Aqua Dog Book Launch

I recently worked on a lovely picture book, Aqua Dog, by Lisa Van Der Wielen. Lisa contacted me to do the illustrations last year, and I loved bringing cheeky, determined Aqua to life, and surrounding him with the stark beauty of the Western Australian Wheatbelt. 

Here is the book trailer:

The book is available in paperback, and also a very lovely hardback, through Amazon. Click here to purchase.

Lisa launched Aqua Dog on the 28th March, and invited me to come along. It was lovely to meet her - we had not previously met in person, as with many of my clients all our correspondence was through email - and she did a lovely job putting the launch together.

See more photos below the cut:

Amigo

Here's a memorial pet portrait I recently created. His name is Amigo, and I was told he loved the beach. It was commissioned by a friend of his owners, as a surprise, so I only had a few facebook photos to go off - not the best situation; I had four photos, he was lying down in all of them, and I could only see his body in one of them. However, he was a nice plain-coloured Labrador, so that made it easier, any old Labrador-body would do. It's when dogs have specific patterns that I don't know about that we run into problems! (PSA: 'Illustrator' is not synonymous with 'Clairvoyant' ^.~) 

See below the cut for a couple of progress shots:

Cat Detected

Colour Collective's 'Mexican Pink' prompt made me think of poodle skirts (and Mexico, obviously, but I decided to go the less-obvious route)

I threw this together very quickly, so again it's more a sketch-with-potential than an illustration. I'd had one of those weeks where I think it's a day earlier than it is all week, and then we had a concert to go to on Friday (The Western Australian Symphony's Symphonic Tribute to Comic-Con, which was fabulous (and hilarious). There are some highlights up on my Instagram page, which you can see here.) So I ran out of time rather quickly!

 

I'm sure anyone with a dog has felt like this scenario could all too easily come true! I like a dog on the smaller scale, to avoid this, but when velocity and all that other physics jazz is taken into account, my Myrna can definitely pull a decent weight, and there's a miniature pinscher on the oval that can - and has - pull a pram (complete with baby), and a toddler along the grass. In theory he is tethered to the pram to stop him bounding off exploring, but they have to keep the brakes on or he ... uh... makes a break for it. 

I chose to draw a standard poodle because it matched the skirt, of course, but I have also been chased by a standard poodle, and while this statement is inevitably met with laughter... they are BIG and it's no joke when they are on a mission!

For your delectation, here is the original sketch:

This piece was done in under 2 hours, in Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Happy Lunar New Year

Colour Collective's 'Boto Pink' prompt came along when I was completely snowed under with deadlines (14 illustrations in 5 days, anyone?). But I don't like to miss CC, and I also didn't want to miss posting something for Chinese New Year... so I took an old Myrna illustration I did for Colour Collective some time back, and updated it (very quickly) to suit both themes. Under the circumstances, it was the best I could do!

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Misc Sketches

Here are some miscellaneous sketches I've done this year:

Katia, the protagonist in the picture book I did for my honours project in Uni. I'm fond of her, every now and then I dust her off:

I don't know if this girl is hiding or discovering something. It's up to you:

There are more below the cut!

Draughts

Over Christmas, while I had a small window of time where I didn't need to be working all the time (December-January is usually pretty crazy for me) I let myself do one watercolour, all for myself. I'd just finished several extremely tight deadlines and thought I deserved a bit of a play at Christmas time!

I do most of my work digitally these days, but I do love my watercolours, so I decided that I'd do a traditional painting - and to make it interesting, I decided to work with Mariella, my little ghost character, and see if I could pull that off with watercolour.

Keep reading below the cut for sketches, progress shots, videos and all that fun stuff!

Lapphund Christmas Cards 2017

Every year I do custom Christmas cards for some lovely friends. We started in 2013, when they had just got their first dog, so she was the subject of the cards. In 2014 they had a second dog, so I added her in, and by 2015 they had a gorgeous little boy, who naturally had to be included too!  This year marks the 5th year of this card series, their little boy is now two and a half, and most of their card recipients have now tumbled to the fact that these are custom commissioned cards, they aren't just super-good at finding cards with dogs that look like theirs!

Back when they only had dogs, I used to do two separate designs for them, but now I just do one, with a traditional Christmassy red-green-gold colour scheme, and another with a blue-gold-grey colour scheme. Here's that second colourway:

You'll notice that the icecream in this one doesn't match the rest of the colours - that's because strawberry icecream is his favourite and we wanted to feature that. The red card has a choc-mint icecream, (because strawberry doesn't match red) and let me tell you, I got very hungry while painting it!

We got them printed at Moo, and they of course did a wonderful job:

These were done in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Go below the cut to see all the previous years' cards:

Under the Christmas Tree

A slightly more polished Colour Collective, from after the deadlines had been met. This was the last CC before Christmas, so I definitely had to continue my Christmassy themes. I chose to do Myrna again. She doesn't, fortunately, eat the baubles off the tree (or the presents), but it's a good image. 

