Pangolins

When I saw Colour Collective's 'Moss' theme, it made me thing of lush, humid rainforests. The only rainforests I personally have experienced have been in south-east Asia, and my original plan was to have two Malaysian children with some jungle fowl for some bright red accents... But then World Pangolin Day came around and I was reminded of how cute pangolins are. So I changed my plan to include pangolins. 

The butterflies are Rajah Brooke's Birdwings - the national butterfly of Malaysia, and completely stunning. They're quite big, too. Here's one sitting on my shoulder, for scale, and one sitting on a flower, because I'm pleased with that photo:

And here's a video of a pangolin climbing a tree (note that this is (I think) a black-bellied pangolin from Africa. I was drawing a sunda pangolin from South-East Asia. Or, to put it another way, no, I didn't completely ignore the colouring when painting them. =P)

I added a batik pattern to the girl's dress to continue the Malaysian theme, and I am reminded that I have the stuff to do batik, and really must get round to actually doing some. Anyone got some extra hours in the day that they don't need?

Adobe Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. Still playing with Kyle T Webster's Photoshop brushes, too. 

Portrait: Cat & Ashby

In December I was commissioned to do a couple portrait in coloured pencil. I started right away, but only finished a few days ago - not because I was lazy, but I had a lot of other work on, so the projects with the closest deadlines were completed first. It's a juggling act! =P

It's quite some time since I did a portrait (or anything, really) in coloured pencil (I think it's about five years!), so this was a lot of fun. It's a medium I used to use a lot more, but which fell by the wayside a bit for the joint reasons of my hurting my drawing wrist (back in 2008) and learning how to use watercolour properly so that I no longer had to rely on mixed media. My coloured pencil method has changed somewhat since I hurt my wrist - lots of soft layers instead of hard colouring - so that I can use them without ill-effect. This means things look a bit fuzzier close-up, but from a normal viewing distance I think the effect is actually much better than my old technique. 

Here's a progress animation so you can see how this came together. Note how I was struggling with the likenesses for a while, and was making lots of small changes. Coloured pencil is much more nerve-wracking than graphite when it comes to likenesses, because it's so much harder to make corrections! 

Prismacolor pencils on Quill Drawing Cartridge paper. About 20-25 hours.

Aquarius

This week the Colour Collective colour was 'deep naples ochre' - definitely not one of my favourite colours, being essentially 'baby poo'. So I thought it would be good to temper it a little with a nice clear blue. Colour Collective fell on the 12th February, and my birthday is the 13th - I'm an aquarius, so what better theme to choose?

I've been wanting to build up a more fun and trendy illustration style for my portfolio, to use in addition to my traditional golden-age style illustrations etc. I'm still trying to settle on exactly what to do, but I think this is a step in the right direction. I think I'd quite like to clean it up a bit more...

I downloaded Kyle T Webster's brush megapack to play around with. This was done with the gouache and china pencil brushes which, as you can see, I am still getting used to. 

This was done over 5 hours, almost all while watching musicals on dvd, so I wasn't exactly 100% focussed (I look up for all the dancing, for a start =P). So it probably took considerably less time, which is why I think it could stand to be cleaned up a bit, there are definitely things that I think I could alter. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Lavender's Blue

This week the Colour Collective colour was 'lavender' (oops, I just realised it was 'Deep Lilac'. That's how out of it with stress I've been this week, I can't even get the name of the colour right. =P It is the right colour though, I colourpicked from the tweet....), and I had plans for it, I really did. And I liked those plans. But then work got a bit feral, with the projects I am currently working on all suddenly increasing in size (but not the deadlines, no, they stay the same.) My Colour Collective plans had to be abandoned, but I didn't want to sit this one out, so I cropped out a small section of a colouring book page I'm working on (yes, I'm working on a colouring book, now everyone can stop nagging me about it =P) and gave it some quick digital colour. (I also removed the colouring book style patterns, because no way did I have time to go into that much detail ^.~) 

And voila:

It's a bit clean and digital for me, normally. I've been thinking of investing in Kyle Webster's Photoshop brushes, but I was hardly going to do that now when the object was to get something completed in the smallest possible amount of time. Maybe soon, when I have cleared off this workload and have time to play...

So yes, nothing special, but quite sweet, I think, and the dress works well in lavender. If you're a long-time reader of my blog (if you are, I salute you!) you may recognise the pose from a 2014 ink sketch from The Glass Slipper. With my colouring book, where possible, I'm incorporating things that I've already done, so as to speed up the process a bit. Kudos to you if you can guess the theme from the odd sneak peeks that have been posted on twitter and instagram. Anyone?

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Castle Invasion

The Colour Collective colour this week was 'viridian'. Obviously a good choice for a fadeaway girl, but I went with something different this week. I don't know why 'viridian' should make me think of medieval dresses and chickens..... but I just went with the flow....

Of course, how can I resist red hair with viridian? It's such a lovely juxtaposition of colours.

I had fun being loose and painterly with this. I've been doing a lot of solid, precise, black and white linework over the past two months so I didn't really feel like being precise for this as well. I rather overworked her face, which I struggled to get right, so I should probably go back in and tighten everything else up as well to match, but for now, this is it. (I might have tightened everything up anyway, were it not for the fact that I was squeezing a few hours away from work, an equally small number of hours before the CC deadline) 

You never know but that I may eventually turn this into a portfolio piece though.... it has potential (probably better potential if I up the number of chickens, what do you think? Would it be better with chickens everywhere?)

Here's the original sketch. Somewhere along the line I flipped the image round and decided I like it that way. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Somewhere between 4 and 5 hours in total.

Ah, the Moon is Here

Colour Collective has started back up on Twitter. I'm currently flattened by the January rush, but I couldn't miss out on the first one, so I squeezed in a quick little fadeaway girl. 

This week the colour was Rose Quartz and I chose an esoteric little song from 1933's Footlight Parade - one of my favourite movies. It doesn't get a big production number, and they don't even sing the whole song, but Dick Powell (who sang it in the film) recorded it fully to coincide with the film. The song was written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal.

Ah, the moon is here

Ah, and we are here

Love is off to a beautiful start

I'm sitting pretty

You're by my side

I'm well supplied

Plenty of you

Plenty to do

Ah, it feels so grand

When I hold your hand

There's a hop, skip and jump in my heart

What is this funny thing I can't get too much of?

Ah, I've got a feeling it's love

Here we are at last

With the day fading fast

Like a boy and a girl in a storybook

Here we are alone

In a world of our own

Like a pair in a love song sweet

Here's the note, dear

As in the song and book, dear

Take a look, dear

The picture is complete

Ah, it feels so grand

When I hold your hand

There's a hop, skip and jump in my heart

What is this funny thing I can't get too much of?

Ah, I've got a feeling it's love

Here's Dick Powell singing it:

I went with a 1930s beach-pyjama look, because who doesn't love beach pyjamas?

There are so many things wrong with this that it's not funny, but overall I like it - eventually, when I have some Spare Time (I know, I should be on the comedy circuit, I'd have them rolling in the aisles with lines like that =P) I'd like to take my favourite fadeaway girls and spend a decent amount of time making them all really nice. Most of them are pretty rough and ready. 

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

2 hours (i.e. Totally not enough time)

Meet the CC Artist

While Colour Collective has been on a holiday break, it was suggested that everyone do a Meet the CC Artist submission - and here is mine:

I decided to do two versions of myself - one for summer and one for winter, because in summer I am almost always to be found in huge 50s skirts and in winter I am 100% guaranteed to be in a chunky winter knit, probably from a vintage pattern, because my mother is a fabulous and generous knitter. 

That quilt over my chair (a high drafting chair because I am short in the body and need the extra height) was also made by my mother. In theory it is to wrap over my legs when I'm cold, but as it is made up of squares of leftover 100% wool fabric, it is also fabulous for eliminating the static shocks you get from sliding off a foam-filled, polyester-covered, plastic chair. And it's bright and cheery too, I love it. 

Yes, I am deaf in one ear. Not totally deaf, but the hearing quality is reduced drastically as well. I was born deaf, and have worn a hearing aid when out and about since I was 15. But it accounts for my general what on earth is going on? default state. (No, I can't 'just listen harder'.) Wearing a hearing aid also means I am paranoid about it raining on me when I haven't got a hat or umbrella, and can't bring myself to lean out over bodies of water in case it leaps out, like a contact lens magnetically attracted to soup. It does mean I have a legitimate reason to collect pretty hats, though, so I suppose it's a win overall.... 

I love to have my nails painted - it's my Wednesday downtime, while watching comedy on tv. A legitimate reason to do nothing at all with my hands while the polish dries, and for someone who spends all day drawing/felting/playing piano/typing a bit of downtime for the hands is nice! A lot of people use the fact that I have nailart as a reason to tell me to 'get a job' - clearly I have too much time on my hands... but in reality, an hour a week for a hobby I enjoy is not excessive! 

I do play the piano, and have done so since I was eight. I'm not particularly musical, I never did exams and I'll never rise to concert-pianist heights - but I don't want to, so that's just fine! Piano has always been a nice hobby for me, without the stress of exams. I learn whatever pieces I feel like, and often play quite complex music, often from the 30s. Currently I am playing The Merry-Go-Round of Life from Howl's Moving Castle, Daddy-O (I'm Going to Teach You Some Blues), Remember My Forgotten Man, My Foolish Heart and It Could Happen To You, which is a nice mix of various styles. I often decide I want to play a particular piece that I've heard in a movie, and have to track it down through old sheet music sellers, like a particularly persevering sniffer-dog. I did that with Daddy-O and also with another favourite, Shanghai Lil. In general I take a bit of time out of every day to practice, although I don't always manage it. 

I'm pleased to see that my 'Loves' list is much bigger than my 'Hates'. Technically I have a number of hates (such as people who don't indicate and nearly run me over while I'm walking the dog. And people who drive up behind me while I'm walking on the footpath. And people who yell abuse at me for no reason other than that I'm walking past), but they pretty much all come under the umbrella category of 'Nastiness'. It's not the individual things I hate so much as the overarching lack of kindness and respect. I could have included a lot more 'Loves', but I thought it might be getting a bit excessive....