Lancaster Drawings

Once again during half term we headed to Lancaster to see my brother. Before we set off I treated myself to the graphic novel 'Jane the Fox and Me', by Fanny Britt and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, to read while we were there and it left me feeling so inspired - I would really recommend it! I love Isabelle Arsenault's work so much, it is so beautiful for all of its tone and texture, aahhh it's amazing!!! Anyway, it was reading this that really motivated me to try and include more texture in my work and to draw more in general.

While we were there we visited the red squirrel sanctuary in Formby which was really lovely. I saw loads of squirrels and took lots of reference photographs of the scenery to inspire future drawings. One of the photographs that I took was of a wooden fence that are often seen at beaches and I decided to draw it when I got back.

For this, I really wanted to experiment with drawing the negative space so the fence itself was left as the background colour. I found it a bit confusing to do at first, but it is something that I will definitely try again in the future. I started with a gouache background and then I drew straight over the top with a black coloured crayon - I have really been enjoying this technique recently.

On the way back from the sanctuary we went to Crosby beach to see Anthony Gormly's 'Another Place' which consists of 100 life size figures made of cast-iron spread along the shore and out to sea. It was amazing to see them because I had researched them for my GCSE Art way back in Year 8. I think it is such a wonderful idea and there is something very beautiful about them. I was left feeling very tempted to try my hand at sculpting.

The next day we went to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool which was also incredibly inspiring and it was a fantastic day out! We went especially to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition which was beautiful but there was so much else to see too, we actually ran out of time.

One painting which was amazing to see was a HUGE portrait of  Henry VIII by Hans Holbein. It is such an iconic image and a very well known representation of him so it was amazing to see in person and we were all very impressed. There was also a perfectly placed bench in front of him so I decided to do a really quick sketch while I was there.

I was extremely happy because I got to see a Hockney painting which was so cool because I really admire his work and have looked at it a lot for my AS Fine Art course. What inspired me most however were the sculptures! I loved them! There was a spectacular room filled with them and there were a few busts dotted around the gallery too, I especially liked one of Queen Victoria which I decided to sketch while I was there.

While I was sketching I began trying to draw it quite realistically, but then I stopped and started again because I knew that that was not what I was really interested in achieving. For my second attempt I simplified the shape and the tone and exaggerated certain parts, I also made an effort to make her look especially grumpy. I wanted the bust to be recognisable from my sketch, but I really wanted to add more character to it and make a striking image.

I was really pleased with the sketch because of the character and humour that I had managed to capture so when I got home that evening I then made a painting from it. The painting was simplified further because this time I was working from the sketch and not the bust and I tried very hard to refine the features of the face so they were more noticeable and clean. I worked in black crayon over gouache again and I think that the final image is very striking and I am so pleased with it. It is so different from anything that I normally do and the face is so much more specific and clear than what I can normally achieve so I am thrilled with the result. Finally I am pleased that I did not simply reproduce the bust but added my own changes and style to make a different image.

Overall, it was a great little holiday filled with art that has left me feeling very inspired.

Thanks for reading!

Inky Experiments

It has taken me a long time to realise that quite often the art that I admire the most and the pieces of mine that I am most pleased with are the more spontaneous and experimental ones. Sometimes the pieces that are thoroughly thought out and meticulously made can end up looking a bit stiff and forced. Therefore, I am making an effort to try and experiment more with what I draw and the media that I use in order to keep improving and discovering the elements that I enjoy and would like to include in future pieces.

For this experiment I decided to use Ecoline which is a liquid watercolour in the colour fir green. They behave very similarly to ink in that they are a strong coloured liquid medium, however unlike ink they can be reactivated with water after they dry. I chose to experiment with this medium so that I could focus on my brush work and inking skills. I really wanted to use the full range of thickness provided by the brush. These paintings were made using only a size 00 round brush. I also chose to paint with Ecoline so that I could play around with the tones that you can make by only diluting the single colour.

I began each of the mini portraits with a very quick pencil sketch using a blue Prismacolor ColErase pencil to allow me to improve and modify the picture when I started painting and try and keep them feeling more spontaneous. I also drew a guy which I don't do enough but it was one of my aims for this year so I need to start somewhere. All of the drawings were done without a reference image as well which I am very pleased with.

