Sunday Sketchblog #63

On Tuesday I found time to pop along to this month's Art Macabre drawing salon at Cass Art Islington. The theme was A Midsummer Night's Scream...

Either I mistake your shape and making quite;

Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite

Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are not you he

That frights the maidens of the villagery;

Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern

And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;

And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;

Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,

You do their work, and they shall have good luck:

Are not you he?

Final Nixie

The third and final nixie, having a bit of a sit down after being defeated by the slippery glass mountain.

Radio 4 informed me this morning that Philip Pullman has produced a book retelling the Grimms' fairy tales, and Amazon tells me that one of them is called 'The Nixie of the Millpond'. I might have to go and investigate...

Another Nixie

I've abandoned Illustration Friday for one week only as I got a bit focused on the Nixie from last week and decided to do a couple more illustrations for other parts of the story. Cunningly, this will also count as one of my projects for the course I'm currently doing.

So, here's that Nixie again, about to encounter the brush mountain.

Mundane Reportage

This is me trying my hand at 'reportage' style sketching - quick drawings of real things and places. Unfortunately there's nothing news worthy going on outside and heading out sleuthing isn't really an option for me at the moment, so it's just reportage of everyday stuff. Does that count?

Green Park Tube

Fruit Seller on Piccadilly

Texture and Transport

I can't decide whether I like this or not... It was an exercise in using different textures and colours and then combining them in Photoshop, to create an image to illustrate a newspaper article. I keep thinking it looks too 'messy' but then, when I tidy it up, it loses some of the sinister quality that I do like about it. Conundrum

The article's about women feeling unsafe using public transport in London. However, if you read it carefully (although you can't in the image below - the text is jumbled up!) there's no actual increase in levels of crime or danger, just that people feel more at risk (quite a lot of men, as well...) Anyway, I wanted the illustration to reflect that - to feel threatening and scary, but without there being actual murderers and rapists lurking round every corner.

Hand-made Colour

This week I've been learning about using hand-made colour, digitally. Rather than drawing something by hand, scanning it in and colouring it on the 'puter, you can also create the colour and texture by hand. Hopefully, you end up with images that seem less 'flat' and which still feel like they were made by a human.

As I was working on a make-up themed image last week, I played around with smearing various make-up products on to a piece of paper and using the results to colour my line drawing.

I think my favourite bit is the mascara - I love the contrast between the shape of the drawing and the textured pattern from the brush.

Photoshop Practice

Continuing to play with line drawings and Photoshop... mostly making a big mess, but I don't think I've been this excited about learning new skills since I figured out steering and changing gear at the same time!

And using a template 'magazine page'.

New term...

As is traditional for autumn, I've just started learning something new. For the next month or so, I'm going to be finding out about mixing together handmade and digital techniques and (hopefully) getting to the bottom of the mysterious (to me) Photoshop.

To start with, we were just playing with black and white line drawings - working out how to put different sketches together, overlapping them or not, that sort of thing. I've been practising with some quick sketches, and am thrilled to discover I can remember everything so far!

Catching up...

Having a sort out of some of my mess, I've just realised I never got round to posting the last illustration from my art class.

The brief was to create a narrative in five images but, as we were off on our transatlantic adventure whilst everyone else was working on it, I interpreted it quite loosely. Rather than telling a story, I looked for a common theme in my holiday sketches and photos and created something based on that...

More bits of the Barbican

I've finally managed to finish my Barbican illustration, pulling together all the sketches from our field trip.

I originally planned for it to be black and white, with just the people in colour, but I think I like this coloured version better. The black and white seemed a little bit too subdued for a building as interesting as the Barbican.

Sometimes...

I mentioned our sometimes it's good to lie project a while back in a Sunday Sketchblog, and here's my finished image. 

I love how far it's developed from the original sketches! I'm also pleased with how the ink work has turned out as it's a new medium for me and I've found it quite fiddly.

Bits of the Barbican

Yesterday's art class involved a field trip to the Barbican. Rather than sitting and drawing the whole thing (or as much of it as we could see) we had to do lots of quick drawings, focusing on interesting details and how people were using the building.

I'm quite surprised to discover that I seem to prefer drawing with a pen over a pencil at the moment. I was quite terrified of it to start with - you can't rub anything out - but I seem to end up with sketches I like a lot more.

Sunday Sketchblog #11

This week's sketch is from my initial doodle-ideas for our first project on my illustration course.


We were given the starting point 'sometimes it's good to lie', and I was thinking about the devil being referred to as the prince of lies* and the phrase 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'. Are those good intentions sometimes the lies we tell ourselves?

I think my devil was also inspired a bit by the Master in Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita? It certainly looks a bit how I imagined him. (Amazing book, and equally impressive adaptation currently on at the Barbican if you can beg/steal/borrow a ticket.)


Go and see if Emma's been sketching this week, and don't forget about the Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt! I'll be posting my pictures on Monday and doing a round up of my favourites later in the week.


*Also a Buffy character, I've just remembered...

'What I Did' Wednesday

I think Wednesday's are going to become 'what I did last night in art class' days around here...


More portraits! I'm very glad I made some attempts at getting over my fear of drawing faces before I started this course or I think my comfort zone would be a dot to me about now.


Yesterday we did more very quick portraits of each other, each one with a specific style or way of drawing: with your left hand, with your eyes closed (yes, that's the one that looks a bit Picasso), holding your pen like a dagger, in thirty seconds, just using straight lines, or dots, not taking your pen off the paper, holding the very end of your pen, etc.

This was a really interesting exercise, especially as we were using felt-tip pens and working so quickly there was no option for rubbing out or reviewing what you'd done. It made me focus on making sure each mark needed to be there and really reminded me that less is often more.