Alexander Sleeping & Eating (Not at the same time)

I have been making attempts to get over my fear of recording my son in ink. I like drawing his long curly eyelashes. This mainly happens when he is sleeping although that does involve me trying to draw while holding the old Moleskine at some strange angles. He's been so congested lately with the croup virus that he breathes through his mouth while he sleeps and I could feel his little hot breath right over my heart. I managed to capture him eating his favourite food - broccoli. The look in his eye here is exactly the look he gives me.

Croup

Here are the latest pages, a collection I call 'Croup'. The clue is in the title as to why I haven't done much in the way of art/posting for a while!

In the Pines, In the Pines

We've been away on holiday for the week at Center Parcs (courtesy of Grandma, thank you, Grandma) - a week of pretending to be in another country without actually leaving the country.  I was completely in love with the 'cabin' we stayed in. Not a cabin at all but to my mind the perfect house, open plan living area, lots of glass i.e. glass walls, totally minimal i.e. babyproof! Alexander loved the expanse of floor and lack of doorways allowing him to go crazy in his walker car and to crawl all over the place. It is right in the middle of a forest so I was able to delude myself that I was back in Austria...until you get inside the 'Plaza' at which point you can delude yourself that you are somewhere tropical, although it is a bit of a shock to the system if you accidentally leave the safety of the dome in your wet swimming costume and shorts (cue: me).

Anyway, Alexander had some really good snoozes I think as the result of all that time in the 'lazy river' and I was able to take advantage of the big wall of glass and draw nature in January without getting cold.

 

I really dislike that I used green for the background but I didn't have anything else and leaving it white looked odd too

Surely the perfect home for an artist. Wall of glass!

Alexander driving his car on the patio

I really like how the colour came through the back of the page

Close Up

Colour block leaves - not finished as Alexander woke up!

Real palm, artificial sunshine

Equipment: A6 Moleskine, Faber Castell Pitt Pen 'S', Promakers 'Vanilla', 'Cool Grey 1', 'Moss' and 'Lime Green', Cheapo retractable pencil.

Tealy, Tealy Badgers

 

I sketched this about a month ago after encountering one of the Anti-Cull demonstrations in the city. The Government have, despite much petitioning and support from famous names including Brian May of Queen, introduced a badger cull. Here is my drawing of badgers. Look at them. I'm sure there are other creatures doing far more damage to this country/World than badgers that aren't getting culled for it. Just sayin' *cough*humans*cough*corporations*cough*politicians*.

Equipment: A6 Moleskine sketchbook, Cheapo Papermate pencil, Promarker in 'Marine'.

Sketching something in the style of free-motion in absence of time to actually do free-motion!

 

Yes, I'm still alive. Not a lot of sketching going on lately and even less so with the atrocious sleeping habits of a 6 month old spending the holidays at his Grandma's. I'd heard this can happen to babies when they are away from home but it really is quite the test! 'Baby's First Christmas' is mostly trying to keep him from crawling into an open fire/pull the guard down, a lot of screaming at alien cot/highchair, and being woken every hour throughout the night. 

I was bought a sewing machine for Christmas as I've had a bee in my bonnet about wanting to do free-motion sewing i.e. drawing with a sewing machine. But I am pretty sure I'm not even going to have time to take it out of the box for 5 years until Alexander starts school - yeah, those pre-birth notions about home-schooling are dwindling faster than you can say 'mummy's just going to put you down here while she...' 'Waaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh'. Fortunately I also got something else I've wanted for a very long time, a sketchbook with squarey-paper. It's actually a notebook but it is fine for using with the V Pen I also got. So, I've managed to keep Alexander happy playing with my phone long enough to draw 'in the style of free-motion'. I don't get to do my nails these days and would never usually put glitter on my nails but, being at Grandma's I have fallen under her influence and bought this Barry M glitter varnish which I put over Rimmel teal varnish while Grandma held onto Alexander. 

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a real Christmas miracle...Alexander's Daddy finally came to see him! I'm actually wondering now if it was all in my imagination. Also, we have sold our flat! It went on the market on a Wednesday and was sold for the full asking price by the Friday. So the new year should see some big changes for us. I am sure I won't blog again before 2013 is out so I hope all a y'all wherever you are end 2013 with good thoughts of the past year and lots to look forward to for 2014.

Dark and moody teal vase composition (or not)

Last night as I was trying to get myself and Alexander to sleep, I got a picture in my head for an acrylic painting.  Actually, it was more a 'colour composition'. I bought my mum this teal vase for her birthday last week and I really love this teal colour lately.  The vision was of it in amongst one of those old fashioned style still life paintings with a dark and moody background and a voluptuous soft pink peony spilling from it.  Whether I'll ever actually paint it is another matter. Alexander and I have a long way to go I think before I'll be able to get the acrylics out and paint a picture without Alexander deciding he wants 'pick up' and me abandoning the acrylics to dry up on the palette and the tubes with their lids off for a week.  But this 'composition that never was' situation has been happening quite often lately so, as it was still in my head this morning and Alexander was having an extended snooze, I got my sketchbook and tried to bring the idea into the world just in case...

But as Alexander kept sleeping, and as I actually had some Promarkers in the right colours, the quick composition sketch became quite involved! Had I set out to make a proper job of this I would of course have dealt properly with the stem in the water which I have completely forgotten to 'refract'. This is the problem with me...I don't learn...it wasn't all that long ago I spent ages drawing that purple straw in the glass of fizzy water where the straw was all zig-zaggy from the refraction. But I find when I draw out of my head rather than observationally, all I know to be true just disappears. I could draw a thousand relatively cat-like cats from real life but then draw one from my imagination and it look like a ball with sticks hanging out!

Equipment: Berol Italic pen (I stole the idea to use a pen like this from the fabulous Jodi Wiley (thank you for the inspiration, Jodi), A5 Hahnemuhle sketchbook, Promarkers.

IF Tail

Pretty quickly done Illustration Friday entry for this weeks prompt 'Tail'. Made quite a mess of drawing the seat!