If I Fits, I Sits

 Gracious, 202 has been a crazy year! I've actually been working fairly solidly, for which I am extremely grateful... but somehow this blog got lost. In an effort to prevent it from languishing completely, let's have a quick new post!

This is my latest Colour Collective post. If in doubt, draw a cat, I say! The colour was 'dark terracotta', which is not a favourite of mine, so I knew I wanted to make it pop with some nice clear blue. And the nasturtiums are in flower in our garden so I thought they'd be a nice addition. The rest of the foliage is shamelessly swiped from a current work project. I have been drawing a lot of leaves and jungle backgrounds so I just popped some of those in here to keep it speedy (I wanted a bit of illustration R&R with my Colour Collective, but I didn't want to spend too long because deadlines. This took 3, maybe 3.5 hours (hard to gauge when you were watching tv at the same time!)

I did this in Adobe Fresco, so there's a time-lapse. I posted it on Instagram, so I'll embed the post here. Click through to the second image to see it.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alison Mutton, Illustrator (@alene.art) on Aug 21, 2020 at 10:35am PDT

Serenity

This year Colour Collective is recycling favourite old colours from previous years. A lot of the time I have no idea what I drew for any specific colour, but I did remember my illustration for 'Serenity'. It was two Indian girls bathing a baby elephant at dusk, done almost exactly three years ago. It makes me cringe now, as old art has a habit of doing, and I briefly considered reworking it... until I realised that people with as many projects and deadlines on the go as me do not have that kind of luxury. So I kept the baby elephant and ditched everything else. Gosh, my work has got simpler!

I threw this together very quickly, it probably took less than an hour, and it needs more work, really, but for the time I had, it is enough. I do like my little elephant, and it was a lovely peaceful scene to work on while I myself was not feeling at all peaceful with everything I had to do! I try to carve out time to do both Colour Collective and Animal Alphabets each week, with a time limit of an hour, because it's important to do some drawing that isn't work-related, just for mental health (if nothing else, it doesn't have to be perfect!), and it keeps my social media from completely atrophying while I work on things I can't share. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro 13"

Robin Hood

Last year I did a few Robin Hood themed illustrations for Colour Collective, while the colours miraculously worked with the theme. I don't know how that happened! Where was the hot pink to throw a spanner in my works?

While we were in the UK, I (briefly) saw a weasel. I was amazed by how small it was, I'd always thought they were bigger. So naturally I had to draw one, and I thought Robin Hood would make an ideal weasel. He's always getting out of sticky situations. And the Colour Collective colour was 'Lincoln Green'. Meant to be!



Then 'Scheveningen Yellow Light' was the next colour, and I thought Maid Marian, with her original association with May Day, should be frolicking amongst the daffodils. We saw a lot of daffodils on holiday.



And then the next colour was 'Seashell', which turned out to be the perfect colour for mushrooms. Friar Tuck seemed to me to be perfect as a mole. We didn't see any moles on holiday (I don't think it's usual to see any!) but we did see some molehills.

Chattering Lories

For Colour Collective's 'Cardinal Red' prompt, I was going to go very uninspired and draw some cardinal birds. But then my mother reminded me of lories. I can't think why I had forgotten about them, I was only in the Lory House at Jurong Bird Park two months ago! So I changed my plan and chose chattering lories, endemic to North Maluku, Indonesia. They are considered vulnerable in the wild due to illegal trapping.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. A little over two hours.

Australian Animals

Here are some sketches of various Australian animals, which I've been doing as bedtime wind-downs. I like to have a little time before bed just to draw something pointless. 

This is a forty-spotted pardalote, endangered and endemic to a small area of Tasmania. I hadn't heard of them, but I saw them on Gardening Australia and they were so cute. They also matched perfectly with Colour Collective's 'Turmeric' prompt, so I included it as a bonus CC as well. 

Here is a numbat. They are also endangered, and native to Western Australia. Obviously I had heard of numbats. A lot. I love them.

