SketchDump: Fashion

I've been suffering from a bit of Artist's Block lately. It doesn't strike very often, but when it does it's always at the most inconvenient of moments, naturally. So here are a few warm-up sketches I've done lately:

I'd been doing a few more 'What I wore' sketches. The quote accompanying this one is "Your hair looks terrible. It's all over the place!" My father is so complimentary. >.< I'm way overdue for a haircut and sometimes curl my hair to keep it out of my face. Here I had thrown on a blazer to dress up my jeans when going out for Thai.

30 minutes, Photoshop CS6.

Just drawing myself is a bit boring, so here's a sketch of the granddaughter of an honorary Aunt and Uncle. She goes to a church school which doesn't have a ball, but I was sent a photo of what she wore for her formal dinner.  

30 minutes, Photoshop CS6.

Another 'What I wore' sketch. This time the quote is "Are you a model?" to which I replied, "Good Heavens, no!" but it's nice to know random little old ladies think I might be (even though that's probably more failing eyesight than anything else =P) My skirt is vintage Sportscraft, which was passed down from my Great Aunt to my mother to me; in reality it looks a lot nicer...

30 minutes, Photoshop CS6. 

 

And here's a speedpaint of Deanna Durbin. I've been watching her movies lately. 

20 minutes, Photoshop CS6.

Finally, here's a peek at my latest needle felting project, very much unfinished:

Sketch: What I Wore

I see the What I Wore meme going round, so thought I'd give it a go as well. I've been working in Illustrator for the past couple of days, and the continual use of just click-and-drag to make pictures can make me yearn for doing something more scribbly – so that is exactly what we have here, me mucking about with a chalky brush in Photoshop.

It was really wintery and very stormy today, so I rugged myself up when I went out for my piano lesson. The coat is a swing coat my mother made from a Butterick Retro (I think) pattern and with the addition of a cossack I bought in Adelaide last year I'm told I looked rather Russian, hence the speech bubble. (Apart from 'da' and 'nyet', 'dasvidaniya' is about the only word I know in Russian. I'm a child of the 90s, I grew up with Anastasia on VHS. ^.^)

I have a hearing aid, and am thus nervous of being out in the rain without a hat to keep the wet off my ears. This naturally means I have to have a large collection of hats (such a trial! =P)

Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3 – somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. 

Related 'What do you mean I'm supposed to actually follow fashion?' painting: In the Rain

Needle Felting: Teddybear

I started this before my needle felted mouse, but left it half finished when I didn't feel like working on fiddly details. It's been finished for a few days now, so I'm blogging it. =)

It's jointed with seed beads, so I made all the parts separately. The scarf was knitted by my mother, who wanted to help. I think it's about 5 stitches in laceweight yarn. I added the extra beads for a bit of bling. 

There's a tail, but it's not very visible.

And as it is jointed it can be posed: 

Tagging along, here's an unfinished flamingo. I did this just after my needle felted wren but it's not yet complete; I haven't yet decided what to do about the base. I was playing around with wire armatures with this, although the legs came out a bit thick. And as my wool choices are currently limited I shaded the feathers and beak with acrylic paint

Here's another angle:

Merino wool with 'fine' and 'coarse' needles, and misc plastic and glass beads.

Watercolour: Oscar

Our dog was put down last week. He was nearly seventeen and a half, blind and deaf, and he had dementia and his back was going (and his teeth smelt awful) so it was time for him to go, but it was still very sad. He was really quite an objectionable little dog, and never much liked me, but I loved him even so and now the house is very empty indeed, especially as I work from home and am often alone. It doesn't help that we were so used to being aware of him, as for the past year and more he'd been unable to differentiate between inside and outside, and would leave puddles (and worse) all over the house; every time he moved we'd swoop and take him outside and we're still in the habit of checking the floors and closing all the doors and keeping an eye out.  

I did this little watercolour partly because I wanted to do a little painting of him, and partly to be used for some thank you cards – some friends gave me an extremely sweet little charm to remember him by, so like Oscar, right down to the placement of the brown spots. It was so nice of them, and cards were definitely required. 

The text I added today, a week after the original painting. I need to work on my creative lettering...

Here's a look at the finished cards, and the photo I was using as reference. 

Windsor & Newton watercolours in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. The text is in a brown Artline pen. 

Needle Felting: Mouse

I find needle felting to be very cathartic – I'm not allowed to stab people, however infuriating they may be, but I am allowed to stab wool, and it releases a lot of tension. =P I started this little mouse for that very reason. I already had a teddybear well underway, but after some clients metaphorically pulled the rug out from under me and slapped my face, I was too grumpy to do fine-detail work, and started on a nice solid shape that I could basically attack without inhibitions. 

And I quite like the result (and I'm a lot calmer! =P):

I was using some mystery wool, probably merino. My mother grew up on a farm and sometime in the 80s her father gave her some unwashed wool straight off various sheep, so she could see which were good for spinning. That.... didn't happen, and most of it is still sitting there, still very much unwashed, but we've been washing and combing bits of it so I can use it for felting. 

The pink, however, is definitely merino. And it was probably bought in the 80s too... 

The whiskers are made of monofilament (invisible quilting thread) which I think works very well!

Here are some more shots:

I think it took about 10-12 hours, over about a week and a half (but I was doing it while watching tv and it's not actually possible to felt and watch tv at precisely the same time). A lot of that time was fiddly paws and tail; the photos don't really show it, but there are individual toes on all the feet. 

Merino wool, 'fine' and 'coarse' felting needles, black plastic beads and monofilament. No armature. 

For more needle felting, there's a label to your right >

Portrait: Horseriding

Here's a portrait I completed a while ago for a lady who does riding competitions. She provided the photo and I drew from that, removing the background so they stood out more. 

Here's a detail of the horse:

Here's an animation of the various progress scans I made as I was working. It took 24.5 hours all up:

You may notice her face change on the very last stage – I sent along a scan of the finished piece to check that nothing needed to be changed, and my client realised that the photo she had sent me wasn't actually a good likeness at all, and sent me another photo so that I could adjust her face.

For this portrait I used a #B mechanical pencil and an #8B solid graphite pencil, along with various blending tools and erasers. For more information on my portraiture materials, you can look at my tutorial on the subject.

Previously posted:

Sneak Peek: Portraits

Illustration: Fairy

This is a submission requested by a publisher. I didn't get the job (story of my life) but I do like how she looks. It was requested that I do a cover from a sketch they sent, which is why there is a little girl up the top. The whole process was rather rushed, as I was asked for the sample mid Tuesday, for Thursday morning. And I managed to finish off the job I was doing before I started, as well. =) 

The first version I did in watercolour (with some sparkles added in Photoshop), but as it didn't sound as though they were particularly enamoured of the medium (they said they 'didn't mind watercolour if it wasn't too pastel'), I also did another version digitally, using the lineart I'd scanned before I started painting. I don't usually like to have such shiny digital work, but looking at other things the publisher had produced I thought it was the best way to go.

Since I could only show half of the fairy in the final artwork, I also sent along a the sketch I did when working out the basic look:

I may clean that sketch up and colour it for my portfolio, I quite like her....

I hadn't drawn a fairy in something like 10 years, and I'm pleased to see that they've at least got more graceful since then. I remember drawing a fairy when I was about 8, in an after-school art group, which the art teacher and my mother dubbed 'The Pragmatic Fairy'. I think I've at least escaped that moniker here! 

Altogether (initial sketching, draft, colour study, linework, watercolour and digital) about 13 hours. 

I used Artline Drawing System pens for the linework, Winsor & Newton watercolours for the painting, and Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3 for everything else.