Watercolour: Clara

Wow, long time no post! I've been very busy with things exciting and not so exciting, and have really had my nose to the grindstone. However, I had a few weeks from absolute hell and decided I needed to do something personal and pointless, as stress relief, otherwise I absolutely would not be able to cope. When I saw the Doctor Who episode Robots of Sherwood, I decided that Clara and her pretty dress would make a good subject. What I really didn't want to do was think. And thus, the composition could be better...

I took a few screenshots from the episode, and mixed and matched, so it's not based on any one image and the background is made up. I had a lot of fun meditatively painting rocks and tree bark.

I've been working exclusively in black and white – either brush inking with grayscale watercolour, or digital inking – so something with nice bright colours suited me down to the ground. It was also a chance to try out my new Copic Multiliners, which are more forgiving than a brush. 

I'm not entirely sure how long it took me, as I was working on it over two weeks (no one can accuse me of neglecting my work!) but I suppose it was somewhere in the 5-7 hour range. 

Windsor & Newton watercolours and Copic MultiLiners in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook

Sketch: The Princess Bride

Here's a recent Daily Doodle topic I did over on Twitter. The topic was The Princess Bride. I nearly did Inigo Montoya, because I like to ink solid black hair... But I decided to be lazy and go the easy route with Princess Buttercup instead, since I was actually very busy, and as we all know, my default sketch state is 'girl in pretty dress' :p

The colour version above I did in Photoshop later, when I had a spare half hour. Originally I did a black and white watercolour version - I had bought some cool grey ecoline for use in the picture book I'm currently working on. I'd never used it before and wanted to practice on something unimportant before I potentially ruined a freshly-inked double page spread. :p

This is a scan, but here's a photo showing a bit more of the metallic golds that I dug out of my pen collection. I combined two gold pens and they turned out remarkably hard to photograph:

And here is the line work. I used a Pentel Brush Pen, in my Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook:

I had to look up references for the costume, mainly because I've only seen the film twice, but I didn't use any one specific reference. 

Pentel Brush Pen in Moleskine watercolour sketchbook | cool grey Ecoline | Adobe Photoshop CC with Wacom Intuos 5 

Portrait: Gregory Peck

Another commission, this time of Gregory Peck. This commissioner is very fond of old movie stars and is getting quite a collection of pencil portraits. I've previously done Rita Hayworth, Gloria Grahame, Robert Redford, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift for the same client. Normally I don't do star portrait commissions but I started this series many years back and can't very well refuse now. 

I'm pretty sure this is from a publicity image for Twelve o'clock High, but I may be wrong. I started this before Kim Novak, and after Rita Hayworth, and it was a relief not to have any feathers, sequins or rhinestones to contend with!  Here's a progress animation. The whole thing took approximately 17.5 hours.

This is a graphite portrait. I used a 0.5 mechanical pencil with a #B lead, and an #8B solid graphite pencil, along with a selection of blending tools and erasers. For more information on my portraiture tools, please see this tutorial.

Portrait: Kim Novak

Here's a private commission that I just got off my hands today. Normally I don't do commissions of stars, but this client is my one exception

So here we have Kim Novak.

The commissioner really wanted something from Bell, Book and Candle, but most of the publicity shots for that are horrible, so I went with a photo that had a similar sort of vibe. I think it may just be a random publicity shot, not for any particular film as I can't really place the costume (not that I've seen all of her films). It was specified that she look alluring, so I decided on this:

Here's a progress animation showing how it came together:

This is a graphite portrait. I used a 0.5 mechanical pencil with a #B lead, and an #8B solid graphite pencil, along with a selection of blending tools and erasers. For more information on my portraiture tools, please see this tutorial.

Illustration: Snuggles

Here's a little watercolour I did for a baby card. One of my cousins has just had a baby daughter, so this is an imaginary baby (I have not yet seen her, and as yet she has no name) and the family dog, a wire-haired jack russell called Abbey. 

Yellow might not have been my original choice here (the nursery is decked out in black, white and citrus colours) but I think it works. I contemplated doing the pattern on the onesie in black, but decided that it would be too heavy, and that it was better to more cohesive by linking to the brown dog. 

Here's the inked version, pre-watercolour:

And here's the final card:

Artline Drawing System pens and Winsor & Newton watercolours in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

Illustration: Caterpillar Girl

Here's a quick little piece I did in response to the @Daily_Doodle  'Caterpillar Girl' prompt over on Twitter.

I sketched it out and inked it on Friday night and then added the watercolour Saturday night.

So, going backwards, here is the inked version and the original pencil sketch:

These are only snaps taken with my ipad, I'm afraid. It's freezing here at the moment, and I wasn't about to leave my spot by the heater to come out and scan. =P

Artline Drawing System pens and Winsor & Newton watercolours in a Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook. 

You can follow me on Twitter at @AleneArt or via the sidebar of this blog for more sketches and progress shots of what I'm working on.

Portrait: Heather

This was a portrait commissioned as a birthday present. The birthday was today, so I can now blog about it. I hear the recipient liked it a lot, too, which pleases me greatly. I like a satisfied customer! 

I didn't take many progress scans (purely due to laziness on my part, my father likes to use the top of the scanner as a shelf, and there was so much stuff on it, and most of the time I couldn't be bothered moving it...) but here's a brief progress animation, with three stages – at 2 hours, 15 hours and 22 hours. 

The original photo reference had a tshirt (visible in the sketch above) but I eventually changed that to a more draped neckline, which I thought gave a more elegant effect and faded into the background better. Most of my time, I must admit, was spent on the hair, which looked rather softer in reality than it does on the scan... 

All up, it took about 22 hours, and I used a #B 0.5 mechanical pencil and an #8 solid graphite pencil, with various blending tools and erasers. For more information on my portraiture materials, you can view my tutorial on deviantArt (I've added cotton makeup remover pads to the lineup since I wrote this back in 2007)