Sunshine in a Bird!

I've just done this very very very quick Flamingo illustration.  We've had days and days of grey skies here in Bristol and today it was really making me feel flat.  I didn't feel like doing anything, and I started thinking about how much I would love a holiday, and then I started thinking about Key West, and Florida and sunshine and then flamingos.  So I drew this little guy.  He took about 5 minutes and then a bit more time for the colouring in.

Again, the colours aren't coming up as vibrant here as in real life as I'm using the camera on my phone which isn't a very fancy one.  Also, as I was just messing about with this, I didn't bother rubbing out the pencil mistakes so when I coloured it in the colours got a bit muddy in places.  But I really loved doing the 1980's tropical style colours, they remind me of a beach dress my mum used to wear when I was little.  I am constantly amazed how versatile my limited colour palette of 7 Promarkers is, and 2 of the colours I rarely ever include.  I am going to have to get a new Vanilla one though as it is running out now as I use it so frequently for highlights and white skin tone. 

Anyway, this flamingo brightened my day.  The lovely flamingo. Sunshine in a bird!

Baby Bump in the Bath

I've just got back from my 25 week midwife appointment and I was able to hear my baby's heartbeat for the first time!  It's amazing to hear his little heart beating and reassuring to know that he is healthy.  So I've been inspired to do this illustration of how my baby bump looks when I am in the bath.  I notice that every time I have a bath, my bump seems to stick out a bit further above the bubbles and I often can see my belly moving as he wriggles around in there.  I have to have bubbles and have the bath quite deep because I like to have the bathroom window open when I have a bath - the combination of the cold fresh air and the warm water makes me imagine I am in a spa in the mountains or in the sea on a beach.  But I now live in a flat and my upstairs neighbour's metal staircase runs past my bathroom window, and they do use it, so I am a bit paranoid about exposing myself too much!!

I never usually draw from photos but for this I had to take a photo and draw from it because trying to draw in the bath, especially from such a viewpoint, obviously wouldn't have been practical!  I don't know why  I used a black pen on the bottom of the tiles here.  It doesn't look right but I'm not someone who can be bothered with photoshopping mistakes out so they're there and that's that. The tiles in the bathroom are actually black so that's probably where I was heading with it but it wouldn't have looked right, or maybe it would, I don't know. I actually wanted to draw this on darker paper and put all the highlights and bubble bath in with a chalk pencil but I didn't have any dark paper.

Equipment: Cheapo paper, a pencil, Promarkers, a Pitt Pen (mistakenly!)

A Bit More Embroidery

Here is something else I've made for the baby. I think this took me a couple of hours.  Of all the stitches I've got to grips with, chain stitch is the one I like best so I decided to use it for the heart.  This, unlike the rocket, was on a piece of fabric large enough to fit into my embroidery hoop and was on natural calico I could easily to trace my original design onto, which made it much much simpler and quicker to make!

The camera isn't quite picking up the colours. The calico looks much warmer and the red is a really lovely colour like the colour of glace cherries.

Embroidered Rocket

 

My embroidery masterpiece!

I knew nothing about embroidery stitches before I started this...you may say I still don't.  I remember doing a bit of embroidery with my granny when I was very little but think I'd probably just done a bit of running stitch.  So I'm very pleased with myself that I've managed to learn a few different types of stitch while doing this.  Stitches the masterpiece includes: chain, satin, back, couch, running.  And I NEVER want to have to use silver thread again!  It is a nightmare!!  Really difficult to thread and gets knotted up very easily.  I tried a few different brands and they all drove me crazy. 

The Process:
I don't have a very logical brain (or a scanner) so I spent quite a lot of time working this process out!!

Here is the initial idea I drew into a sketchbook.  It was a very tiny illustration - the rocket is only about two inches. Sorry it is a bit blurry.

This was the design I created straight onto calico. Very useful here was a roll of masking tape which I used to stretch the calico flat onto my kitchen table:

Aforementioned kitchen table.  My flat was being decorated while I was doing this so my kitchen was the only 'living room' I had for 4 days.  I was working on this while people were walking back and forth through my kitchen with buckets of water and paint and the whole place was very dusty and uncomfortable.  Really, working on this bit of art for my baby was what kept me sane.

I decided that I actually wanted to use the navy blue fabric (in picture above) to embroider onto.  I liked that the tiny white flower pattern on it looked to me like stars, which meant I had to transfer the illustration off of the calico and somehow get it onto the navy fabric.  So I traced it onto some greaseproof paper from my kitchen cupboard!  I also walked round to the newsagent and did a photocopy of the design so I have got a hard copy of it for future reference.  I don't have a scanner at the moment which means I am employing some quite old-fashioned ways of working!

