Flowers from a friend

Posted on September 26, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Flower press, Flowers, Freesias, From friends, Illustration, Photo, Plants, Pressed flowers, Roses2 Comments

In exchange for some pears my friend gave me some flowers. I thought how kind, I wasn’t expecting anything back. The roses are a mellow red colour, and there are pale purple Fushias and white roses and some different white flowers.

Apparently the Victorians used to give different meanings to different plants. For instance Forget-me-nots. I think also Pansies and Lily of the Valley. I don’t know the meanings, but I know people used to press flowers within the pages of heavy books. Or even flower presses. The idea was to squash the flower so it became dried and flattened. If the person pressing it was artistic it could be used in artwork, some of them would be used for illustration purposes. I’m not sure how they would have coped with larger flowers like multi petal led or stemmed flowers. I guess they would have needed more steady pressure? Sorry, a lot of this is speculation. My mind wanders across different thoughts….

How do I sync my phone, tablet and PC?

Posted on September 21, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, creating a web site, Design, diital sketch, Fun, Humour, Illustration, Learning, new web page?Leave a comment

I have had a thing from Microsoft saying I can sync my information ( My gallery on my PC, Tablet and phone are all different) or I could move stuff to the cloud? But I really don’t feel safe doing it. What if there was a solar flare that wiped everything? (It could happen) we think our digital information is safe, but who knows? The earths magnetic poles might flip, or I might drop the phone in the sea? so many worries. Last night I was wondering what would happen when I die? Will I be a digital ghost? A friend died last year and yet I had a reminder of her birthday last month. The grim reaper can be cheated digitally!

I’m in the middle of preparing for another 12 week semester on my college course. Life will be getting complicated again. I need to set up a website just for illustrations and artworks, probably a separate page here. Or perhaps on Redbubble or Square Space? any recommendations….

Possible exhibition

Posted on September 19, 2020 Posted in Fine Art, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Excited, Fine Art, Illustration, Limited time, llife, New art, New paintings, Painting2 Comments

I might be having an exhibition in October. There is a slot free at a gallery where I have exhibited before. What I need to do is produce some new works. It might be based on my Urban sketches, or something totally new and colourful. I will have to be careful though as I start my next semester on my college course on Monday, so I will have to try and fit everything in to a limited timescale. Got to have a discussion.

Passed! Phew!

Posted on September 14, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blogging, College, Illustration, Learning, Life, Nerves, Pass marks, Shaking4 Comments

I was so tense when I tried to find my marks for my college course that I was shaking like a leaf! I had tried to stay calm, but I’ve also been trying to do other things too. I’m sure my blood pressure is up!

I finally found I had passed but couldn’t see the marks. Now I’ve found them and it’s OK. But I need to find the feedback to see what I’ve got right and got wrong. This is the worst bit, I hope it’s constructive and that I will be able to improve my scores next time.

Eek!

Illustration books

Posted on August 9, 2020August 9, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Books, College, Creative, Design, Drawing, Illustration, Learning, Semiotics?, SketchingLeave a comment

I ordered three books through a well known delivery system and they have all arrived safely. Now I have to read them. They are about designers, creatives and illustrators. There is a look into unpublished sketchbooks, an introduction to semiotics and another one about illustration. (OK so I forgot what the third one I ordered was and the text is to small to read off this photo). I shall be reading them tomorrow.

Birds in the garden

Posted on August 8, 2020August 8, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 'i' weekend guide, Animals, Art, Avian, Beauty, Birds, Environment, Flight, Garden, Illustration, Life, Nature, NestingLeave a comment

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We had a lovely chart in the ‘i’ paper with ots of bird a you can expect to see in your garden. Of the thirty or so species illustrated, I think we get about half visiting our garden. They are Blackbirds, Blue tits, Robins, Song Thrushes, Great tits, Coal tits, a Jay, House sparrows, Woodpigeon, Collared doves, Feral pigeons, Wrens and Magpies. We probably have other species but sometimes it’s hard to identify them. Hubby told me he saw a Nightjar a couple of weeks ago but there has been no sign of it since. The best thing is seeing chick’s being raised. Baby Wrens and Robins, we also have nesting Blue tits and Blackbirds. It means we don’t cut the hedge till late in the year. But I’d rather have a scruffy hedge and happy birds.

Portfolio submitted

Posted on August 5, 2020August 5, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Drawing, Illustration, PDF, Pictures, Portfolio, Submitted, Word documentLeave a comment

It’s taken me three or four days to put my college portfolio together. Lots of images in a word document. I had 51 pages in the end. I presented it as a landscape document. Word is a pain. Every time I tried to fit images to a page it jumped. So that meant I had to delete lines and insert lines. I tried putting numbers to pages, but because it was automatically numbering pages my document started with number 11! I had to work out how to delete 1.

Then I decided to put frames round each image, but the one I chose overlapped the edges of some of the drawings so I had to choose something with a slimmer frame.

Then I had to convert it to a PDF. When I looked all the images were too small. I had to resize most of them. So frustrating….

I hope I learn to do things better. I need advice in using Word, and everything else.

Watering can

Posted on August 4, 2020 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #uskstoke, #uskstoke challenge, Art, ArtRage app, Design, Drawing, Illustration, metallic effect, Sketching, watering canLeave a comment

Todays Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge was ‘metallic.

I decided to draw our zinc watering can that hubby has kindly left in the middle of the living room floor after watering the plants infant of our house.

I decided to draw in my Artrage app as I don’t use it often enough. Its the pro version so you have lots of tools, including pastel, pen, brush, a roller, and lots more. It took a while to get used to it. Because it has metallic colours it meant I could get some interesting effects on the can, and there are also settings so i gave the background surface a canvas look.

creating a portfolio in word

Posted on August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Confused, Design, file size, Help, Illustration, Images, Learning, Portfolio, Technology, word 10, WorkLeave a comment

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I’m trying to create a portfolio of all my images I’ve made so far on my illustration course. I have managed to add them to a Word document, but I need to know what the file size is and as I’m not up to speed with Word 10 I’m not sure where to look. If the file size is too big I will struggle to upload it to the college. Any ideas? I know I’ve got to convert it to a PDF but I wanted to find out how big it was before I did that… Duh!

Taking notes

Posted on July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Blogging, Collage, Design, Grids, Ideas, Illustration, Interest, Light box, Techniques4 Comments

Two of our tutors were in conversation today. One was nterviewing the other. It was interesting and helpful to see how they went about doing their work. Taking rough photocopies to add texture, cutting out black paper shapes to create shadows, and white paper to add highlights. Using a broad brush to paint quick marks, creating people and buildings. There were so many techniques I’d not even considered. Also using a grid to place the work on so that the images would all be the correct size…. And a light box. I don’t even know how to use one of them.. Very interesting.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Illustration