I used this for my thank you cards this year. It's good to find multiple uses for something!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. It took about three hours or so.

Bark the Herald Angels Sing

A quick little Colour Collective that I threw together. Most of December was full of deadlines and I was working absolutely flat tack, but it's important to carve out a little time to not work, so I kept up with my Colour Collective pieces, albeit very quick ones!

This was inspired by the way you get barks heralding Christmas visitors if you have a dog in the house. If in doubt, I draw Myrna!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Christmas Mayhem

I had grand plans for Colour Collective's 'Alice Blue' prompt, but as so often happens, deadlines got in the way. So I threw together a quick little illustration to use as my Twitter header for this festive season.

Myrna is always a good choice for when I'm low on time!

Of course, I scrambled to finish something for Colour Collective, and then Twitter decided to hide my post from the hashtag search. Thanks Twitter, that's all I need. >.<

Here's a look at how it fits into my Twitter page. It's tricky to design something that will work across all devices and screen sizes. I used a template I found somewhere - but it does not work on Twitter's Mac app. Which I don't think has been updated in years, so that's probably why...

Last year my Twitter header was Myrna as well. This time in Christmassy red:

Christmas Myrnas

Continuing with Illo Advent, I did some Christmas themed illustrations of my dog Myrna. I'd already done some extras when I did 'Scarlet' for Colour Collective and I had saved them for Illo Advent days when I was too busy to create something new:

And then I added two more, with a different background colour, as it was getting closer to Christmas:

Some of these are inspired by actual things Myrna has done, and some of them are just inspired by her in general. She does hoik her ball out from tricky places using a paw, but she hasn't stolen a bauble (yet....). But I regret to say that we had a BBQ last night and we did find her up on the table, after the crumbs and the discarded serviettes (she loves tissues). It's not like she doesn't know that she's not allowed up there! Fortunately all the food had been taken away by that time (also all the plates, but that doesn't read so well as 'up on the table'...). 

All done in Adobe Photoshop CC 2016 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. They were pretty quick, I think I spent a little over two hours each on the first two, and less on the second two. 

Lapphund Christmas Cards 2016

A new Christmas card to add to the lineup for some lovely friends. I've been doing their cards since 2013 and they have evolved from one finnish lapphund, to two finnish lapphunds, to the addition of a baby. Said baby is now a cheeky toddler, and I thought it was about time he got up to some Christmas Card mischief!

The original sketch for this was a little different - I initially had the two dogs joining in with painting the wall, but it was decided that as they are generally more placid and long-suffering than they are naughty it would be better to reflect that. Here are the two sketches side by side. I switched orientation as I felt it worked better. 

Here's a progress animation:

Of course, I used reference photos (these cards are, after all, a slightly more arty equivalent of family-photo cards - they have to look accurate!), and I also used some free finger-paint brushes for the Christmas tree. I'm pretty sure they were these ones.  The nappy cover is inspired by the many wonderful ones he's regularly dressed in. I couldn't leave it plain when he always has such stylish ones!

I did two colour-ways, as usual, as we get them printed at Moo, and it's nice to take advantage of the printfinity option. Back when it was only dogs I used to do two different designs, but lately it's just been different colours. 

Here's the whole line-up of cards. I always keep to roughly the same look. I've linked to the corresponding blog posts if you want to read more about any of these:

From 2013:

From 2014:

From 2015:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2016 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About 6–8 hours, I think. 

Circus Act

I've had a bit of a stressful week, lots of work to do, lots of clients to juggle... so I didn't have time to do anything elaborate for Colour Collective - no story behind the illustration, no fancy background. The colour was 'Pale Turquoise' and I decided to go as fairy floss as possible. Lots of frills, lots of sparkles, lots of girly colours. I always try to practice something with Colour Collective, however, so I decided that this time I would practice horses.

Here's a close-up of the chihuahua, because I think it's pretty cute, but the poor thing is so tiny in the full illustration, no one can really see its bug-eyed glory:

I used Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault's Prancing Horse as a reference for the horse. I missed the memo on horses as a small girl, I've only ridden one perhaps twice in my life - so I'm not as familiar with their anatomy as I could be! This is why I need to practice them!

Here's a progress animation:

About 4, maybe 5 hours in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. 

Night Time

This week's Colour Collective prompt was 'Ivory Black'. I could have done something in black and white, as my black and white stuff tends to be heavy on the black anyway (last time a black came around in Colour Collective I had just finished Gwendolen and posted that). Myrna's half black anyway, so if I wanted to do a Myrna illustration I'd need a better way to use the black than just on her (which felt a bit like cheating). I had been wanting a dark colour to use with a night-time Myrna illustration, but I'd been thinking more on the lines of dark blue... black would pose a bit of a challenge, but I decided to try it:

Myrna likes to sleep right on top of me - and she weighs 15kg so she's not exactly light.... sometimes I'll wake up in the morning and she's snoring (she's a champion-level snorer) on top of me – but I haven't noticed her sneak up from 'her' place at the foot of the bed. I don't know how she does it! 

