Watercolour: Puffins

A little piece I did for last week's Colour Collective on Twitter. The colour was flame red, although this isn't actually painted with Flame Red, because I don't have that colour paint: it's a combination of Cadmium Scarlet and Winsor Red. 

I'm not even at all fond of this image - it looked a lot better in my head, but I didn't have enough time to execute it properly, but I thought I should blog it anyway, rather than leave it languishing in a sketchbook:

Here's is the inked version. I really need to work on my hand-lettering:

And here is my original sketch, which I like better. Ah well:

Winsor & Newton watercolours and Copic Multiliners in a Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook.

Watercolour: Princesses

Here's a little watercolour I did for #ColourCollective on twitter. The colour this week was sap green:

I originally sketched this piece for @Daily_Doodle's Wednesday prompt, which was The Letter P. I decided P could be for princesses, and as it was also International Hug Day on Wednesday, I thought it would be cute to have them hugging. And then I ran out of time on Wednesday, as is so often the way. 

I decided to go with Regency-esque styling, mainly so I could draw those cute little bloomers. My stylistic choices are often very deep and meaningful. =P The crowns and dress decorations are inspired by extant examples that I've gathered on my Pinterest boards, but I didn't worry about historical accuracy at all and just had some fun drawing cute dresses. 

I inked my sketch with Copic Multiliners, and it's painted with Winsor & Newton watercolours in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. I did have a reference for the positioning of some of the hands, but only used it very loosely. I'm quite fond of this little piece, and wish it had got a bit more love on twitter, because I had a lot of fun taking some time off to work on it. 

Sketch: African Girl

I was watching Human Universe the other day, and took a few screenshots of ruined civilisations for my reference files. Inspiring stuff!

I also saw this little girl, and thought she and her dreadlocks would make an interesting subject for some inking practice:

I drew and inked her over two evenings, using a Pentel Brush Pen and some Copic Multiliners in a Moleskine Sketchbook.

And then I thought I'd slap a very quick bit of colour on in Photoshop, just for some messy fun.

Photoshop CC 2014 with a Wacom Intuos 5.

Sketches: Historical Hair

I've been having fun sketching some over-the-top historical hair lately. I find hair quite a relaxing and fun thing to draw (providing it doesn't have to be photorealistic, then it's a bit of a pain =P) 

Here's what I did tonight, partially because I wanted something fun and mindless to draw while watching tv, and partly because I need to get in a bit of practice with my brush inking before I move on to big projects. 

I had a lot of fun doing this! It's based on a photo I found on Pinterest, and have traced back to theaterakademie.de. It looks like it's a renaissance hairstyle created by Trille Hvidfeldt, but I'm relying on google translate here. 

I used a Pentel brush pen for the majority of it, with some of the finer shading added with Copic Multiliners, for a more burnished look. It's in a Moleskine Sketchbook.

Here are some other Historical Hair pieces. All of these are warm-up speedpaints done in Photoshop and based loosely on old paintings:

From a painting of Queen Anne when Princess of Denmark by Willem Wissing and Jan van de Vaardt (30 mins in December)

From Henri Pierre Danloux's portrait of Comtesse du Cluzel (20 mins in November)

From a portrait of Sophie of Hanover by an unknown artist (30 minutes in October, while I was sick with a sinus infection)

Watercolour: Bedtime Peekaboo!

The lovely Penny Neville-Lee has just started up a Colour Collective hashtag on Twitter. Every week she posts a colour and those wishing to be involved create an illustration using that colour, any theme, any medium. Last week was the first week, with the chosen colour 'Cadmium Yellow Pale. 

I've been pretty busy, but with the yellow colour choice I decided to take an hour out and paint a Daily Doodle picture I had done way back in July. It had been waiting to be painted, and was always meant to be a yellow image, so I really couldn't resist!

This was done pretty quickly (painting in just over an hour), and very late at night, so it's not as polished as I might have liked, but overall I'm quite fond of it. 

Here are the inks, which I did for two combined Daily Doodle prompts - 'Bedtime' and 'Peekaboo':

I don't remember why I chose to go with a 20s theme... maybe I had some A A Milne poetry in my head or something. Maybe I just wanted to draw 20s curls.... Overall it definitely could have been planned better, but I think it came out okay for all that. 

Winsor & Newton watercolours and Artline Drawing System pens in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.

There is now a Colour Collective Facebook group, where all the images can be seen together. 

A look back at 2014

I thought I should write an epic post to reflect on the past year. It's been a busy and eventful year for me – I've had my first picture book published and completed over 268 blackline master illustrations, with my work now featuring in over 50 publications for ReadyEd. I've worked on wedding stationary and Christmas cards, and I'm currently in the draft stages for another picture book. 

I'm looking forward to an even better and more exciting year in 2015!

January

I started off the year with Blackline master work. A lot of publications have to be ready for the start of the school year at the end of January, so the beginning and end of the year is always a busy time for textbook illustration. However, I also managed to practice brush inking – it was definitely a month for linework!

The Glass Slipper - Ink

Blackline Master Illustrations
Copyright ReadyEd Publications - Photoshop

Blackline Master Illustrations
Copyright ReadyEd Publications - Photoshop

Blackline Master Illustrations
Copyright ReadyEd Publications - Photoshop

See the rest of the year below the cut:

Illustration: Thank You Cards

I didn't manage to get any thank you cards out last year, and I felt really bad about it – I always send them out, but I was really busy around Christmas 2013 and couldn't find time until it was really too late, and then I was horrendously sick on my birthday for 2014 and was knocked out for over a week, and then flat out trying to catch up on missed work. Even with these excuses, I've been feeling guilty, so this year I've succeeded in doing thank you cards for Christmas, at least!

Here's the illustration I did for them. For the past six years I've been doing thank you cards featuring this girl, but I decided to depart from that theme. 

I did the sketch on Christmas Eve. I'm still really busy, and haven't taken many days off over Christmas, so I'd already done some work and just wanted to vege in front of the tv and sketch something brainless, with no plan whatsoever. I started by deciding to sketch a girl in the dress I was wearing for Christmas (although mine is navy blue with while polkadots, not red), and then just let it go wherever it wanted – and I liked it enough to turn it into my thank you cards. 

I had a lot of fun painting it, I haven't been able to find time for much painting lately, and it was fun to do something a bit messier and without having to worry about perfect linework. 

The font I used in the background is the Harman family – it has a nice variety of of font styles that all work well together, along with a nice selection of flourishes. 

I decided I wanted the cards to look shiny, so I printed off the images onto photo paper, cut them all out and mounted them on plain white cards, using a bit of double-sided foam to give a bit of height. 

And then I wrote in all the cards tonight, and that's something I can cross off my list! I'm quite pleased with how they all came together – a few wonky bits, but that's okay. =)

Sketch using a 0.7 mechanical pencil with a #B lead in a Moleskine sketchbook

Painting in Adobe Photoshop CC with a Wacom Intuos Pro 5