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

Wattle Day

Wattle Day is the 1st September, so of course I had to draw something for it. Every year I get hayfever when the wattles come out, although I am informed that wattle pollen is too large to cause hayfever. Still, it's a lovely flower (and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that something else comes into flower at the same time and it is that that causes my hayfever). I chose to add a New Holland Honeyeater, partly for interest, partly because I've been having fun drawing birds lately anyway. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. I think it took about an hour, an hour and a half.

Mushroom Fairy

For Colour Collective's 'Mink' prompt I eschewed fur coats in favour of mushrooms. About 6 months ago I did a quick little sketch of a mushroom fairy, and I thought I'd try working her up a little:

Being for Colour Collective, she's still a sketch, of course, but now I think she's a lot more interesting, and all that extra background makes her seem properly small.

I think I spent the most time on her hair, and I'm still not happy with it. I think I need to do a bunch of studies of fairy hairstyles...

Here's the original sketch:

The whole thing took me about 2 - 2.5 hours, so I wasn't exactly bothered with everything being perfect. But I had fun, that's the main thing. =) 

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Easter Project: Floral Wreath Stool

As it's the Easter long weekend, I thought I'd take some time to do a project that's been hanging around, undone, for far too long. And then I thought I'd share it around, so read on for a template and mini tutorial!

Floral Christmas Cards

Here's a commissioned Christmas card I did this year. I always love these projects! I've been doing cards for these lovely people for a few years now, and they usually feature birds in a woodcut style, but this year we did something different (much to the consternation of my parents, who would look over my shoulder and demand if I was sure this is what they'd asked for. Not sure if they actually expected me to say 'no, actually, I decided to do whatever I liked' or what...) 

The commissioners had done some work in their garden this year, removing a large pine tree and planting lots of paper daisies. They like natives to bring the birds to their garden. The new yard has been attracting a lot of attention, so they wanted their cards to feature paper daisies. I did up a few concepts, including one based on the floral cards I do myself every now and then, and that's the design they chose:

I added a few extra natives - pink bottle brushes and swan river myrtle - to keep things interesting. They came out very clean and modern and I like them a lot!

We were printing via Moo, of course, so I did a dark version as well, to take advantage of the printfinity option at Moo. I like the way the colours glow against this dark background:

They printed very nicely:

It was such fun to do a Christmas card with such non-traditional colours!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Morning Ablutions

Some privacy, please!

"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.

Bramble and Briar

I'm dividing my new website by age (so children's, middle grade, young adult) rather than the previous division of colour/black and white, digital/traditional, and realised that my Young Adult section was a bit thin. While staring into space trying to think of something to do for it, my eye fell on a portrait I did of a friend back in year 12, as one of the three paintings I did in TEE art. It's very dated now, my skills have improved so much, and I was never entirely happy with it as it was - and what better to put in a Young Adult illustration portfolio than a redo of a piece I myself did as a young adult? Plus, I'd come across the photos I took for it back in the day, while I was sorting out files on my computer. It was fate!

Here's the final piece:

I designed it as a book cover. I know everyone generally says that you shouldn't include text in your illustration portfolio as illustrators aren't qualified to work with type - but I have a degree in design, and I do a lot of work for self publishers, who need to see that I can apply type to a cover for them. So as a compromise, I have a version with text available upon roll-over on my website. Best of both worlds!

This isn't a real book. I came up with a title that fitted the image, and used a random name generator until I snagged one I liked for the author. I envisage that text being shiny gold foil....

It's quite a radical departure from the original painting I did back in 2004. I was referencing the Pre Raphaelites when I did it, and looking at the Victorian language of flowers. The plan was to do something very lush and a bit Bollywood inspired, with a huge bunch of white carnations, with a single red rose in the middle. But my art teacher didn't like that idea, and insisted I use coloured carnations, which really mucked up the message. I didn't paint the flowers very well anyway (not aided by the fact that I was working in oil paint, which gives me a bad migraine. Not the best situation for good painting!)

Here is the original:

Yeah. Oil paints really aren't my thing! 

So this was a chance to do it over, see how much I'd improved, and get more of the feel I'd originally been going for when I did the painting. However, I'm still scarred from painting all those carnations with a migraine, and I just couldn't bring myself to do a page full of carnations. So I went with all roses, influenced, no doubt, by the fact that I was listening to Robin Mckinley's Rose Daughter at the time.