After this I still had to get the design onto the navy fabric.  I just put the greaseproof paper on top of the navy fabric and traced over the design very firmly with a biro and, I don't really know what greaseproof paper is made of, but the result was that the design came out on the navy fabric as a very very feint line.  It was really difficult to see though so I used a chalk pencil to go over the design on the fabric so I could see it better. I wonder now if there is some some of white tracedown paper on the market that can be used for transfering designs onto dark fabric and paper?  Like a chalk version of carbon paper?? I've never seen such a thing.

Whisper Illustration - IF

Much more on the ball with my timing this week!  Here is an illustration inspired by this week's theme from Illustration Friday. Look, I've completed it only one day into the week!!  The theme is 'Whisper'. Now, 'whisper is a lovely noun/adjective but for me this immediately conjured up rather pejorative connotations of being told off in class for whispering to my neighbour. Teacher thinks I'm being a nuisance when the truth is I haven't got a clue what is going on and am too scared to ask.  As a teacher myself and someone who loathed school, I think I'm considering that I might home-school my son when he reaches that age.

I haven't had a chance to hunt down an alternative for the obstreperous white gel pen as it is too cold and grey outside for me to walk to town and get one at the moment - I really don't like the cold.  Oh, I put lots of grey in the illustration because I think school is dull :)

'Sketchbooks'

I've had a bit of a sketchbook epiphany. I've got so many really nice sketchbooks and pads of paper, like the blocks of bristol board, Arches hot pressed (at about 20 quid a shot), Moleskines, and the as yet untouched Hahnemuhle landscape fold-flat travel sketchbook thing I bought last week. But what I actually end up using is things like this 69p 'Drawing Book' from the cheapo shop on Church Road (my local high street). Same same when I go to art class I always take a decent hardback sketchbook but more often than not end up using a sheet of sugar or computer paper from the tutor. It's also occurred to me that the thinness of the cheapo stuff makes no odds as my beloved Promarkers bleed through even the fancy papers. So, with that in mind, and me being broke, im going to stick to the bargain shop kids' art section from now on!

Wool Illustration - IF

I signed up to Illustration Friday three weeks ago and have managed to actually do a picture for all three of the weeks so far!  I'm enjoying IF, as it actually makes me produce something that is complete. IF gives you a theme, and a week. Well, both are pretty useful to me as I am rubbish at thinking up what to draw and more importantly, I'm ludicrously slow at doing art.  I'm a person who goes to life drawing and leaves with pictures of a model with their head or a limb missing, and a person who takes all day to do a 6x6 inch collage. Knowing that there is a cutoff point for when I can get the illustration in is therefore incredibly useful to me!

Here is my creation, a collage, for IF's 'Wool' theme which ended yesterday.  I finished it and uploaded it to IF and Flickr at around 23.50 last night!

It reads 'Grandma has been knitting and we can't wait for you to get here'.

Medium: Collage, chalk, pencil, and an obstreperous white gel pen. Finding close-up pictures of wool was more difficult than I'd anticipated!  It started off as a quick sketch of some baby booties my mum has knitted. They are actually purple but I had no chance of finding photos of purple wool in the magazines knocking around my home so I made these ones white instead!

Storm Illustration - IF

Here is the illustration I did for IF's 'Storm' theme. There is something very problematic with the positioning of the girl and the expression in her face. But I really like how the background turned out and more to the point, the quote and the light in the darkness are very meaningful to me personally.

This looks very different to other drawings I've done and as I'm posting this retrospectively, I can definitely see that I've learnt a lot about composition since I drew this.  I like how the storm effect came out in this though.  I scribbled all over the background diagonally with quite a soft (4B?) pencil, then went over it with a white chalk pencil. Then I scratched over it all with the needle of a compass which created the little white flecks.  The 'light' is coloured with a regular old yellow highlighter pen.

Wheel Illustration

This was my first entry to Illustration Friday.  As I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into or whether I'd even end up actually posting anything I did a pretty simple little illustration.  The theme was 'Wheel'. This is a wheel, of things that popped into my head as I went along.  Some of them are clearly things that were on my mind at the time.  It wasn't intentional. I like when illustrations turn out to be something that you later look back at and are reminded of what was going on in your head at the time. I really like the little Moses baskets on the left.  I was trying to buy one at the time. I've since bought one.

I used a Pitt Pen for the lines and Promarkers for the colour.