My Mum's Artwork!

My mum is going through all her old stuff, in preparation to move house. Here are a couple of her pen drawings, from 1979.  Three decades later, and I think they still look great! And they're even mounted on kraft-type card, which is super-trendy again right now - fashions always come around again!

Any similarities with my pen drawings?  I do hope so.

New blog for Cards

I've decided to start a separate blog for everything related to cardmaking, so I've moved my last couple of card-related posts from here to there so everything is together.

One Drawing A Day

To improve my drawing skills and confidence, I am trying to sketch every day at the moment, even if it is just a quick doodle.  I plan to use the 'One drawing a day' book for some ideas, but so far it's just quick pen or pencil sketches of whatever is in my head at the time.

I've never blogged sketches before because they tend to be a) messy, b) a bit weird, c) decidedly unimpressive and d) covered in random nonsense scribbled in my worst handwriting.  However, I'm feeling isolated doing this One Drawing a Day thing on my own and I want to stay focused, so I've decided to ignore these worries and blog my daily doodles for six weeks in the hope that someone else might decide to join in with me, or at least talk to me about it!

First Week's Sketches - mostly people, all pigment pen (terrible photo - too lazy to scan them separately!)

Second Week - fish, landscape and strange Pierrot people. All pencil.

Last Week's Sketches - people on the bus, isolated buildings, doodles (all pigment pen)

 

Unintentionally Flattering Self-Portrait!

I've never tried painting a self-portrait before, so I decided to have a try today.  My first attempt, using acrylics in 'realistic' colours, was dreary and horrible, and didn't feel like me, so for the second effort I decided to use pink and blue watercolours and make a dynamic feature of the hair, which seemed the most noticable feature in the photo I was using.  I tried my best to make it look like me, but it turns out that's more difficult than it sounds!  In the end it doesn't look anything like me, but I still quite like it.

Fish on Friday

I liked the Amazon silhouette collage so much I decided to do another one, this time with Koi Carp. Same thing again - watercolour background with black collage on top.

I think I still prefer the green one, but I like this one too. Researching fish pictures was surprisingly interesting, and I'm working on some other fish projects too.

Sleek Art Journal Cover

I'm quite pleased with how this book cover turned out.  The silver shapes are embedded (I just found out it is called 'piece work'?) so the surface is smooth and flat, apart from the metal letter tags (and the embossing).  Maybe a slightly unusual look for a book cover, but then I generally like 'unusual'!

Fresh Approaches to Collage - 'Amazon' Silhouette Collage

I really enjoy having a go at lots of different techniques and media, but collage is my first love! This is an idea I had in the middle of the night. It's a watercolour background with a black collage on top.

I hand-cut the snake and the lizard. The rest are die-cuts. I'm pretty pleased with it because it turned out exactly how I pictured it in my head.