Here's the reference photo. Isn't my friend gorgeous?

And here's a progress animation:

As you can see, one of the final stages was to add a colour adjustment and some lighting. That's the beauty of Photoshop. I also duplicated a lot of the roses, for which I am not sorry. =P 

All-up this took about 20 to 25 hours, and I did it in Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. No oil-paint-migraines for me this time!

Christening Cards

When Colour Collective's 'Clover Green' prompt came around, what I *really* needed to be doing was a couple of Christening cards for my cousin's two daughters, so I used the colour in the cards to get two things done at once. 

The card I shared for Colour Collective featured this illustration. This is Mary, the older of the sisters (she's nearly four). I wanted to go with a very spring theme as that seemed appropriate for a Christening card:

I added text to make it into a card:

And I also made another card for her sister Jemima - but just with flowers on, as Jemima is only six months old:

I used the same font family (Storytime) on both cards, to tie them together, and used daisies on both, as white flowers are popular for Christenings.

I added clear glitter to both cards, but I didn't have time to take a photo of the final result. It was one of those weeks where it was all go! =P

Both cards done in Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

I had to to a quick little illustration for Colour Collective's 'Amaranth' prompt as life's been pretty busy lately! Originally I had planned for her to be dwarfed by sunflowers, but in the end time constraints meant she ended up just looking at a butterfly. I'm hoping for some calmer weeks so I can spend more time on my Colour Collectives, but it's not looking hopeful....

Those enormous bows are inspired by a little girl I passed while walking the dog. I don't think they're big enough though.... 

Adobe Photoshop CC 2016 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

3-4 hours but I wasn't really focussed >. > 

More Cards!

Here are some more hand painted cards from last year. First up, a baby card. You may remember the baby cards I've already blogged, one of which was for a cousin's second baby girl. That cousin's sister had her second baby girl shortly afterwards, so I did another card in the same style:



Here's a video of me painting that card:

#painting up this #baby #card. You may have seen the sketch for this in my story yesterday. I think this is it for #babycards this year. There's been a bit of a #babyboom! 💖 #paint #painting #smallpainting #babycard #originalartwork #cute #sweet #yellow #floral #watercolour #watercolor #artistatwork #artistoninstagram

A post shared by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Nov 15, 2016 at 12:34am PST

Around the same time I also needed to make a nice sympathy card for a family friend who had had a short battle with cancer:



And here's a video of me working on that. Towards the end you can see me adding Perfect Pearls for a bit of a shimmer - they're a fine pearlescent powder, and I use an embossing pen (actually, a proper Perfect Medium pen - often I don't have the 'proper' tools =P) to get them to stick.

Painting a sympathy card this afternoon. This is in memory of 'aunty' Margaret, who died last week. #workinprogress #wip #timelapse #rose #sympathy #flower #smallart #watercolour #painting #inking #ink #pentelbrushpen #copicmultiliner #watercolor #perfectmedium #draw #paint #artistatwork #greetingcards #sympathy #originalartwork #video #artistoninstagram #inktober #inktober2016

A post shared by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Oct 27, 2016 at 3:59am PDT

Both of these cards were done with watercolour and a water pen, over ink (both Copic Multiliners and a Pentel Brush Pen), and the drawing behind the watercolour images is tinted with prismacolour pencils.

CC Moroccan Blue

Heavens, I'm a bit behind on my blogging! The beginning of the year is always flat-out for me, and writing for blog posts was way down on my to-do list!

Here's a little piece I did for Colour Collective's 'Moroccan Blue' prompt. I went with The Little Mermaid:

I was inspired by a sweet photo by The Burleigh Princesses on Instagram, which popped into my feed that week:

Watch carefully the magic that occurs when you give a person just enough comfort to be themselves- Atticus @atticuspoetry Wednesday arvo dinner date with my favourite princess ❤#candid #portrait #treeclimbingtoo

A post shared by Fiona & Alexandra (@theburleighprincesses) on Oct 26, 2016 at 4:31am PDT

I wish I'd had more time, I didn't really do justice to my reference, but on the whole I think it works quite well. The fireworks were a lot of fun!

Adobe Photoshop CC on a Cintiq Companion 2.

