Painting from college

Posted on December 31, 2021 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged Art, boyfriend, College, Fine Art, Hubby, Life, Memory, Oil on canvas, Painting, Portrait, SnowLeave a comment

This is a painting I did when I was about twenty. I was at college doing my fine art degree and I had recently met my then boyfriend (now hubby). This was in my small studio at college. The painting has been on the wall for several years. I painted him sitting on a chair with his feet up. He hasn’t changed too much.

Outside there was snow lying on the hills above the city. You could just see the roofs of the college across the road. The rooms we worked in were reasonably light. I remember the studios upstairs had parquet flooring. It was a different world from what I came from. I’m glad I went.

Dragons get everywhere

Posted on December 30, 2021December 30, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Design, Digital drawing, Dragon, Drawing, Fun, Illustration, Sketchers2 Comments

Oh I do like creating a dragon now and then. I decided to rotate my sky drawing and then add a bit of symmetrical drawing over the top. I think the result is quite cute.

It’s getting towards the end of the day, week, year and I’m looking at some of my older stuff. I might have to delete some of the earlier work. Memory on computers and phones seems to run out faster than humans!

dragon again

Posted on December 8, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged College, Design, Dragon, final major project, high contrast, Idea generation, Learning, Life, lino cut, PhotoshopLeave a comment

I’m still working towards my final major project at college. The project is a picture book with patterned pages on one side of the two page spreads and possibly strongly contrasting images like this one on the other side. Im thinking of trying out linocutting as a method of producing them ( could get very messy) or perhaps a photoshop technique I’ve never used before? All part of ideas generation…Probably both to show that I’m trying to widen my skills. I also need to resolve where the text will sit…. I might even get it published. I think time is not dra-gon-ing on! Its going too quick!

Making a Zine

Posted on November 30, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged 64 pages, Art, College, Design, Editing, Fun, Learning, Life, Photos, Sketching, zineLeave a comment

Sixty four pages (32 images, 32 text) later. More glue and parcel tape than I can cope with. The parcel tape is white and has fragile written on it in big red letters.

I started by taping 32 a6 cards together with parcel tape, then gluing down an image and plain paper alternating with each other. My measurements were a bit off so some prints overlapped each other. The result works but is messy. I wrote on the blank sheets vaguely telling a story but it needs doing properly.

We will see what happens.

Shiny

Posted on November 17, 2021December 13, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Colour, Design, Dragon, Inks, Life, Metallic, Pattern, ScalesLeave a comment

1.23am on Wednesday morning. I’m messing about with filters to create a scaly pattern. The inks were metallic and I tried to enhance the shinyness of it. I mirrored the image four times. Yet another pattern for my current college project. One problem I face was that all the colours are quite similar and of a medium tone, it was difficult to distinguish between dark and light areas.

How to do dragon scales

Posted on November 14, 2021November 14, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Balloon, College, Design, Dragon, Dragon scales, Plastic discs, Project, shimmering, Sketching2 Comments

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.

Not slept so drew

Posted on October 23, 2021October 23, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Design, Dragon, Drawing, Exciting, Fun, Imagination, Life, Scales, SketchingLeave a comment

Scales again, I was playing with combinations of colour and black and white. I’m building a large collection of them. Maybe this is enough? Next step is to hang them on my character. Discussing the idea with others I might do a dragon that changes throughout the book. Not because I can’t draw it from different angles, but because it might need to change depending on its circumstances….. Hmmm, I keep seeing new directions!

Found, a dragon eye

Posted on October 22, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Dragon, dragon eye, Fun, gaze, miniature, Mythology, Painting, ScalesLeave a comment

I found this in my previous images on WordPress. It’s a tiny picture of a dragons eye that I painted a couple of years ago. Since I’m researching dragons for college and it seems to be something I’ve looked at over several years. This was a miniature piece about 1 1/2 by 2 inches. I was going to do some more but got sidetracked into doing other paintings. Like many of my mythological paintings it’s entirely imagined.

up late/early?

Posted on October 18, 2021October 18, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged childrens book, College, Digital sketch, Dragon, Drawing, Fun, Illustration, Luck, Meeting, Project, WritingLeave a comment

I’m up messing about on my computer, I want to work out characters for a childrens story I hope to write and illustrate for my college project. I am not sharing what it will be called or the scenario. And given my bad grammar here I dont even know if I will be able to do it. But the saying goes that we all have at least one book in us. Mine might be a bit musty and old fashioned! I think I need dragging into the 21st century. I also want to find some watercolour sketches I painted years ago to illustrate this (its a very old project) wish me luck.

Dragon scales

Posted on October 15, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Designs, Dragon scales, Drawing, Duplicated, Experiment, Fun, Life, Nail polish, Sketching, Texture2 Comments

Experimenting again with dragon ideas. This one is made up of a drawing coloured in with different nail varnishes and then duplicated and mirrored after adding texture digitally. The blurred section had the words ‘dragon scales’ written on it but I decided to blur that out.

Each of these experiments will be added to a portfolio of images that will go towards my final major project for college.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: College