Poppy

I just love them, their colour, brilliance, shape, papery petals. Colourful flowers that are imbued with sorrow because they were used to commemorate wars. They sprang up in the fields of flanders after the battles there. And yet to me they don’t signify fighting or fears, but memories of summers long gone, my favourite colour and how tiny seeds can create such magnificent flowers.

Playing a with Peony flower.

Paeony or Peony? How do you spell it. I changed this photos texture in Photodirector, then changed its hue and saturation and finally used the curve tool to adjust the lightness and shadows. I feel it has a look of embroidered silk or satin. The petals are more defined than the original white flower. I like the yellow and blue greens on the leaves. If this was the true colours I would say that it was an ill plant. But as this is an edit of the original I think it gives an interesting effect.

drawing of a profile

drawing with an ink roller

This was one of the portraits I did in a student led portrait group at college during the last few months.

The face was mostly drawn with one of those ink rollers you can use to blank out your address on letters so that you can throw them away without anyone seeing your details and stealing your data. Its quite hard to use because you have to sort of turn and twist your hand and press firmly to sketch curves. AfterId done that I added colour using pastels and the thick black lines were done with black calligraphy pen (most of these have run out so I need some more).

I quite like the strong feel to this. I am trying to find my illustrational voice. I have been told to look for illustrators that my work resembles, but I think mine is different? Is this a good or bad thing? I’m definitley developing my analogue skills. Digital work is more difficult for me.