Faded bloom...another work in progress

Painted tulips

So here's the "finished" painting of the tulips. The end result doesn't feel quite right to me, but I'm not sure why and I don't know what to do to fix it. But I'll let it be for now and maybe one day it will come to me. Any constructive criticism is welcomed!

Having a go at painting - work in progress

After not having used my acrylics since painting a picture for my friend Vicky in October last year, I was inspired to try again. So I bought myself some more flowers and pulled my easel out of its dusty box and just started. This needs work until it's "done", but here are the first stages. I'm also going to be starting a painting course soon, done by correspondence with OCA again, the same people I did my drawing course with. The thought of learning to paint scares me, but it's all the more challenging and thrilling for it. I just have to focus on how much I'll have learned by the time I finish the course, and remember how far I've come since I started drawing just 18 months ago. Anyway, I'll be blogging about my journey here.

Drawing dried flowers

Pastel study for a portrait

Self-portraits

The top two are blind contour, the second has colour added later courtesy of oil pastels.

mandala time again...

Getting to know Lotty & Jakey

So, Lotty & Jakey joined our household a few days ago and I got to know them a bit better today. Jakey is easier to draw as he will stay still in one position for a while, and doesn't mind being watched. Lotty on the other hand will either be hiding or, if you're looking at her, she'll come to you for a cuddle and a stroke, so not so easy to draw.

Above are blind contour drawings of Jakey - the first one is in ink with watercolour added later, of him sitting on my computer table as I worked, the second is a blind contour drawing in pencil as he comandeered my chair for his nap - and Lotty (blind contour in pencil, drawn as she was sitting in my lap, the watercolour was added later), and a normal sketch of Jakey in pencil.

To read more about them and to see photos of what they actually look like, go here.

Wired

Billy hated it when his wife wired him up to her home-made lie detector. It always ruined his hair.

Hide for IF

Sometimes, he liked to hide his kisses amongst the folds of petals...

(I know, I know, this is very sappy. I apologise, I got carried away. If it's too much for you then please look away now.)

Ink & watercolour on textured paper

blind contour amenomes

That's the flower, not the sea creature.

Yesterday, I bought myself this bunch of flowers to cheer myself up after the expected arrival of Lotty & Jakey didn't happen as planned. We are hoping it is still going to happen, but who knows when!

Anyway, they're very pretty and I love drawing flowers so I decided to have a go at drawing them blind and then colouring them in with watercolour afterwards. I quite like how they turned out, what do you think?

my week in mandalas

Drawing Paul

Blind Contour 1

Blind Contour 2

Completely blind (drawn while blind-folded, from memory)

Single line drawing

Drawn "normally"

Paul and I decided to have a go drawing each other. These are my drawings of him. My favourite is the one I drew completely blind. Which one do you like best?

Experimenting with drawing

I spent yesterday afternoon drawing with a couple of friends. We drew each other in a variety of ways, blind contour, single line, and even a combination of the two.

These are drawings I did of my friend Vicky. The top one is a blind contour drawing (drawing without looking at the page) and the second one is a single line drawing (drawing without taking your pen off the page). The energy of the drawings is very different. I personally prefer the freedom and looseness and expressiveness of the blind contour one.

For more drawings from the day, go here.

More "experimental" drawings

Here are yesterday afternoon's "experimental" drawings that I did of my friend Mad. The first three were done in ink. The first was drawn in a single line without taking the pen off the page, the second was drawn blind contour (without looking at the page), the third was drawn both without looking at the page and drawn in a single line, and the fourth was done in willow charcoal with my left hand (the hand I don't usually draw or write with).


































It was great fun experiementing with all these different ways of drawing and I was surprised to learn that I enjoyed the blind contour drawing the most, I liked the freedom of doing it, the excitement of not knowing how it was going to turn out, and I also liked the end result of the blind contour drawing the most.

For more drawings from the day, go here.

More mandalas from the last few days

To see my first post about mandalas, go here.

Communication, or "It's not everyday that a hip panda speaks to you."

Telepathy has always been up there as one of my favourite forms of communication. Sadly, it is a lost art in our modern society overly taken up with texting in dismembered and misspelt words. So you can imagine my joy when I was wandering round the ruins of Monte Alban and heard this little fella speak to me!

Now, it's about time that I let you in on a little known fact - something that Paul and I discovered on our trip to Mexico. After we'd done a lot of walking and were weary and aching, we simultaneously said to each other that our hips were hurting (stay with me...). That was when we found out about hip pandas.

Apparently, by our simultaneous utterance of those words in a place endowed with magical powers, we had inadvertently invoked the ancient gift bestowed upon weary travellers by a band of mostly secret hip pandas.

These are baby pandas who have been rescued from a life of orphan hardship who wish for the opportunity to travel combined with warm human companionship. When you invoke the spell, the hip pandas appear and magically hold your hips to prevent you from feeling the ache of many hours on your feet. In return, they ask only that they be treated with kindness and be taken along on exciting adventures around the world. For many of them, this beats a one-way trip to the zoo.

We were told that hip pandas don't appear to just anybody, but were given no further explanation, so we realised just how lucky we were that they appeared for us. Happily, they were keen to come back to London with us and rest till our next adventures (North Wales in April), and one of their merry band kindly agreed to pose for me for this week's Illustration Friday. So here he is!

Next time you're hiking somewhere really magical, just try invoking the spell. You never know what might happen...