Illustration Friday: breakfast

Eggs and bacon for breakfast:

(watercolour, A5)

My little chicky is all grown up :)

Illustration Friday: diary

Blah blah blah my entry:

(pen/ink/watercolour on paper, A4)

A bit of a break from the norm. I was playing around with this line and decided to do it in some kind of calligraphy. I could have gone straight for the obvious "draw a diary" but went with a heart instead, it's what you pour out onto the pages of your diary after all.

Anybody know where the line comes from? And who knows where I heard the line first?

No prizes for the right answers. You're on the net, Google is only a URL away.

(OK, maybe a cookie)

Looks like rain again WIP

Last night I overcame my artist's block :O
and I began painting :O :O
With oil paint :O :O :O

(oil paint on paper, A3, WIP)

This was inspired after I saw a mushroom cloud. Not in real life, otherwise I'd be dead and typing this out would be really difficult. No, I was just link bouncing on the net and saw a picture of one. And as I like juxtaposing different things together, I introduced a lady with an umbrella. I like the calm and the chaos being played out here.

I'm only 2 days deep into this piece so it's not finished, but I had to post it even if nobody sees it because I'm quite happy with how it's turning out. I still feel like taking it down in tone a little. Make it darker, a little more sinister. Oil paints take longer to dry fully, way longer than I'm normally used to with acrylic, but what is nice is that it was still wet and workable after leaving it for 8 hours while I went to sleep. Blending it is fun too, I like being able to blend the paint when it's already applied. What's doing my head in at the moment is cleaning the paint brushes and then wiping them down so they don't thin out the paint I've already applied. If only I could just run it under the tap like a water based paint. Oh, I also can't just rush through it like I normally do with acrylic. My palette looks pretty though. Messy as hell, but pretty :)

I am painting this on paper. I know, I have a canvas just itching to be blessed but I really didn't want to mess it up with something that is essentially just an experiment with a completely alien medium. Let me get a few more of these done before I commit.

Today is the hottest day so far in London. BBC news said max temps will hit 31°C. Looks like rain again...

Illustration Friday: giant

My entry for Illustration Friday, this week's topic, "giant"

Yesterday I was at a school summer fair that my cousin was DJing for, with it's typical bouncy castle, face painting and tombola stands. One of the prizes at one tombola stand was a big panda bear holding a heart. The first thing I thought was "I don't have a teddy, OMG I want it", then I found out I couldn't have it because it was a kids-only tombola :(

Later that day I saw a little girl running around and playing with her friends, while carrying a giant blue shark plushie on her head. She'd won it from the same tombola stand where the panda was, which is weird because I didn't even see it at the stand.

It was hard to sketch because as with most little kids she wouldn't stay still, and I didn't bring my camera so I couldn't draw from a photo. So this was really rushed. My proportions and lack of skill at drawing human form really shows in the 10 or so minutes I did this in. But that's fine, at least it's something and it keeps me from thinking about what the hell I'm gonna paint.

So sharks, as well as being carnivorous toothy sea-beasts can also be fodder for cuddliness... Hmm, imagine that.

Plucking daisies

Just a little nothing...

(watercolour pencil on watercolour paper, A5)

I've got a huge artist's block right now. The enormity of the blank canvas has hit me and I've got like 5-10 different ideas visualised but only 1 canvas, and the more I think about what to do, the more the ideas all swirl into each other and seem like a huge mess of crap. I also really want to use oil paints but I've never used oil paints, and the idea of using them seems quite daunting. I think I'm gonna have to do some practice.

Illustration Friday: trail

My entry for Illustration Friday, this week's topic, "trail"

(pen on watercolour paper, A5)

The first thing that came to my mind after seeing "trail" in my inbox on Friday was "snail", and not just because they both rhyme. I didn't get around to doing this until today, it was another of those "don't think too hard about the subject" pictures, so I just did it freehand off the top of my head.

I scribbled with aqua Promarkers and blended them like watercolours, then I added some highlights with my favourite white illustration ink pen :) In total it took about 40 minutes to do and that includes time taken for the paper to dry to a workable state so I could use the ink pen.

Today I bought a canvas. I think I know what I want to put on it but I've never painted on canvas before... so that should be fun. I don't know when I'll start it but I'll post the end disaster if and when it's done :D

Change clothes

Not a major update, I just decided to change my avatar, because I can.

My old one is from an obscure (in everywhere but Japan, that is) claymation called Taiko Drum Master (Taiko no Tatsujin), based on the crazy arcade game of the same name.

I always thought the animal under the mask was a fat cat, turns out (thanks to wikipedia) it's a teddy bear. I also thought the mask was a cat, turns out it's a fox. Yeah, you see it now.

My new one is from a bunch of doodles that I did while house-sitting for a certain somebody :)

At the time I looked more like the one on the right, but seeing as I don't remember the last time I had a haircut I now look more like the one on the left.