New paintings and regular art updates.
I did this drawing on the ArtRage app. I wanted to create something a bit different, fluid, expressive. Most of my pictures are of black and white cats, but this reminds me of a swirling ice-cream, perhaps ginger and vanilla, or caramel and white salt.
Signature.. sometimes I use my full name, but for years I’ve also called myself cmb, which I like because it also stands for cosmic microwave background..but that’s another story.
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I wanted to send a friend a card… 
I found a tin with a slight dent in the rim so I could push a candle holder into it. Then I added a tiny birthday cake candle and lit it and took the photo.
Added the text later in a sketch app.
I sent this to my friend with her name edited onto it. What is it they say ‘necessity is the mother of invention ‘?
I shone a bright torch on our disco ball (yes I’ve got one) took a photo, then another one with the torch on a lower power. Duplicated the photos, and ended up with a couple of interesting pictures that are quite abstract…..
Playing with shapes and light is fun.
Experimental things teach you
How to make new things.
If you don’t try,
You never learn….
I was playing with a similar face to the previous one, and wanted a change of style and mark making. More patterned, lines, dots and dashes. Trying to get a feeling of age. The grey areas were done by wetting a brush and running it over the papers surface. Spreading the black ink gently into the shadows.
Age seemed an appropriate title.
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I drew this last night. I interpreted my wire fairy as a real one (with embellishments). I wanted to get the picture to look like one of those adult colouring books. I drew the outlines first with a thin black pen, then I shaded it in with spectrum noir coloured metallic pencil crayons. I finally outlined the fairy with a slightly thicker and darker black ink pen. Drawn in a Windsor and Newton heavy weight case bound sketchbook. A5 size.
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“Remember Felix?” she said.
“Yes, he was a good cat”, he said.
They sat quietly and remembered their adventurous cat.
“Remember that Saturday, when he came through the cat flap with a sirloin steak?” he asked.
“yes” she replied “I had to take it off him!”
“And a week later he came in with half a chicken?” “yes, I think it was from the neighbours?, I couldn’t tell them, and I think they blamed their own cat!”
“I still miss him, he was cheeky”.
They looked at each other.
“I bet he’s in heaven”, he said.
“You don’t believe in that stuff do you?” she said.
“bet he wangled his way in, and there’s a big ginger cat up their sporting a pair of wings?”
“maybe” she smiled.
That was today’s USK challenge, draw something that adds flavour. Trouble was I’m getting low on tasty stocks, the strongest thing in the cupboard was English Mustard.
There was vinegar, soup, custard powder, a hot drink mix, pilchards, sardines and tuna in there together with the mustard. I think there were probably some lentils in there too.
Funny what you realise you’ve got. It should keep us going for a few more days.
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I just thought I would show you a close-up of the apple I drew today, so you can see the effect of layering up pencil crayon and permanent marker, black ink pen, and charcoal pencil. I enjoyed using fine lines to define the shadows. I was going to leave a patch if white paper as a highlight on the apple, but when I looked at it, it was to white. So I used orange, red and pink permanent markers to try and make the apple stand out. Using different colours and textures is really exciting, it makes the image less flat. But I’m not trying to make it 3d either.
I might be submitting some little black and red drawings to a group exhibition. It’s not something I’ve done before. The work is meant to be two inches square with it being in ink and on white paper.
After drawing the two images on the left side of the paper, I realised there was not enough white and I had used too dark a red in the first one.
I tried to draw the two patterns again, but they didn’t come out as well as I’m still quite tired from staying up too late last night. What do you think? Are they interesting enough?
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Ten years ago or so I drew this at sketchfu. It’s an astronomer and a sort of face. I wonder sometimes where I get my ideas from. I enjoy astronomy programmes but I guess this started out as a doodle and then I embellished it. This was what I was talking about when I said about being experimental in a previous post, this isn’t controlled. I didn’t have to use ellipses or straight lines. I was not constrained by any rules.
I have a deviant art account and I used to draw in photoshop and post the results there. I might go back to doing that. Using a phone is simple, but it’s limited.
I have drawn so much in my life. I want to continue….
Mallaband-Brown