Watercolour: Family Portrait

Here is the finished portrait that I showed a progress shot of the other day, now that it has gone to the commissioner. 

When I was discussing the portraiture options I had on offer – a fully-detailed graphite portrait of five people being out of the Christmas budget – they liked the loose watercolour I had done of Ann Miller, so this is similar. I like to have a number of different options for what I can do, as my graphite portraits take up to 30 hours for one person, which pushes the costs up. This watercolour took somewhere in the region of 13-16 hours, and is put together from five separate photos, all with drastically different lighting conditions. A bit more shadow or dramatic lighting might have been nice, but since the references didn't provide it, I thought it best to stick with something that wasn't likely to completely destroy the likenesses if I got it wrong! 

I used a drinking straw for the splashy background, blowing the paint around. Everything is in Winsor & Newton watercolours on Moleskine A3 watercolour paper, and (apart from the drinking straw) I used Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes. 

Sneak Peek: Family Portrait

Here's a look at a loose watercolour portrait I'm currently working on finishing up.

I cleared one blackline master book off my desk today, and this is the next thing on the list, to be followed in rapid succession by wedding invitations and a lot more blackline master work. All good, enjoyable work, but I could wish that I hadn't been sick recently, it has really mucked up my schedule and everything's a bit of a rush now! I usually find November unusually busy anyway.

This is a family portrait compiled from five different photographs, all in Winsor and Newton watercolours on Moleskine watercolour paper (cut from an A3 watercolour sketchbook). I've been using Winsor and Newton Series 7 brushes. 

With luck, I can finish it off tomorrow!

Invitations: Tulip Wedding Reception

Here are the seating plans and place cards I put together to match these invitations:

I did two copies of the seating plan, mounted on silver paper, and made 81 place cards, which meant a lot of cutting, a lot of scoring, a lot of folding and a lot of glueing! 

The seating plan is typeset in Americana BT, which is easy to read and matches the invitations, and the place cards are in Recherche, which did mean that I had to individually manage the glyphs on every one – something that almost certainly won't be noticed, but it adds to the overall feel of the cards when each name is arranged to look as good as possible, instead of relying on just 26 letters. 

The backgrounds were put together in Adobe Photoshop CC, and the type was all done in Adobe InDesign CC. 

Illustration: Colours of Nature

Here is the theme illustration I did for the 2013 SmokeFree WA Kelmscott Annual Show. The theme was 'Life on the Land: The Colours of Nature'.

 I provided them with five different concepts, and they chose one this one, a continuation of the 2012 theme of 'Mother Nature'.

This was done in Adobe Illustrator CS6:

Here's a closer look:

I'd put up a colouring page, but my website host appears to be down, so that will have to wait. 

I'm sorry to say that this wasn't an enjoyable assignment, so I was thrilled to see that it struck a chord enough for a kid to enter a lego version of it in the themed lego section. This is by someone called Xavier, isn't it fabulous? (It even won a first!)

Everything was faithfully put in, even the flag and clouds from last year's theme that were vetoed this year. Last year I included a donkey – this year I had planned to include a horse, but it was eventually dropped, so I'm glad to see that there is a horse here too. 

I also demonstrated portraiture and needle felting for one day of the show. (19th October. I know, I'm late with this post) I did about 6 hours all up, over half of which was portraiture, and the rest felting. 

Unbeknownst to me I was coming down with something that completely flattened me for the next week (and ruined my productivity and energy for the following week (and then some) as well) so I hope I didn't unwittingly give it to anyone! I thought I just had a nasty headache caused by the stormy weather (not unusual), and soldiered on. >.<

I'm indebted to my father for these photos (usually he forgets to photograph me =P). That's my mother sitting beside me, doing some knitting, and doing much of the talking for me. I am deaf in one ear and have trouble in large, echoey spaces, much of the time I wasn't even aware if someone was talking to me (when they were standing to my right) with all the surrounding noise and feedback in my hearing aid. 

At times we had quite a crowd, generally there were at least one or two people watching:

And did I ache after that uncomfortable plastic chair and desk!

My portraiture demonstration was Gene Kelly this year. I didn't have time to prepare a new portrait, and found this, barely started, in an abandoned sketchbook. By the end of the day it looked like this:

My reference was a publicity shot from Anchors Aweigh. 

And about 2 to 2 & 1/2 hours furious felting resulted in a semi-complete duckling:

Needle Felting: Arbella

Here is my latest – and definitely most ambitious – needle felting project: Arbella, a mouse of Tudor times. She's intended to be one of a pair, but her swain only exists as a couple of very rough sketches at the moment:

She's felted in merino and corriedale wool, although her core is ordinary polyfill stuffing. I used #32, #36 , #38 and a star felting needles. 

Her tail is copper wire wrapped with embroidery floss. She wears a french hood and carries a pomander and a bible. Her whiskers are monofilament. 

Most of the detailing is felted, but there is a bit of shading in the folds of her skirts, with acrylic paint.

The beads are a combination of very small glass seed beads and plastic pearls. 

And here's a shot with my hand, for scale. She stands 9cm tall.

Invitations: Tulip Wedding

Here are some wedding invitations that I sent off today. I did the engagement invitations for the same couple and they requested something similar but with the colour scheme changed from purple and silver to red and silver. 

The wedding ceremony is at Araluen Botanical Park, which is known for its tulips, so as I again didn't have any specific guidelines for what to design, I went went with a tulip theme. They'd requested that the invitations be 'romantic' but also 'fun' so I typeset on an angle so as to be a bit less formal, and used Americana BT for the font, as with the engagement invitations. I used the text monogram from the engagement invitations to tie everything together. 

As wedding invitations need to look a bit more luxe, I used embossing powder to emboss all the monograms. I went out an got some embossing pens, but most annoyingly they didn't work on the paper (Canon high resolution paper) – the ink dried instantly, presumably due to the coating, so the powder had nothing to stick to; I was forced to return to using glue, which works but results in a more crackly finish than the embossing pens. (Fortunately I plan to emboss this year's Christmas cards, and the pens do work on that cardstock. They will not be wasted!)

52 invitations and 52 rsvp slips are quite a lot to emboss, but I think it was worth it, they catch the light very nicely. 

Typesetting in Adobe inDesign CC, Illustration in Adobe Photoshop CC, all hand assembled. 

Sketches and Sneak Peeks

Long time no post! I've been pretty flat out – for a couple of weeks all I was doing was waiting for work that was supposed to materialise, and then it all arrived at once, several projects within three days of each other! However, to prevent my blog from completely stagnating, here are some sketches I did a while ago, as rewards for working all day:

Mucking about with personifying my dog, Myrna – she's a cavoodle, so a mix of King Charles Cavalier and Poodle (hence the costume).

Manga Studio 5, 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes to colour.

A sketch of Eustacie in Georgette Heyer's The Talisman Ring, which I was listening to at the time. 

Manga Studio 5 and Photoshop, 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes to colour.

And here's a little peek at a few of the things I'm working on, which is currently ranging from portraiture to advertising to educational publishing to wedding invitations to Christmas cards. Plus a graphic novel test that I was putting together while waiting for work to arrive. I don't think anyone can say that I'm not versatile! =P