

Sketchbook + red paint + blue black ink

Skink-buzz

A present from my cat. Poor little guy had already lost it's tail.

I rescue them from her when I can, such delicate digits.

Some photoshop stuffs

Sometimes I just like to play around drawing stuff in photoshop. I like the naivety and shonkiness of the results.








This last image was a thank you card for a wireless mouse.