My Hiatus Pt2: 'Harbourfest'

For those that don't know Bristol, it has a lot of water running through it and a lot of boats so the city holds this Harbourfest event. I was hoping to do a couple of sketches of boats to use for some art for Alexander's wall as he seems to like looking at boats. But in fact I ended up paying more attention to the other stuff going on - like the dance stage which had some amazing dance crews and Bristol breakers and poppers. Something else I really liked was this tree in the 'Happiness Project' area. It is a tree and you get a coloured paper leaf and write on it what you are grateful for and tie it to the tree. I wrote a leaf on Alexander's behalf and wrote 'Grandma' on it because we really would be lost without her.

To sum up the day I did this little illustration. It looks like I have loads of time on my hands doesn't it?! Actually it was the kind of repeated pattern drawing that was quite easy to do one-handed while Alexander was on my lap.

I don't really like that I coloured it black. In hindsight I would've coloured it all light grey including the leaves.

Equipment: Sakura Pigma Micron, Berol Fine, Promarkers (I forget which colours)

My Hiatus Pt.1 'Two girls and a dog having a picnic'

i have scanned! alexander was asleep and let me put him down for long enough to scan a few bits from my sketchbook. i'm so tired, i should have taken the opportunity to sleep but i felt an overwhelming desire to post something. of course he 'waah lahhed' before i finished and he is now across me feeding hence the one-handed-sorry-about-lack-of-capital-letters post! i don't know whether to put all the sketches i've done since alexander was born into one post or to split them. one thing i can say is that they are really not brilliant. i get this desire to draw but my mind is so much on alexander, especially when we are out, that i don't focus on the sketch. i'm not someone who is able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time and that applies to drawing too. even the loosest, simplest stuff i do like the continuous line drawings i have to put 100% concentration into!

well, here is what i did yesterday in the park. i go to the park nearly every day. this was right before alexander woke up in his pram and before a random jamaican guy tried to get my number.

i have for a while been noticing that some people when they sketch combine black pens of various nib widths. i really like this as it gives something similar to the line variation you achieve with a dip pen and so is an out and about or baby friendly alternative to a dip pen! i was a bit scared about doing this, i've never really known what to do with my 'M' pitt pen. but i've tried it here and i really think it has turned out okay. i have also gone back to my sketching roots and used my beloved grey and vanilla promarkers. they are the first colours i ever used and also really what got me into sketching regularly. it is my favourite way of sketching to just have one or two simple colours and a lot of white space. i don't know whether this sketch means i have gone back to square one though! i hope not!

Equipment: Sakura Pigma Micron 01, Pitt 'M', Promarkers Cool Grey 2 & Vanilla

My Finest Creation!

Here he is, my masterpiece! By far and away the best thing I have created. He is a blessing to me and I am so in love with him, even if he doesn't let him mummy get much sleep!  Alexander Teddy was born on Friday 7th June 2013 at 14.44, weighing 6lbs 13 3/4ozs. I was in labour for 36 hours in total, but it was all worth it when I felt his warmth against me. 

These are just phone pictures but have come out pretty well. I have been trying to take one photo of him a day so that over his first year I will have a photo diary of him. I would like to sketch him of course but heaven knows my drawing skills wouldn't do justice to how beautiful he is...plus I definitely don't have time for drawing at the moment!

Every Day In May: Days 24, 25, 26, 27

I haven't been sketching as regularly since May 23rd, my last post. On Friday 24th I had some pain and the midwife at the hospital told me I need to be taking it easier - I had been trying to clear some of the rubbish my neighbour has left in my garden. So I went to my Mum's for a few days and completely lost track of my EDiMs!  I have managed to do a few of the remaining items from the EDiM list now that I am back in Bristol but I'm also finding that drawing is aggravating the pain in my right shoulder blade so I can't do more than one drawing a day.  To add to that, Domino was run over today and is at the vets on a drip tonight, poor little boy, it's one thing after another with him. Hes certainly using up his 9 lives early in life!

So I basically have just picked one a day at random, the ones that took my fancy the most as I knew I wouldn't be able to do them all before May 31st. I have also done a couple of sketches for recipes which are just in pencil and need painting but I will do that at a later date and post them separately as they aren't EDiMs.  Here are the EDiMs I chose:

#24 'Something That Makes You Laugh'
The baby moves all the time, he is so active. But the other day I could see a little foot (I think) moving across me from side to side. It looked like I had a little mouse trapped under my skin!
Equipment: The trusty cheapo HB retractable pencil.

#25 'Tote Bag'
All my bags are packed for hospital and everything in the house is ready...but now I'M not ready. I'm too tired to have a baby at the moment! I've been waking up thinking 'no I don't have the energy for labour today!'
Equipment: Pen and watercolour

#26 'A Screw'
This was so poignant to my pregnancy! I have so many random screws in my kitchen drawer left over from all the IKEA furniture I've been building over the past few months - a chest of drawers, a bed, a coffee table, a sofa and a wardrobe. Seriously, this baby is going to think he's been born in an IKEA showroom!

