New paintings and regular art updates.
My Cat is black and white so when he comes in from the rain he often looks like an otter. He’s like that tonight but it’s too dark to get a decent photo so here’s a little illustration I did of a cat walking through the rain… He looks very fed up!
I saw this again today and I really do like it. I might buy some scraper board to do my own creations. Then if I was to photograph the I could make original artwork to turn into cards and prints. I just wish I had more energy to do it.
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I must have been about five when I realised I wanted to do art. I would make patterns on graph paper, draw and doodle and sketch. I know my mother started to collect some of my drawings. As I got older I put them on my walls. I even strung them across my bedroom held on by pegs because I didn’t have enough wall space.
When I was in my teens one of my paintings was sent to our twin town in Germany to be exhibited. My headmistress was given a drawing I did of my fellow pupils as a leaving present and I knew I wanted to be an artist as I told my careers teacher, not a nurse as she tried to persuade me. On to Art school to do a degree, and even 40 years later an MA in illustration. Now. I’m struggling. But iooking at different methods and skills. I’m not giving up!
It’s hard to get a good photo when the surface of the underlying scraped board is so reflective. I’ve been playing with scraper board art, in the 1st and 2nd pictures the holographic surface changed colour due to the angle of the light hitting it. The image is based on a photo of my cat. The 3rd and 4th are a copper colour, the horse was made up from my imagination. The underlying board was metallic not holographic but still changed colour based on the angle of incidence of the light.
Comes to something when you are so tired after “another sleepless night”, that you end up doodling about it. At almost 6am.
I used my Artrage app to do it and the various brushes to get different looks. I didn’t blur anything together so it looks quite graphic/illustrative. I’m please the blue stands out against the flood filled black.
Why am I awake? Aches, tremors, too hot or cold, also hungry as I missed a few meals with a stomach bug. Urgh.
What sacrifices have you made in life?
I was once offered a job out of this area. The problem was that it would mean moving away from my then boyfriend, later hubby. It was a reasonably decent job, well paid, illustrating the canals in the West Midlands of England. I would be part of a project to map, illustrate and record details of the massive canal network in the area. I really wanted that job… But it was too much of an upheaval. My boyfriend would not be able to come with me and I was scared to lose him. So I sacrificed the opportunity, and truly, I think it was the right decision for me. X.
This poster is in our opticians waiting room. His grandfather is the Hanwell on the poster. It was done in the 1930’s I think by an illustrator called Wilfrid Sheard who was a private in the second world war and died in 1967. You can find his details on Google.
The picture is a bit disconcerting. The man sits on the road with missing lower legs, his boots strewn across the road. He’s clearly been hit by a bus. His glasses are broken. The sign says “Never Mind – HANWELL will replace them in an hour or two!”
List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.
Basically I would work for free if money wasn’t an object. I’m not bothered about sales, it’s the joy of getting my hands on paint, paper, canvas or pen and ink.
If I wasn’t creating art I would join a choir that travelled round and just did spontaneous performances of cool songs. Simply to make people feel better. I would do it without pay, just for the pleasure of entertaining people.
All I would need is enough money for food and shelter. Certainly I would try and share with other artists if money were no object. I would set up a small gallery near the coast and talk to people who visited it, but not as a salesperson, but to discuss art and creativity. I don’t enjoy selling, I’m an artist, not a seller. X
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was Green. Forgive me, but I do like drawing weird green men ideas. This has been drawn in the Sketchbook app on my phone. Then I added textures in photodirector. It’s a bit of a monster! I’d say this is more of an illustration than a pure sketch.
A simple digital drawing using flood fill to fill in a sketch, then a line drawn over it to delineate the face and duplicated and flipped to create a collaged image. I like the freedom of digital abstraction.
Mallaband-Brown