It’s a little world

A small painting I did in acrylics a few years ago. It features North America and was an attempt at painting clouds. Its not as accurate as I would have liked but then I needed to possibly use smaller brushes. The cloud patterns stretch across the width of the continent and show the direction of the winds as they curl and blow and bend in them. I always think its interesting how clouds tend to cling to the coastlines, except where s major storm appears to be in the gulf of Mexico. Also the lack of cloud cover over California. I’m not sure I’ve got the colours right. I tried.

Glue and more glue

Scales

Post it notes and plastic metallic colour discs. Thought about a pattern that I could make, using arrow shaped post it notes I decided to place the pointed bits over the discs. Have a glue stick, water soluble, so I glued each individual piece of paper and plastic… It took two hours! By the time I’d done it (after accidentally dropping the discs and the glue stick on the floor) my fingers were covered in a sticky gluey mess. Thank goodness it’s soluble!

How to do dragon scales

This is a collage. I drew a black outline of discs in a fish scale pattern. Then I added one line of round plastic discs (I’d got from inside a balloon), then left a gap for the drawn line of circles, another line of discs and then the drawn ones, over and over till the page was full. Once I’d glued the discs in place I thought about how to fill the gaps. I decided to spray green ink over the page, which I dabbed off the plastic metallic coloured discs to leave clean and dry. I added black around the discs for shading, but it was a bit wishy washy. What next? I used silver felt pen on the green areas but it was boring so I got out all my old nail varnishes and dabbed them on the paper areas too. I used sparkly glitter nail varnish to finish it off. This is one of several experiments. I’m quite pleased with it. It certainly shimmers.

Wanting the sea…

I need the seaside, it’s been a couple of months since we went and I really miss it. I want to see the big blue sky. The blue or grey waves. Stormy, misty or sunny. I don’t care.

I like being beside the sea like it says in the old song, I’m not really bothered about being on it. I don’t like the motion of the ocean.. Up and down, around and down. Waves, breaking over the boat.

Yes, I need to go on a trip along the coast, taking in the scenery. Looking at the boats, feeling the breeze.

Cat carving

I know there are better carvings, but I really enjoyed creating this. We didn’t have posh carving tools, just a few knives. I’ve seen pumpkins where just the outer rind is carved away so you get a shallow relief effect. I like it but I guess you would have to use clay modelling tools?

Apparently wild animals can eat the remains of the pumpkin once its been use for decoration. I don’t think hedgehogs like them though? I’m not sure feild mice would like one carved like a cat? Anyway it was fun to do. And it works as a ginger cat, X

Draw a shape…

I’m doing a series of drawings over a week based on prompts. The problem is the prompts are included in short videos and for some reason my phone is playing the audio at 3 or 4 times normal speed!

Anyway today’s prompt was to choose one verb from a long list of them. Then draw a pattern over and over again to represent that verb. I chose ‘to support’. With the problem I’ve been having with my drawing hand, I decided to draw hands over and over again. In a ‘supporting’ bridge sort of position. Then I decided it needed a thing to support. I thought of all my friends and how they support me. I decided to add tears, but not to wipe the tears away with a hand, I thought that would be too twee.

Other handed

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was using your other hand to draw. As I have injured my right hand I was happy to try and draw with my left hand

This is one of our cats. Drawn left handed. I could manage the outlinesbut the shading is a bit rough and ready. I used a dark blue ink brush to go over the black shading. I have some nice metallic pens which are useful to create related colours

More ‘scales’

More experiments for my dragon project. Converting one of the patterns to black and white gives me an idea of how it would look if I had not got full colour options. I can still create complexity and light and shade even in different greys. Duplicating and mirroring are used again to add intricate patterns. I shall save these for possible use.