I was struggling a bit with drawing this as my 'S' pen wasn't working properly and my back was really sore from trying to do the line work. But then I sat outside in the sunshine and had a brainwave over how to colour it inspired by a bit of mesh I pulled apart as I opened a punnet of nectarines. I was actually going to just use the mesh as a stencil and pull it off after painting but the paint made it kind of stick and so I dug out an old bottle of Diamond Glaze to stick it on properly as I liked the industrial sort of effect it gave it. I really loved doing this!
Equipment: Pitt Pens 'S' 'F' and 'M' (Basically because the S has gone scratchy for some reason)! Acrylic paint in Primary Blue with a bit of Titanium White and Buff Titanium mixed in, The red net from a punnet of nectarines, Judi-kins Diamond Glaze.

#27 'Something Sticky'
I chose this one because it was so cold the other day, for May, that I made a cup of cocoa in the middle of the afternoon! Cocoa on a May afternoon, I ask you! However, as usual I overestimated the amount of time I needed to heat it for and it all bubbled over. Oh well, at least it has forced me to finally clean the microwave!
Equipment: Triplus Fine Liners. I used the fine liners as I knew they aren't waterproof and thought that drawing on the chocolate and then getting the pen wet would reflect the fact that I had made such a mess of making the cocoa!!

I've really enjoyed this EDiM challenge and it has helped me to create a little book of sketches to document the end of my pregnancy.  It has also helped to have been posting into a Facebook group as it is so nice to get comments and to see how other people interpret the daily themes.
I am considering embarking on something for June, the 30 Days of Creativity calender but not sure. I will decide when I wake up on the 1st of June...tomorrow!

Every Day in May: Day 23 - 'Summer Joy'

I have eaten so much fruit while being pregnant so the arrival of something new coming into season is a welcome change. I bought these peaches knowing they aren't going to be the best peaches in the world - it's a cold May and they are from Spain - but they are surprisingly more tasty than I thought they would be. Peaches can be really dreadful if you accidentally get those ones that are dry and never get juicy but just go off in the bowl. These ones are white flesh rather than the yellow flesh ones that will come further into the summer. I must have enjoyed them because I bought them yesterday at around 5pm and within 24 hours have stuffed all but one of them, along with a whole mango!

I really like how this has turned out. They remind me a little bit of the Quentin Blake peach for James and the Giant Peach, not that I am in anyway comparing myself to Quentin Blake just to be clear!!!

Equipment: Pitt pen 'S', W&N watercolours in Cad Red Pale Hue, Aliz Crimson, Yellow Ochre (peaches), Indigo (shading/background)

Slipper and Flip Flops Illustration

I picked up the last couple of things for my hospital bag yesterday. And then I obviously sketched them. They were so cheap - the slippers were £3 and the flip flops were £1. A pound! A pound! And they are as comfortable as flip flops I've spent £20 on in the past! And they smell as good as mty beloved hammer. I have just about resisted the urge to eat them...!

Equipment: Pitt pen 'S', pink highlighter pen, Indigo W&N watercolour (flip flops), Aliz Crimson W&N watercolour, Uniball Signno white gel pen (slippers).

Portraiture - The fifth and final class

I decided to have another stab at acrylics today in portraiture class.  I liked what I produced last week but as this was my final class - really final as I won't be able to sign up for any more art classes for a very long time - I wanted to try and really achieve the type of portrait I've been hoping to get to!

When the model, Chris sat down the teacher noted that he sat with a tilt.  I looked at him and said to the class that I thought the way he sat tilted made him look like a politician - something about his face also made him look like one. So something I really like about how this portrait turned out is that I do think it looks like a portrait of a politician. Not that he is one in fact. If you could see the whole A3 page it is even more evident I think. I left the background unpainted and I think it looks like he has been cut out to be put on a placard or billboard.

Unlike last week, I decided not to mix the colours on the palette. I put a load of Primary Blue acrylic on the palette and basically put down all the areas of the model that were in shadow, regardless of how much shadow they were in. Then I completely washed the brush and put down pure Titanium White on all the areas where I could see the light was directly hitting him. I wanted to take a photo at this stage so I could put it on the blog and also because I actually thought it looked pretty good at that stage - I was almost tempted to just call it as finished there and then! That part only took about 10 minutes.  But I couldn't get to my bag to get my camera as my bump was too big to squeeze betweem the easels and I had a vision of sending them all flying like a row of dominoes.

After that, I worked on putting some of his features in. I didn't want to mix the blue and white on the palette because when I tried it it produced a kind of third colour and when I tried that out on his face it looked flat and lifeless. What I wanted was streaks of the blue and white which merged on the canvas. I'm really pleased with how this turned out, which is a relief as it would have been really frustrating to walk away from my final opportunity to attend a portraiture class feeling like I hadn't managed to produce what I'd been hoping to from signing up for the course.

I'm going to miss this class though. It has been a lot of fun, the other students were really nice, and I'll miss the teacher's comments which have included lines like 'you've made his eyebrows look like an untrimmed hedge', 'you need to give her more brain' 'that's really good! Oh no, actually it's not.'  He's so funny.

I also took a photo of the model this week. It is at a slightly different angle as I stood up to take it but I thought it was about time I had a photo of a model so I can make a comparison!

Here also is my homework practise I did for a pair of eyes in profile: