Birdday

time of day: evening
feeling: a bit tipsy
music playing (in my head): jamiroquai
dinner: pasta with mushrooms, tuna and other good things

Just a quick post, as this is in fact an illo blog, to post my latest illo. A bird-day card for my friend in Florida. Attempting to finish off "Small" very soon for I-F but although I've already done a quick sketch I haven't been able to make myself sit down at he computer to finish it. Maybe a good chance to do some natural media you say? I hear you cry.

anyway, here is the birthday card. Have to come up with one for Christmas now (or "Chrissy" as they say in Australia) - oh, and do a masthead for my blog, and redesign my website, and, and....

I-Fri: Free

Set them freeeeee....

digital vs. natural media

time of day: afternoon
weather: overcast with a chance of rain
music: Sharon Jones
feeling: quite good, thank you.

I seem to find myself with a fair bit of time on my hands. My graphic design contract wasn't renewed because the guy I was replacing decided to return (bastard!) but they have kept me on one day a week to finish up some projects, which is at least something while I look for more work. I've got some freelance projects to keep me going and in the mean time I'm taking the time to draw and experiment with different media. I've set myself the following things to do on each "home day":

-1 illustration thing
-1 business thing
-1 house thing
-1 garden thing (weather permitting)
-1 exercise thing
-1 relaxing thing
-1 fun thing

and so today, it's 4:30 and all I've done is the illustration thing. well 2 actually. so at least I'm off the hook for that one for tomorrow! But here it is. It was inspired by my foray into the garden yesterday when I meant to do some weeding but ended up doing damage control, cutting back this vine that had totally taken over the backyard. I wanted the illo to feel really jungly with lots of different greens, and make it obvious with colouring that the vine was taking away the snippers, which got a bit lost in the linework. The first one is done with inked outline and watercolour pencil:

It all gets a bit lost. there are some nice textures, but the snippers aren't obvious at all, and also the ink I used bled a lot and made the whole thing muddy. And admittedly my skills with actual watercolour aren't that great. Satisfied, but not really happy with it.
Done in Painter:

This is more what I was going for, with different greens and the snippers stand out more. This is using the same linework (scanned). I also changed the border colour cause it was too yellow/green. In general I'm much happier with this.

so far, digital 1, natural 0. I may have to get some non-bleeding ink, and try real watercolours where I am not limited by the colours of the pencils. Wish me luck!

I-Fri: Strength

For some reason this immediately popped into my head when i thought of "Strength" - not sure why, maybe a repressed memory of going to the circus as a child and seeing some bizarre balancing act! But I wanted it to have an 'old school' look about it, so tried to do the woodcut effect a la Chet Phillips. Nothing like his work, but I'm pretty happy with this all the same.

Again done in Painter IX (do i see a pattern?) - I filled the entire canvas with black, overlayed my sketch, and then "chipped away" at the black using the eraser to make the outlines. Then put a layer below the black and coloured with Tinting and Blender tools. Lots of fun!

yeah!

Time of day: the witching hour
cat: sleeping
feeling: tired of sitting
dinner tonight: chicken in adobo sauce; spicier than I meant it to be!

Wow, it's really amazing to get people's comments on my drawings and even just to know that my illustration work is "out there" being viewed. Very motivating to do good work!



This is something I've been working on the past weeks: our wedding invitations! (getting married in Feb) - it took me a long time to get the expression on A's face (yes, that is me and my fiance) but it finally got there. The eucalyptus leaves & gumnuts are because we're having the wedding in the "aussie bush" (read: forest) Done again in Painter IX using conte on 'artist canvas' paper. I love Painter and all its textures. The canvas really shows through here and gives an effect I like.

We sent them out wrapped up like this:



and then recipients unwrapped this lovely cloth-like paper to reveal the invite and response card, which was a different postcard for each person. Mostly Frida Kahlo, one of my favourite artists (not so much for the aesthetics of her art but for what she said with it and for her story, but that's a post for another day)

So far they have been very well received!

Hoping to work on "strength" for illustration friday very soon and to post it before Thursday this time!

Night: First I-F contribution!

Here is my first participation in Illustration Friday. I'm very excited about doing this weekly and getting the creative juices flowing again cause lately I've had a bit of artistic blockage in the veins. I really like it when other artists talk about their process so I will just a little bit here as well.

Lately, I've been doing all my sketches by hand as usual but then either scanning them or recreating them on the computer. I'd like to get away from that and start doing more natural media stuff but for the moment I'm comfortable and happily lazy here. This was done in Painter 9 using felt pens for the linework and digital watercolour.

Hope you like!!
_l-k.

virgin blogger

time of day: night
tummy: full
cat: inquisitive
music playing: chili peppers

So I thought it's best to make at least one post before I doing anything else just so that I can say am an honest-to-goodness blogger and didn't just set this up so that I could post (hopefully) interesting things for Illustration Friday. Even though that would be untrue, I'd like to be able to say it cause the truth is I've really gotten into this blogging thing. I read through Loobylu's and that somehow lead me to Holli Conger and her great story and then on to Illustration Friday which seems like a great community and I think just what I need at the moment. A bit of inspiration. A bit of a kick up the bum.

The coolest thing about this is that no one knows it exists yet. I haven't told anyone it's here, not my fiance, friends, or enemies. Anyone could happen upon it just by chance. Ah, the wonders of the internet. I actually had a blog long before it was called a blog when i came travelling to Australia 5 (five!) years ago. It's still out there in cyberspace somewhere.

Ok, enough of this. I need to get to some drawin.