This was a very dark picture, so I gave Myrna one open eye - a little pop of bright white to draw attention to the illustrative part of the canvas and focus everything a bit. All the colours used in this are really dark, approaching black. I always find it fascinating how a colour can look relatively bright when against black, but super-dark when against white. I've done all the colour theory stuff, and I know why - but isn't the world an interesting thing?

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

About 2 to 2.5 hours.

Pleeeeeeeeeease....?

A quick Colour Collective piece this week. The colour was Pompeian Red and I thought I'd use it as a backdrop for this classic doggy-bribery tactic:

I used this photo I took of Myrna nearly a year ago as a rough reference:

All in all, this took about 2 hours, including far too much spent sketching out a different pose and trying to force it to work. In the end I gave up and switched to this one, and I'm glad I did. =)

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

But it's RAINING....

Here is my 'Velvet Clover' Colour Collective. It was such a lovely stormy-day kind of colour, and Myrna is never happy about walking in the rain, so there was my subject:

Of course, Myrna will happily roll around in all the mud kicked up by footballers on the oval, but getting her out for a walk while it's raining? Sometimes it's more trouble than it's worth, especially as I'm not keen on walking in the rain either... This is rather what the weather is like here today, although we managed a brisk walk in-between heavy showers of rain. There were bits of tree everywhere and Myrna thought it was all Not Usual!

For the purposes of full disclosure: I don't walk Myrna on a collar and leash, we have an easy-walk harness for her. Letting her walk with the lead attached to her collar means she pulls a lot and makes distressing noises as the collar presses on her soft cavalier trachea. We don't like that at all. But for this illustration I just used the collar and lead, as it worked better visually and was much simpler. But I do not drag my dog around by the neck, I promise! =) 

Here's my original sketch:

And here it is in a partially completed stage:

I enjoyed doing that wet pavement. I think they worked well!

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About 2 hours. 

Blissful Abandon

Another week, another Colour Collective colour - this time it was Light Yellow Glaze, a colour that made me think of spring. 

On lovely days, Myrna likes to roll on the grass. (She also likes to roll in mud when it's been raining and there have been footballers on the oval.... but that wouldn't be a 'yellow' illustration....). She gets greenery stuck in her ears and tail, but she has a lovely time and I'm quite jealous. It looks so blissful and refreshing.

I did google photos of dogs rolling around - it's such a tricky pose - but didn't base this on any one of them. It was hard to get her face and expression right at this angle, though, especially as I was working quite fast - it's been a busy week! I added some butterflies for some extra interest, because why not?

Here's my original sketch. As you can see, I changed her face a bit. 

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Two to three hours. 

YOU are eating sausages...

For the 'Scheveningen Violet' prompt for Colour Collective I decided to use the colour as a foil for Myrna's orange food bowl. She's a real drama queen, and if she finds her bowl empty, she will bang it around with a paw, mutter away, whine, try eating the bowl as a pointed hint, and finally collapse dramatically from starvation. 

However, you may notice that this bowl is not empty. That's because if she finds boring biscuits* in there, and we are eating something more interesting she will tip out the biscuits defiantly and stare at us in a vaguely affronted way. She would make an excellent stereotypical teenage human in these moments.

*No, she doesn't just get boring biscuits, she has a varied diet - but her mid-evening post-walk snack is just BB. 

The expression was a hard one to capture, especially when simplified down this much. The tiniest tweak of an eyebrow is enough to make or break it, so it took the most time for this illustration. 

Adobe Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About three hours. 

Chomp! Chomp!

For the 'brown ochre' colour collective I decided to go with a stick. When it comes to dogs, that colour could easily relate to poop, but I'm keeping it classy. ^.~

And I added another little friend - this time it's a New Holland Honeyeater. Our garden is full of them. Originally it was going to be a willy wagtail, but I liked the pop of yellow.  

Here's my original sketch, alongside the photo I used as inspiration:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Will You Play With Me?

For Colour Collective's 'limpet shell' prompt I decided to work the colour in as the sky, and feature a bird - Myrna loves to chase birds. A lot of them (especially magpies) tease her, flying just in front of her - but she doesn't really want to catch them, she just wants to chase them and make them fly. If you've ever seen the scene in Lady and the Tramp where Lady rushes out into the garden to chase away the birds... that is exactly what Myrna does. 

When we're out walking and Myrna spots a bird sitting on a street lamp or a powerline she stares directly upwards at them, like this... I wanted to put the bird on a street lamp (as we have been mercilessly teased by a white cockatoo sitting way up high and squawking at us) but the height of a lamp didn't really fit with the format I've been using for these illustrations, and I didn't want to change it. So I put in a lower tree-branch and, after toying with a white cockatoo, a pink and grey galah, hanging upside-down for maximum tease-factor. 

Adobe Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2