A Tasmanian echidna. I saw one on David Attenborough's Tasmania and absolutely fell in love with it, so cute. I was filled with a desire to needle felt one, but I totally don't have felting time right now, so a quick sketch was the best I was going to get:

More below the cut:

Strange Noises in the Night

For Colour Collective's 'Midnight Blue' prompt, I decided to work in more of my middle-grade style. I've been working hard on picture books, and wanted a bit of a change so I revisited this little medieval girl from an earlier illustration, simplified her a bit, and went to town with a two-colour palette and ink-like outlines. It's nice to have a bit of a change now and then, especially when I'm working hard, and I enjoy middle-grade illustration just as much as picture book illustration! 

As you can see, I kept it simple, because I am working hard. Just enough background to suggest a medieval setting, and I was done in less than 2 hours. 

She's simple, but I quite like her. Here's a little peek at the quick sketch I did for her, snaffled from my Instagram Story. Remember to follow me on IG for lots of behind the scenes snaps!

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Going Fishing

I wasn't sure what to do with Colour Collective's 'Hooker Green' prompt, so I decided to rather boringly use it as foliage, and combined my CC with another building practice. 

This is based on a photo I took in Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire. We had been there before, but wanted to go back - a train ride from York to Scarborough, and then a bus to Robin Hood's Bay, but we made it! It was a fairly grey day, with some drizzle, but it made for some very spectacular photos. I was playing around with one of the art filters on my camera, and took two shots of most things - one on normal camera mode, and a second with a filter, which really took advantage of the overcast sky.

Here's the photo I based this on. I loved the way the filter on the camera really highlighted all the textures. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. I think I spent about three hours on it in total. 

Lovebirds

'Living Coral' is the Pantone Colour of the Year for 2019, and it was naturally also an early entry in the Colour Collective. It's such a vibrant colour, a favourite of mine anyway, and it was really tempting to do a detailed tropical underwater scene with lots of coral and fish and bubbles. But I had to be sensible; I'm busy, with two books on the go, and I'm running a bit behind because I was hideously sick with a sinus infection for a week. So detailed scenes were out of the question, I could only schedule in 1 hour for my Colour Collective - so I defaulted to birds. They're such nice, simple shapes. 

I chose lovebirds because a) they're cute and b) there was lots of opportunity to tone down the coral with green. It's summer here, I quite like to work with cool colours! And people seemed to like them, which was nice! 

And they were a big improvement on my previous week's effort (while sick with the aforementioned sinus infection). I'd dragged myself out of bed and thought I'd tentatively try doing a Colour Collective (tea green) to see if I was well enough to get back to work. I wasn't - a define lack of energy and purpose in my linework and colouring! I'll have to return to these ringneck parrots some other time and do them more justice. At the time, however, I just went back to bed. There was no point trying to do work if I was only going to have to redo it later! It's amazing how much being unwell can affect your drawing!

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. Each illustration took about one hour.

Folktale Week 2018

I took part in Folktale Week over on Instagram. Still very busy, so a lot of my posts involved sneaky reusing and altering of existing work, but better than nothing!

Day 1: Forest 

In which I sneakily use a study of Rottnest Island, change the lighting, add some sparkles and call it good.

More below the cut:

Twilight Dancer

A quick little Hawaiian dancer for Colour Collective's 'Thistle' prompt. I chose something quick as November was full of deadlines and I was very busy - but I wanted to have a little break and do a Colour Collective as a change of pace. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. Under 2 hours.

Snack Time

I had a bit of creative block when it came to Colour Collective's 'Amethyst' prompt. I love purple, and amethyst is my birthstone... but I was having trouble coming up with something. So, as I had been drawing birds, I gooded purple birds and discovered Lilac Breasted Rollers. I think we can all agree that they look pretty fabulous. I hadn't heard of them before. You learn something every day!

I added some African daisies for some extra purple, and voila. A Colour Collective Post!

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. It took about 2 hours. 

Castle in the Sky

For Colour Collective's 'Cornflower Blue' prompt I was way too ambitious. I knew this when I started, but I carried on anyway. Never the best plan...

I'd been to see Aladdin the Musical on stage with some friends the Sunday before, and all week my work had had a total lack of sparkles and curly-toed shoes, so I wanted to do something with an Arabian Nights theme. It went through a couple of iterations in my head and then I attempted to actually create something in a couple of hours, when actually I needed rather a lot more than that. 

But I think the concept is okay... so I'm posting it here so it doesn't get totally lost in the depths of my social media, in case I ever want to pick it up again and make it actually good. You never know. We are calling this a sketch, 'kay?

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. Just over two hours. (See, I told you I didn't have enough time!)

Warrior Princess

I was listening to Cressda Cowell's The Wizards of Once (fabulously read by David Tennant) on audio (I like a good kidlit story on audio, it tunes well with my kidlit work) when Colour Collective's 'Vanilla' prompt came around, so I went all 'warrior princess'

Unfortunately I ran out of time, so I didn't execute it as well as I would have liked. Oh well, it's in the files, and maybe one day I'll dig it out again and make it better. I think the potential is there.

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

The Trouble with Bathing in Milk

For Colour Collective's 'Milk' prompt, I went with Cleopatra. Unfortunately, I in no way had enough time to fully do justice to my idea, but I'd like to go back and do it properly one day. When I have the time (insert hollow laugh here). I mean, I like Cleo... but the rest of it could really do with an overhaul. I'm calling it a concept sketch. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. 2 hours.

Witches

Here are two witch sketches I did, the first one I did actually on Halloween. I shouldn't have had time to do it, but I was having a bit of technical trouble with my graphics tablet, and we'd had to source a second-hand one so I could continue working while the original was being repaired. I kept working on the old one while I set up the replacement... and I foolishly signed out of Photoshop on the old one before I realised that Photoshop wasn't up to date on the new one... so I had a half-hour where I was waiting for updates, and I borrowed my father's iPad Pro and did this sketch. It was Halloween, and all I had for social media was a rough sketch of Hogwarts for the end of Inktober 2018. And I was a bit stressed, what with all the tech troubles, so I reverted to default 'poofy dress sketch'.

And the second witch was for Colour Collective's 'Auburn' prompt. It was a few days after Halloween at this point, but I've been listening to a Tiffany Aching book, so I've got witches on my mind. (Not that this is Tiffany, she wouldn't be seen dead in this cloak, although she would probably mildly approve of the boots). I needed a quick subject as I'd had a very long, active and busy day; I just wanted to draw something quick, and go to bed as soon as it was a reasonable time to do so. (Colour Collective falls at 3.30am here, not 7.30pm as in the UK, so I had plenty of time for a quick CC and an early bed time).

 

The first witch was done in Procreate on an iPad Pro, using mainly the default dry inking brush, and the second was done in Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro, using mainly Kyle Webster's sketch pencil rough.

Mouseapple & Co

Mouseapple & Co, Purveyor of the finest novelty favours for the discerning witch. New flavour this year, 'Diabolo Menthe'. All hygienically prepared.

It had to be another quick Colour Collective (the colour was Diabolo Menthe) because I'm still super busy. When I had almost finished I toyed around with turning it into a 1900's style advertising poster, but I hadn't planned for that when I started, and I was just going to waste too much time with too much else to do. So, sorry, Random Mouseapple Employee... you just get a plain black background!

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. About an hour. 

Raven (and Friend)

I had lots of grand ideas for Colour Collective's 'Scheveningen Orange' prompt, but I didn't have an equally grand amount of time at my disposal. In fact, I practically have negative time. So, it had to be something quick. No witch this week, just two of her friends.

Adobe Photoshop CC2019 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. Just over one hour. 

Tuna Sandwiches

Trying to keep up with Colour Collective, despite having all of the projects on the go, so the natural solution is to go with a chapter-book style, which is nice and quick to do. For October I like to have a witchy theme for my Colour Collective posts, so here's a modern little witch eating some tuna sandwiches on the way to school . The colour was 'Glaucous' and I took the easy way out by making it the sky.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. About 2 hours, maybe 2.5. 

Hot Chocolate

It's serious business!

I like to have a witchy theme for Colour Collective in October, so this is what I managed for the Deep Mahogany prompt. I didn't have much time to work on it, I'm very, very busy right now. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. I've got it in my calendar as taking 2.5 hours. 

Snail Cosy

I was very busy when it came time for Colour Collective 'Basalt Grey', so I took a quick sketch I'd done earlier in the week and prettified it a bit.

Here's that original sketch, inspired by a photo my friend Makenzi linked me to when I was feeling a bit down, of a snail cosy crocheted by Katie Bradley:

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. I spent an hour to an hour and a half on the Colour Collective version and about 20 minutes on the original sketch.