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.
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.
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.
For Colour Collective's 'Kohl' prompt, I went with the obvious - eyeliner. I am terrible at applying eyeliner, and usually leave it off altogether. The struggle is real!
I was a bit busy, so I went with a quick, cartoony style. And I added in that black cat, because why not?
Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.
Here are a few cats I did for Colour Collective throughout May. I was pretty busy, and needed a quick subject, and black cats are one of my go-tos for that.
Colour Collective 'Sky Blue' landed right on May 4th, so while the colour was perfect for a Mermay piece, I thought I really should do something for Star Wars Day. I can't say I've ever been a rabid Star Wars fan, but the movies are fun.
And if you've got a blue colour, what can you do but R2-D2?
I added a cat, because why not? I figure space cats... are still cats. That red shiny light is going to fascinate them.
Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.
For Colour Collective's 'Midnight Green' prompt I branched out into siamese cats (I love siamese cats, they're mental). The colour reminded me of secluded ponds and goldfish (and siamese cat eyes)
Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. 2 hours.
It's my last blog post for 2017 and I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy new year. If you read my blog, I'd really like to thank you, your support means such a lot to me!
It's fitting that I now post this Colour Collective kitty that I did for the last Colour Collective of 2017. The colour was 'white' and I had to do something special for the New Year!
Let's all make this a really good year. I'm feeling energised and ready for it - I want to make big things happen!
And here are two more cats I did for Colour Collective during December. I was so busy it was black cats or nothing (they're quicker to draw)
For the colour 'sugarplum' I eschewed the obvious sugarplum fairy and featured gingerbread and sweet pink icing. This kitty has just been BUSTED.
And then for Venetian Red, I did, as someone on Instragram so wonderfully put it, 'a cat flossing a fang' on some Christmas wrapping.
These were done in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.
I'm feeling a bit overworked, and dreaming of lazy holidays of the sort that I normally don't even like (you know, sitting on lounge chairs by the beach or pool, while someone brings you drinks. Usually I prefer to be out and about seeing stuff on holiday!) so when Colour Collective came up with 'Battery Charged Blue' for their prompt, I decided to do something with a holiday vibe. I went with the Mediterranean rather than South East Asia, for the very simple reason that I didn't feel like drawing tricky palm trees.
Any colour with a name like 'Battery Charged Blue' needs the zing of a contrasting colour, so I kept my palette very limited, with marmalade cats and terracotta roofs, and kept the saturation high. I've never actually been to the Mediterranean, but the photos always have gloriously saturated colours.
This took 2 hours, tops. And as usual, I did it in Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. Apart from the clouds, the whole thing was done using Kyle Webster's 'Gouache Extra Dry' brush (the clouds were a watercolour brush).
"The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack."
A quick little piece for Colour Collective - for the 'Old Lace' prompt. Obviously this really required a detailed treatment of an Elizabethan ruff.... but I required not to spend too long on it. So this is what we have.
The quote is from Anthony and Cleopatra, and I have no idea what it's referring to, never having read that play. I just searched for a quote that would work with the image. My knowledge of Shakespeare is patchy. I'm good on the tragedies, from highschool, and from proof-reading my friend Makenzi's various theses, from Bachelors all the way up to PhD. And I'm good on a few comedies, because I like the comedies. But histories.... nope. I got nothin'.
Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.
A couple of hours. I was not having a good drawing day. Sometimes you get a day like that!
After several days of not drawing at all, being sick, I couldn't miss Colour Collective's 'Deep Saffron' prompt. I picked something very quick and very easy, of course, let's not bite off more than we can chew when unwell. But it was fun to do. I played with Photoshop's new symmetry drawing tool to speed up the pumpkin a bit, and also downloaded some more of Kyle Webster's watercolour brushes and played with them too. Gotta get some fun out of the extortionate fee I pay for Creative Cloud!!
We don't do much for Halloween in Australia, but you can't be in the kitdlitart social media circles and ignore it. And really, what is the point of Jack-o-Lanterns if we cannot fill them with kitties?
Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About two hours, in a desultory fashion.
Continuing my theme of quick-cat-because-I-don't-have-time-for-a-Colour-Collective-but-I'm-doing-one-anyway pics. And I'm branching out - this cat is not black!
The colour was 'timberwolf' this time around.
I really love how much expression you can get into two white circles with dots in!
This was very quick, about 1.5 hours, in Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2
Back to the cats for Colour Collective. The colour was 'Pewter Blue'. I'm still pressed for time, so I reused an old concept from last year, and updated it to fit with my current cat series:
I had rather less than two hours to work on this, so it was a bit rushed, but there we go.
Here's the original use of this frightened kitty-cat, from a Halloween witch I did in October 2016 (that's a year ago, how did that happen??):
Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.
"Buttercup" for Colour Collective. There are daffodils in our garden at the moment, so naturally the yellow made me think of them. I tossed up for a while whether I would feature a black cat, as in my previous few CCs, or return to my Myrna series. In the end I chose a cat, but I would choose a very tricky pose, wouldn't I? =P It took a bit longer than planned, because I was exhausted after an extremely busy day, but I got it finished in good time, so never mind.
Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2, about 2 to 2.5 hours in total.
Here's the little piece I did for Colour Collective's 'Cordovan' prompt. I'm still practicing cats.
This had its start as a sketch on my father's iPad Pro. We had the electricians in, so the power was off. I had a multitude of things I should have been doing, ranging from drawing or typesetting for work to cooking dinner or practicing the piano, but they all required electricity (my Cintiq Companion has almost no battery life. Last time I ran on battery I got 20 minutes out of it (after which it shut down without warning), and my piano is in a very dark room so I need the lights on) so I picked up the iPad and started doodling. I quite liked it as a concept, but it was horribly full of mistakes (look at the length of her legs, oops) so I thought it would serve as a good starting point for Colour Collective:
This was a quick piece, a bit over two hours overall (plus half an hour or so for that original sketch). I don't have much time to labour over Colour Collective pieces, but I like to squeeze them in as a change of pace from whatever I'm working on at the time. I enjoy coming up with something for colours I might not ordinarily use.
Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2
A little piece for Colour Collective's 'Pantone 292 C' prompt. It seemed like a good colour for a ribbon, perhaps around a cat's neck... and I'd been playing around with witches in my sketches so it sort of evolved from there:
Anyway, I need to practice cats. We've always had a dog, so I'm naturally more familiar with pooches than pusses - but that is no excuse!
Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. The Colour Collective took 2-3 hours. Not quite sure how long the sketches took - quicker than the CC, anyway.
Here's another recently-completed pet-portrait - this time of a cat! I don't do many cats, my pet portraits tend to be a long line of dogs.
Miss Bear is a beautiful siamese. I was given a few photos to choose from, and chose a pose where she was sitting up straight and proud, as befits a siamese cat:
The background went through a couple of iterations. Apparently she likes to sit by the fire, and so the commissioner (who was commissioning a present for the friend than owns (or is that 'is owned by'?) Miss Bear) originally wanted her sitting on a hearth in front of a roaring fire.
Fire is pretty revolting to paint, so I wasn't exactly looking forward to that, but I was fully prepared to give her a cosy fire... and then I learned that the recipient is red-green colourblind. I did a bit of checking to find out exactly how red-green colourblind people see the world, and found that red appears, basically, yellow. This didn't bode well for painting a fire, where I would be exclusively using red, orange and yellow. I just didn't feel confident that I could paint a convincing fire that would work for a colourblind person, so I contacted the commissioner and suggested a different option - a black and white floral background inspired by the designs of William Morris - lots of nice contrast that would work well for a colourblind person, with a bit of gilding added in to catch the light and liven everything up. Siamese cats are so graphic themselves that I thought the background would work well. The commissioner liked that idea, so I went with that.
Here I'll collate some of the progress snaps I shared on Instagram, and my Instagram Story, as I worked:
I did the draft in Photoshop, on my Cintiq Companion 2 - it just made it much easier to work out the pattern, and repeat areas, without constantly worrying that I was filling in the wrong thing or drawing lines in the wrong place:
I printed out my digital draft and used my lightbox to trace it onto Moleskine Watercolour paper using Copic Multiliners:
Eventually I had everything inked:
I filled in the background with black Ecoline, while Miss Bear herself was painted in Winsor and Newton watercolours with details added in Prismacolour pencil:
The final stage was to add some gilding. I used Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Flakes in Autumn Leaves. This photo shows just how shiny the gilding flakes are:
Here's a video I took to show how I applied the gilding:
Finally, I created 15 greeting cards using the painting. They were too small to use this gilding technique, so I went over all the gilded areas with different coloured metallic gel pens - not as shiny, but better than nothing.
Copic Multiliners, Winsor and Newton watercolours, Prismacolour pencils and Cosmic Shimmer gilding flakes on Moleskine watercolour paper. Six and a half hours in total (not counting the cards).
I've been doing some scene illustrations from Diana Wynne Jones' wonderful Charmed Life for my black and white portfolio, and wanted to do some practice with my grey ecoline before putting brush to paper on a more complete and complicated linework (I'm always slightly freaked out by the properties of ecoline, and feel the need to practice with them if I haven't used them for a while, in case I have forgotten something vital and thus mess everything up irretrievably.) I've been doing some character sketches in my sketchbook while out and about, so I worked one of them up into an ink and ecoline sketch. So here is Millie, Chrestomanci's wife:
They were ushered in front of a plump lady with a mild face. She had a gorgeous lace dress on – Gwendolen's eyes swept up and down it with considerable awe – but otherwise she was one of the most ordinary ladies they had ever seen.
I didn't see any mention of her having a pet cat in the book itself, but my hazy recollection of one of the other books in the series tells me that she had a lot to do with cats when she was young, she she does carry the cat Fiddle at one point in Charmed Life. Anyway, I need cat practice.
I gave the whole thing a digital teal wash so I could use it for Colour Collective on Twitter. If I'd had teal ecoline I could have done it in colour initially, but I'm not even sure there is such a thing as teal ecoline... I don't have any, anyway! I have a basic set of Ecoline, and some extra grey, as I usually use it for greyscale images only.
And here's a sneak peek at the linework for the finished piece I'm about to paint. This photo was taken a few days ago, when I hadn't finished the inking, but overall it's a more interesting picture, being an actual illustration, than the above straight character portrait.
Pentel Brush Pen and Copic Multiliners with Cold Grey Ecoline and Copic Opaque White in a Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook.
Here are a number of sketches that I've been working on over the past month or so. None of them are particularly stella, so I thought I'd share them all at once.
1. A Tangled sketch in my watercolour Moleskine. I'd been doing work-sketching all day, and wanted something brainless to do. Since I'd also been annotating some Tangled music for piano, my music book was to hand, and the promotional shot this is based on was in it.
(Pitt Artists's pens in Sepia, and Winsor & Newton watercolours)
2. A small sketch done after 'Lavender's Blue' rolled around on my shuffle.
3. Redesigning Adele's costume. I'm thinking of redoing one of my honours pictures featuring her, and thought she needed a dress redesign.
4. Two cats inspired by my uncle's very fat tabby (who unfortunately instantly ran away, so these aren't very realistic) and two life drawings of my dog, who has taken to sleeping with his back end right off his cushion.
5. And lastly, Eleanor Powell in Born To Dance, ref from Doctormacro.com