So I would say that this was a successful painting session and hopefully the first of many experiments. It is often after these more spontaneous paintings that I feel I am making some progress!

Thanks for reading!

Sherlock and Self Portraits

Recently I have really been enjoying painting digitally on my graphics tablet. I have been feeling more excited about drawing digitally than traditionally which is a new feeling for me.

I think I am finally starting to feel comfortable drawing in Photoshop and like I sort of know what I am doing now. Compared with my experience in traditional art,  I am still very new to digital painting - I only did my first digital piece in January of last year.

So it has taken me a year to finally be pleased with the pieces I create digitally and it really is a lovely feeling. I finally find more enjoyment in it than frustration. I would say this feeling started with the two digital paintings I did after watching the New Year's special of Sherlock (which by the way was amaaazing). I painted Watson and Sherlock and I really wanted to be able to achieve a likeness to the characters but in a stylised way. I think I achieved this with Watson, not so much with Sherlock, but I am still pleased because I think I made a lot of progress with these paintings.

I also wanted to experiment with different Photoshop brushes and not just use the basic round brush. I chose one from the dry media section I think and this meant I was able to create a lot more texture than I normally can and I love the way this looks.

The third painting I have done digitally is the one that I am most pleased with.  I have been feeling very inspired by Taryn Knight's (or TarynDraws) art recently - I love the texture that she creates in her illustrations, so that is what inspired this piece. I decided to just do a little self portrait and I really tried to be more adventurous with my choice of colour and texture (for example in the hair) and I think I was pretty successful. 

I am looking forward to continuing with digital art and I would like to challenge myself to do more full body paintings because I am getting too comfortable with drawing the head and shoulders. Also, maybe next time I should try and paint a setting for my characters because  I really struggle with this and would like to improve.

Thanks for reading!

Screen Printing

This Christmas I was super lucky to be given a screen printing kit from my Mum and Dad and I finally got round to giving it a go.

I was interested in screen printing because not only does it look really fun, but I loved the idea of being able to reproduce an illustration multiple times and print onto different materials. The idea of having a tote bag or a pencil case with one of my own illustrations on just excites me so much!

I am still very new to screen printing so my knowledge is extremely limited, however I do know that there are many different methods to actually get your design onto the silk screen. The kit that I received involves the stencilling method where you have to cut your design out of a self-adhesive vinyl material and then stick that to the underneath of the screen. When I was researching this method I repeatedly read that the stencilling method can only be used for very simple designs and not for long runs. When I read this I was a bit disheartened because I had imagined being able to print quite a detailed design, but I was undeterred and just as determined to do a more complex design.

As for the design, I struggled to come up with an idea that I wanted to use as my first ever screen print. It got to the point when I was so desperate to try that the design mattered less to me. In the end, I used my sister's interest as inspiration - she loves historical fashion. So I did a bit of research into historical fashion (which I have to say I enjoyed very much) and decided to try and screen print a lady from the 1820s. (Please excuse if it is not entirely historically accurate, I gave a lot more focus to the design of the image on this one.) In the end, I was actually really pleased with the design. I found that having the challenge of screen printing the image forced me to simplify the design a lot and think about how it would all fit together when cut out of vinyl and I just love how bold the image looks!

So, once I was happy with the idea in my sketchbook, I redrew it as carefully as I could onto regular A4 printer paper. I then went over it in a felt tip pen so it was extremely clear which areas I would like the ink to be in the final print. Once this was done, I layered it over a piece of the vinyl and taped them both to a cutting mat - then the cutting begins. I have to say I was dreading this step because I thought my design would turn out to be waaay too complex and impossible to cut out by hand with a little craft knife. But like I said I was determined and in the end it turned out ok. I had to simplify the design a bit from the original sketch and I really struggled cutting out her eyes, but I got away with only one small cut on my finger so I would rate that as a success!

The next step was to peel off the backing of the vinyl and stick it onto the bottom of the frame. This actually proved quite difficult because of the leaf border, but with some help from my Dad, we managed to get it stuck down well. However, it was at this stage that I started to have doubts about whether my design would be too complicated after all because the vinyl wasn't completely flush with the screen and it kept lifting on certain points.

With that done I could start screen printing! Yay! My kit came with a hinge bracket that allows you to attach the frame to a surface and this was SO useful at keeping the frame in the same place. It would have been so much more difficult without it. I went for a blue ink colour because for some reason this is what I had imagined all along, but I'm sure it would have looked good in other colours too. My first attempt turned out pretty badly and the ink bled everywhere, but the more I did the better it got. It was very much a learning process so I was experimenting with different amounts of ink and different materials to print on. I used a bunch of different papers and had best results on a random piece of grey card that unfortunately we only had one piece of. However, I would say that I got the best results on some cotton fabric. The ink just seemed a lot cleaner on this, assumedly because it was more absorbent. The ink did run a bit in the more complex parts like the hairline, but I am still really happy with the results. And of course, I can now use the fabric prints to make other things which is very exciting!

This one was printed on fabric:

I was very excited when I was screen printing so unfortunately I completely forgot to take any progress pictures, but I will make sure to do that next time.

Overall, I am SUPER happy with how my first adventure into screen printing came out. The prints are not perfect, but I was honestly expecting awful results because I had thought my design would be far too complicated. I didn't expect to be able to make so many prints either, eventually the results stopped being so clean and some of the small details came loose from the screen, but I was very impressed at how long the vinyl stayed stuck on. I can see myself being hooked from this point though so expect more - I can't wait to try again!

Thanks for reading!

Stamp Carving

For Christmas I was lucky to receive a Speedball rubber stamp block and a set of carving tools from my Auntie and Uncle. I have been wanting to try stamp carving for a while now and so I was so excited to finally give it a go.

I carved my first stamp on Christmas Day while watching festive telly. I started off fairly simply, just carving the details out rather than carving around them. I decided to carve a thank you stamp which is just under A6 in size so that I could make a bunch of thank you cards to send to my family and friends. I am really pleased with the design and how the stamp turned out.

I used gold embossing powder for some of the cards and it works really well with the stamp. That stuff is magical!

I then carved a stamp for my Mum's Etsy shop 'MidgetGemBeads' so she could use it to jazz up her packaging a bit. This stamp is probably a third of the size of my previous one and I found it a lot more difficult, probably because there were a lot more tiny details. I think this stamp would have looked better with some more white space to lighten the design up a bit, but apart from that I am relatively pleased with it and my Mum is too.

I think in my next stamp I would like to try and carve away more white space than I have tried before. I would love to try and carve a little person so  I am excited to see how that will turn out. I'll need to order a new rubber block soon!

Thanks for reading!

Full time marvel. Part-time demon slayer.

I did this painting as a Christmas present for my sister this year and she was really pleased with it.

Up until this point I had never spent so much time on a digital painting before. I had felt very frustrated with digital art because it is still so new to me and I find it so difficult, I still do, but with this painting I felt like I finally got a little closer to how I had envisioned it when starting. I think I acquired a much better understanding for painting on Photoshop and I am excited to continue learning and improving!

Holiday Drawings - Lancaster

At the end of October my family and I stayed in Lancaster for a few days to visit my brother at university. We stayed on a lovely wooded campsite and went on some equally lovely walks while we there. I did a painting on each of the two walks we went on and it was really fun for me because I have hardly ever painted outside before. Before recently I had felt too self conscious to draw in public and it was only after visiting the Manchester Costume Gallery in August and sketching some of the exhibits while I was there that I have felt confident enough to draw in public - I have been loving it since!

The first painting I did was of a rather cool-looking tree at the edge of a lake that we passed on one of our walks. For this, I tried adding more texture with my pencil marks than I normally do. It ended up being a very quick painting because it started to rain, meaning I had to stop sooner than I planned, but I still quite like the result.

The second painting I did was on a lovely walk straight from the campsite we were staying on. My Dad, sister and I had walked down to a really nice spot at the edge of a river and the sun was shining through the trees so they were glowing and reflecting beautifully on the stream. So basically I HAD to paint it.

I managed to get my sketch done and I had put most of my paint down when a rather large bug landed on my page. It made me jump and I proceeded to throw my sketchbook straight into the river I was painting. So you can imagine that this painting session also ended very abruptly. I was upset at the time because I thought my sketchbook and all the paintings in it would be ruined. Luckily they were all fine and I ended up finishing the painting off later with a black pen. Normally I try to avoid outlining landscapes in black, but with this one I was stuck for ideas and very frustrated. The black outline was a fairly desperate attempt to make it worthwhile me throwing my sketchbook into a river and I think it just about worked.