One of our most read books is ‘The Pig In the Pond’ written by Martin Waddell. Here’s a little example of one of the best pages.
It is a beautiful and energentic book illustrated by Jill Barton. I was thrilled to discover that she studied as a mature student and graduated at the age of 48. Her work is loose and full of light which is just what I love.
I just love it when worlds seem to come together magically. We started a new college assigment on Friday. The brief included making comment on an environmental or political issue. So I started to work with the issue of the polar ice caps melting. And then IF came up with ‘Worry’….. perfect. The finished assigment will be in gouache but I had to have a go with the watercolour….what with all the ice and water. I originally decided on the subject because I was being a smart-arse and thought I’d need less paint – white on white. How wrong I was…there’s so much colour in the arctic.
I have recently discovered how cool Adobe Illustrator is after a painful learning process. I know it is vast and will probably take me a lifetime to get to grips with compotently but these first few steps have been great.
I have also discovered gouache paint in the last week. It is fabulous, vibrant and virsatile. But as usual I have chosen to do a really complex and difficult picture to complete inside the timeframe for an assigment. This was supposed to be finished last Friday. It’s almost done, just some swirly patterns, notes and maybe even a fairy. Hope I don’t screw it up at the final hurdle because this has taken forever!
How cute is this? I made it yesterday. Yes, when I had time to complete my assigment. The kids keep trying to sneak it away to play with it but it’s a present for a friends baby. I decided we should try and find the hundreds of rabbits and bears I have made for them. So we enthusiastically delved into the soft toy boxes and discovered lots of wonderful toys they had forgotten….and then something unimaginably yuck and smelly…. so several of them are in a bleachy froth in the washing machine as I write.
Moving swiftly on!! I also discovered the absolute joy of successful thrift shopping today. Let’s face it the interest rates are making us all take a look at our budgets. I don’t usually take on thrift shops happily, I’d rather moan about having rubbish clothes and no money to buy anything new. But today I went for it and managed to get some really great stuff for $30! I am a very happy lady.
I may have missed a perfect opportunity to produce something wild, dramatic…electrifying even. So instead you’ll have to settle for my Auntie Margaret. She was ahead of her time and did her very best to conserve electricity. She insisted she didn’t need to turn the lights on until 6pm, even though in England during the winter it gets dark by 4pm.
I had the best day. I completed a photoshop assignment. It probably needs to be fiddled with a bit more. Photoshop is completely addictive so i may spend an evening on it sometime. The assigment was a book cover with the title ‘Mr Wigglies Flying Contraption’. I think the stories my mother used to tell us when she came home from work nursing elderly people have somehow inspired this.
I also finally got round to giving the wonderful kinder teacher a copy of this.
And I had the best life-drawing session this afternoon. Sooo good to get the pastels out again as I do love them.
So, loads of lovely me time today and now I’m sitting here doing this whilst I should be cooking the kids tea! It’s just all about me. Which reminds me, I checked out Loobylu for the first time in ages this morning. Such wonderful inspiring stuff. Of course I made the mistake of linking onto the Papoose felt making and doll making site and got all excited about making felt and making things out of felt. But no! The children need to be fed. That’s all for now.
I have been wondering what to do for a card for some good friends of ours who gave birth to their second child this week – then along came Illustration Friday with a inspiration for me. This may be a little over the top on the cute stakes but it’s a new baby, I can’t help myself. I remember really clearly how adoring our first child was when the second one was born. Always wanting to help me and to sing to her and cuddle her. Now, four years later, they smack, scream and slam doors in each others faces routinely.
Alright, this is a bit of a cop-out. It’s an old sketch that very loosly fits the description…although I haven’t actually included any of the wrinkles around my eyes I do notice they are emerging. And then I get a grip on myself because there are far more important things to worry about – like losing my hearing.
Hey, here’s another old one that might fit it aswelll….done for an editorial about plastic surgery. Wrinkles, sprinkles….we’re all just perfect the way we are. More new stuff next week if I’m not even more stressed with the husband going to Italy and parents going on a cycling holiday – they think it’s more important than looking after my children for me!
Another weekend, another birthday party and a good excuse to splash the watercolours about.
By some miracle I have scraped in an IF entry! It’s been the busiest week. If primitive is the opposite of civilised I would say it’s an accurate description of mealtimes in our house. This was rushed, as usual, and drawn on a peice of paper too big to scan – bright!
A little four year old friend of ours was recently rushed to hospital with a burst appendix. This was her get well card.
Often when we fail we can look back on the experience and realise how much we learnt from it. And other times it’s just really crap.
We have a blue tongued lizard who lives under a rock in the garden. The dog is forever trying to get hold of it. Our eldest daughter, whose heroe is Bindi Irwin and wants to be a vet in Africa when she grows up, insists she would save the lizard before the dog got it.
Hoorah! It’s Friday again…well it was, but I needed to think. I have to admit I nearly gave this one a miss because I didn’t really know what it meant. I had long discussions with my eldest daughter and we felt sure it was to do with things that annoy cats and dogs. But then I realised it could mean anything that’s kind of niggly and annoying. Sooo, at the risk of appearing to be a grumpy mother I had a think about things that get under my skin a bit on a daily basis – the washing pile, the dog leaving dead things on the doorstep, the smaller children sucking toothpaste from the tube. But as we are on the Easter hols now I thought this was a good reminder that we can relax for two fabulous weeks and not have to do the school run. This picture was done a bit quickly – sometimes that works for me and sometimes it doesn’t, but I can’t fuss about doing it again because we have visitors coming from London tomorrow – more children in the house…double the inspiration.
Our wonderful identical twin nephews turn three this weekend and we’ve never met them because they live in London. So sad. But they sent us some photographs of their birthday party at a farm and I was inpired to paint something cute. Of course the poo humour appealed to my kids enormously. Bodily functions are top of the humour list in our family.
I am thrilled to report that I finally made it onto the list at IF because of the lovely Penelope who helped me. Hoorah!
Clearly getting my stuff out there is a problem for me at the moment so I have decided to share and celebrate some of the fabulous and inspiring illustrators I love. Emily Gravett is an English illustrator whose work is quirky and delightful. Click on her name and you will discover the most wonderfully designed website. We first discovered her through a book called ‘Wolves’ that we got from our local library here in Melbourne. The simplicity of her work is just wonderful. Find out for yourself. This is from a book titled ‘Orange Pear Apple Bear’.
This is Maggie. She’s my response to the word for IF this week – ‘heavy’. I did her quickly this morning in the spirit of IF – immediate creative reponse. And I’m quite pleased with her. Can I load the link to her onto the IF website? No, of course not!! More ahhhhh! I’m at the tearing my hair out stage at the moment and will continue with my hopeless pursuit but if I continue to fail I’m worried I may end up being Maggie.
The Illustration Friday topic this week is ‘garden’. If I manage to link this it will be the first time ever and I will be totally delighted as the whole process has completely confused me up to this point! Not a great sketch, did it a bit quick.
