Illustration Friday



Here's a scary swamp monster, drawn in Illustrator and coloured in Photoshop.

Some more blogs I like...

Lynn aka Redheaded Stepchild Blog
Lynn draws some really lovely pictures, I especially like the ones of her cats. Animals are really difficult to draw, mainly because they don't keep still!

Christine aka Mumspotting Blog
I really enjoyed having a look through Christine's blog when she joined EDM a couple of days ago. She draws in a variety of styles, and I particularly like her cartoons which are full of whimsy and a sense of fun. Very cute kids too :)

Russ bought these shoes to wear while we're on holiday- and they were half price! After my previous shoe drawing successes, I thought I'd have a go at drawing these.

After scanning the sketch at work (my scanner is definitely dead) I added the colour and shading in Photoshop.

Would you adam and eve it? My scanner's decided it likes doing prescans but won't scan anything at proper resolution anymore. I've reinstalled the drivers and even installed a different scanning program, and I get the same error. So that's why there haven't been any updates here for a while.

Here's the last one for today! This is a walnut ring box made by woodworker Stephen Boone, who is the son of one of my favourite online friends. Stephen and his wife Gwen are wonderful, and I highly recommend using Stephen for any custom woodworking projects. The box is just gorgeous, I absolutely adore it! I keep picking it up and looking at it, feeling the texture and grain of the walnut. It's already one of my most treasured possessions and I'm really looking forward to using it in our wedding.



As well as woodworking, Stephen is also a very talented artist. Have a look at the Chinese brush paintings on his website, they're really beautiful. He makes capturing the essence of a flower in just a few brush strokes look effortless.

EDM #23 and Illustration Friday: Draw your foot



I always thought I had horrible feet, my toes are a bit strange. And this foreshortened view makes my heel look huge!

Phew, lots of stuff to go on today...

Firstly, here's my EDM #58, draw a hat:



This is a sketch one of the fascinator hats that a friend of a frind made for me as payment for building a website. In real life it's a chocolate brown, and the feathers are on longer stalks- I seem to be having a bit of trouble composing things on my page (a very stange malaise for a graphic designer!) so I had to squash them in a bit.

My new Fabriano sketch pad, drawing pens and water brush arrived yesterday, I'm now good to go! I removed the pages from my first journal that I'd used and I'm going to make them into a little booklet. Russ has been inspired to keep a writing journal, so at the weekend we bought him a nice pen and he's going to use the old journal. He's a great writer, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he fills those blank pages with.

Here's another inspirational sketching blog that you should visit:
Julie Oakley Blog
Julie's blog is a treasure trove of sketches and drawings, in numerous styles. I really like the sense of depth and perspective she puts into her work. I also like her Photoshop colouring technique, which is something that I'm eager to try.

EDM Challenge 57

Here's a scan of my journal page for the EDM challenge 57. This is the first drawing that I've specifically sat down to do to meet a challenge. I picked this frame out of the twenty that decorate our lounge (that's not counting the rest of the house!) because our trip to Iceland was so special.

Big thanks to all the lovely people who have left comments on my Illustration Friday butterfly, you've not only made me blush but made me feel very welcome too, it's lovely.

Illustration Friday
Here's a butterfly I drew for an origami project, which is why it's triangular. It's a Monarch butterfly- you don't normally get them over here in the UK, but sometimes the jet stream pulls them across from America. That's an amazing journey for something so small and delicate.

I drew the outlines in Illustrator and then added the colour in Photoshop. I really enjoyed drawing the "stained glass" effect wings.

Please note- the Illustration Friday topic rolled over as I was posting my link on their site- that's what comes of time differences I suppose. Sorry if you thought this was going to be a tattoo! Now I feel really stoopid- my first go and I mess it up :(

We bought this little Kodak digital camera to take away on holiday with us. I tend to take my big old Hasselblad and shoot landscapes, and Russ moans that we don't have any "holiday snaps". So he's going to be in charge of documenting our trip to California with this little camera :)

It's drawn with a Stabilo fine marker onto bog standard drawing paper. I'm not happy with the angle of the lens, it was really difficult to properly see the angle of the oval, all the time my brain was screaming "it's round!", so it's come out a bit too flat looking. I decided to experiment with crosshatching for shading, it was quite theraputic to put all of the lines in, but I don't think I'd want to do that on a larger drawing! It was an interesting experiment anyway.

I've ordered some really nice supplies- a proper sketching journal (so that the ink doesn't run through) as well as a couple of waterproof pens and a special water brush pen to use while we're away.

The really cool thing about Danny Gregory's Everyday Matters yahoo group is that lots of people share their work there, either on blogs, Flikr on on their own site. It's exciting to see how many people love drawing and painting, as well as all sorts of other arts and crafts. I've already been inspired to look into bookbinding and to invest in some interesting tools.

Here are a couple of my favourites so far:

Kate (also known as Cathy) Johnson Website Flikr
Not only is Kate a truly wonderful artist in any number of different styles and media, she's also super friendly and helpful.

Nina Johansson Blog
I really love Nina's drawing style and composition. She also explains quite a lot about her techniques and equipment which is very helpful.

I've also just put some framed photographs from my recent exhibition up on eBay- they're only just above what it cost me to get them done, as I'm only worried about breaking even, not making a profit. Get 'em while they're hot here.

This is the first thing that I've drawn that actually looks like the object it's supposed to be :) These are my favourite pair of shoes, they're so comfortable and give my slightly dodgy feet the right support.

I drew this using my favourite pen, a Pilot mini fountain pen. Unfortunately the dog chewed it today and I'm going to have to order another from America as it's beyond repair. That's really annoying as I like working in ink. I have however ordered a couple of Kuretake drawing pens from Blots Pens. These are waterproof, so I can use my water soluable pencils to wash over my drawings for a bit of colour.

I scanned the drawing from my journal into Photoshop, and then removed the lines (why I'm drawing in a lined writing journal I'm not entirely sure). I coloured it in, I quite like the cartoony look. I might try giving it some shadows/highlights, I'm not sure.

I want to be more creative, and so I've started practicing drawing. Inspired by Danny Gregory I've started keeping a daily sketch journal. OK, it's not pretty, and some drawings don't really look like the thing I've drawn, but for some reason it doesn't matter. Really looking at something and drawing it is incredibly satisfying, and it doesn't seem to matter whether other people think it's any good. So why the blog? Well, I want to be able to share my artworks with supportive people, it's unfair to look at the other great drawing blogs without putting something out there myself! I can't promise I'll update this very often but it'll be nice to have an outlet of sorts.