Draughts

Over Christmas, while I had a small window of time where I didn't need to be working all the time (December-January is usually pretty crazy for me) I let myself do one watercolour, all for myself. I'd just finished several extremely tight deadlines and thought I deserved a bit of a play at Christmas time!

I do most of my work digitally these days, but I do love my watercolours, so I decided that I'd do a traditional painting - and to make it interesting, I decided to work with Mariella, my little ghost character, and see if I could pull that off with watercolour.

Keep reading below the cut for sketches, progress shots, videos and all that fun stuff!

Fishing!

For Colour Collective's 'Midnight Green' prompt I branched out into siamese cats (I love siamese cats, they're mental). The colour reminded me of secluded ponds and goldfish (and siamese cat eyes)

Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. 2 hours.

Happy Scottie

I didn't think of anything creative for Colour Collective's 'Ruby' prompt. I was so busy that I didn't even check what the colour was until Friday. I'd decided that morning that whatever the colour was, I was going to do a scottie dog in a tartan coat. A carefree scottie with no deadlines and no one asking when something would be finished. Oh, to be a dog....! 

When I found the colour was very pink, I added a butterfly. If it had been a more autumnal colour I would have done a drift of leaves - basically, whatever suited the colour of the week! 

I spent about an hour and a half on this, so not long. It's important to do some things that aren't work (especially if your work is being boring and not really letting you actually draw) to preserve your sanity, so I didn't feel guilty taking a bit of time for Colour Collective. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

Festive Kitties

It's my last blog post for 2017 and I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy new year. If you read my blog, I'd really like to thank you, your support means such a lot to me!

It's fitting that I now post this Colour Collective kitty that I did for the last Colour Collective of 2017. The colour was 'white' and I had to do something special for the New Year!

Let's all make this a really good year. I'm feeling energised and ready for it - I want to make big things happen!

And here are two more cats I did for Colour Collective during December. I was so busy it was black cats or nothing (they're quicker to draw)

For the colour 'sugarplum' I eschewed the obvious sugarplum fairy and featured gingerbread and sweet pink icing. This kitty has just been BUSTED.

And then for Venetian Red, I did, as someone on Instragram so wonderfully put it, 'a cat flossing a fang' on some Christmas wrapping.

These were done in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Lapphund Christmas Cards 2017

Every year I do custom Christmas cards for some lovely friends. We started in 2013, when they had just got their first dog, so she was the subject of the cards. In 2014 they had a second dog, so I added her in, and by 2015 they had a gorgeous little boy, who naturally had to be included too!  This year marks the 5th year of this card series, their little boy is now two and a half, and most of their card recipients have now tumbled to the fact that these are custom commissioned cards, they aren't just super-good at finding cards with dogs that look like theirs!

Back when they only had dogs, I used to do two separate designs for them, but now I just do one, with a traditional Christmassy red-green-gold colour scheme, and another with a blue-gold-grey colour scheme. Here's that second colourway:

You'll notice that the icecream in this one doesn't match the rest of the colours - that's because strawberry icecream is his favourite and we wanted to feature that. The red card has a choc-mint icecream, (because strawberry doesn't match red) and let me tell you, I got very hungry while painting it!

We got them printed at Moo, and they of course did a wonderful job:

These were done in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Go below the cut to see all the previous years' cards:

Floral Christmas Cards

Here's a commissioned Christmas card I did this year. I always love these projects! I've been doing cards for these lovely people for a few years now, and they usually feature birds in a woodcut style, but this year we did something different (much to the consternation of my parents, who would look over my shoulder and demand if I was sure this is what they'd asked for. Not sure if they actually expected me to say 'no, actually, I decided to do whatever I liked' or what...) 

The commissioners had done some work in their garden this year, removing a large pine tree and planting lots of paper daisies. They like natives to bring the birds to their garden. The new yard has been attracting a lot of attention, so they wanted their cards to feature paper daisies. I did up a few concepts, including one based on the floral cards I do myself every now and then, and that's the design they chose:

I added a few extra natives - pink bottle brushes and swan river myrtle - to keep things interesting. They came out very clean and modern and I like them a lot!

We were printing via Moo, of course, so I did a dark version as well, to take advantage of the printfinity option at Moo. I like the way the colours glow against this dark background:

They printed very nicely:

It was such fun to do a Christmas card with such non-traditional colours!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Under the Christmas Tree

A slightly more polished Colour Collective, from after the deadlines had been met. This was the last CC before Christmas, so I definitely had to continue my Christmassy themes. I chose to do Myrna again. She doesn't, fortunately, eat the baubles off the tree (or the presents), but it's a good image. 

I used this for my thank you cards this year. It's good to find multiple uses for something!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro. It took about three hours or so.