Baby Cards

Babies always seem to come in clusters, don't they? Here are two baby cards I've completed recently:

This one is for Jemima:

I did the illustration in ink with watercolour highlights so it could count towards Inktober (at which I am woefully behind) as well:

And this one is for Xavier. I had a photo of him to work from, so did a miniature watercolour portrait for this card:

Here's a video I took of me painting this little portrait:

Putting together a quick #baby card this afternoon 😄 #wip #workinprogress #artistsoninstagram #art #paint #painting #video #timelapse #hyperlapse #artistatwork #watercolour #watercolour #newborn

A video posted by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Sep 11, 2016 at 12:41am PDT

Dez

Here's another recently-completed pet portrait, this time of Dez the staffy, who has unfortunately shuffled off this mortal coil. 

Here's my process, told mainly through photos taken with my phone and shared to my Instagram Story:

The commissioner had seen my Miss Bear portrait, and wanted a similar floral background. As Dez is such a black dog, I didn't think it would be sensible to have a black and white floral behind him, so we decided on green. I started off my sketching everything out in Photoshop. I didn't have a lot of photos to work from, but I combined several to get the best possible pose and expression. I sent this sketch to the commissioner to get her approval to move on before I started inking:

And then traced it onto Moleskine watercolour paper using Copic Multiliners. It was at this point that I added his tail. You couldn't see it in the photo I was using for his body pose, but I came to the conclusion that it looked a bit weird without any tail visible at all:

Once everything was inked, I started off by painting in the background in several shades of green watercolour:

And then at last it was time to paint Dez himself. It can be a bit unnerving, being stared at by a dog who's nose and eyes are not filled in!

It takes quite a few passes with the black Ecoline to get a really solidly black dog. There are about three layers of Ecoline, plus coloured pencil, all over Dez:

 

I added gilding as with Miss Bear, which really helped to warm everything up:

I sent a photo of the finished portrait to the commissioner, who expressed concerns that Dez wasn't black enough (the pitfalls of working from smartphone photography, you're never quite sure how realistic the colours are, and I'd erred more on the brindle side. However, that's what progress shots are for, no harm done)

So before she came and picked it up, I went over him again with black coloured pencil, and pushed the blacks as hard as I could without losing all sense of his shiny fur and the underlying muscles that a staffy has. I sent her another photo to check that she was happy once I'd done that:

Copic Multiliners, Winsor and Newton watercolours, Prismacolour pencils, Copic White and Cosmic Shimmer gilding flakes on Moleskine watercolour paper. 8 hours in total.

Miss Bear

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:

Want to see how I do my #gilding? Here's a little #timelapse. I'm using Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Flakes in Autumn Leaves. #wipe #process #gild #gildingflakes #cosmicshimmer #gold #floral #hyperlapse #williammorris #art #artistsoninstagram #artistatwork

A video posted by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Aug 29, 2016 at 12:47am PDT

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).

Anniversary Roses

I needed a 50th Wedding Anniversary card, and isn't that a perfect excuse to play around with creating another floral design?

The flowers for the 50th Anniversary are yellow roses and violets, so they formed the basis for my design. I then filled up empty space with some miscellaneous leaves and some baby's breath, that being a suitably wedding-themed type of flower. 

 

I approved of being basically forced to put purple and yellow together. I like working with colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel!

The metal for this anniversary is of course gold, so out came the gold glitter again:

In an ideal world I would be able to print all cards properly, instead of printing them out on photo paper and mounting them on cardstock. But until I get so amazingly organised that I have all cards ready a year in advance and can send them off to Moo for printing (i.e. never).... this is the way they are done.

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

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. 

Mothers' Day 2016

Here's the card I made my lovely mother for Mother's Day this year. I've been working on creating some more commercial-type illustrations in addition to my kidlitart stuff, and this was one of those experiments. I think it worked quite well!

I chose chrysanthemums because my father bought her a deep pink chrysanthemum as a present (I bought her a blue butterfly bush and put money towards a dwarf mulberry tree, but they didn't all work together....) and added some gerberas in a contrasting colour and some miscellaneous leaves to keep everything bright. 

And because my mother loves glitter cards, I glittered the text after I had printed it:

I'm pretty pleased with it. I think it looks like something you could buy in a greeting card shop, and I think I shall try more things like this. 

I've also turned it into a repeating pattern:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. I spent four hours on it, but I was watching tv at the same time, so that wasn't solid work by any means. The fonts are from the Storyteller family.