Watercolour: Millie

I've been doing some scene illustrations from Diana Wynne Jones' wonderful Charmed Life for my black and white portfolio, and wanted to do some practice with my grey ecoline before putting brush to paper on a more complete and complicated linework (I'm always slightly freaked out by the properties of ecoline, and feel the need to practice with them if I haven't used them for a while, in case I have forgotten something vital and thus mess everything up irretrievably.) I've been doing some character sketches in my sketchbook while out and about, so I worked one of them up into an ink and ecoline sketch. So here is Millie, Chrestomanci's wife: 

They were ushered in front of a plump lady with a mild face. She had a gorgeous lace dress on – Gwendolen's eyes swept up and down it with considerable awe – but otherwise she was one of the most ordinary ladies they had ever seen. 

I didn't see any mention of her having a pet cat in the book itself, but my hazy recollection of one of the other books in the series tells me that she had a lot to do with cats when she was young, she she does carry the cat Fiddle at one point in Charmed Life. Anyway, I need cat practice. 

I gave the whole thing a digital teal wash so I could use it for Colour Collective on Twitter. If I'd had teal ecoline I could have done it in colour initially, but I'm not even sure there is such a thing as teal ecoline... I don't have any, anyway! I have a basic set of Ecoline, and some extra grey, as I usually use it for greyscale images only. 

And here's a sneak peek at the linework for the finished piece I'm about to paint. This photo was taken a few days ago, when I hadn't finished the inking, but overall it's a more interesting picture, being an actual illustration, than the above straight character portrait.

Pentel Brush Pen and Copic Multiliners with Cold Grey Ecoline and Copic Opaque White in a Moleskine Watercolour Sketchbook. 

Watercolour: Chinese New Year

I did this little piece very quickly for last week's Colour Collective on Twitter. I've got plenty to keep me occupied at the moment, but my friend gave me some new watercolour for my birthday on the 13th, and I hadn't had a chance to try it out all week! Also, one of my lovely new colours was Winsor Orange, and the Colour Collective was Orange Lake Light – not quite the same, but definitely fate (and as close as I was going to get with watercolour, anyway). 

With that kind of encouragement, I had to do a little watercolour!

I chose Chinese New Year as the theme, as it seemed to go rather well with an orange colour scheme. And I decided it was the year of the ram for the purposes of this picture, because with my surname, how can I go with a goat? 

I managed to squeeze in the other two paints I got as well – Vandyke Brown and Olive Green. 

I need to study sheep some more...

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

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.