A step into the darker side of eve

A selection of today's roughs for my next project. I am particularly happy with this first image. This sequence is inspired by a piece of poetry that has a distinctly eerie tone

More playing in black and white. I am trying to get a method of ink and graphite collaboration that I am happy with.....it is slow progress, and I find that the aquash brushes that I use keep getting blocked by the ink solidifying inside. I need to adjust my working method. Here is today's play:

Seasons greetings

It's very early to be thinking of chestnuts, reindeer and tinsel but as I am about to start back at college and I will be a busy mum juggling life again, I thought I would get Christmas card designs done earlier. With this in mind I have spent a few hours this week, designing and cutting Lino and here are the results. Merry Christmas to you all ( a few months prematurely). X

Merhaba, hello, I have noticed that I have a few Turkish visitors and I wanted to say Hi and it is nice to know people are looking at my work. Thank you for visiting. I haven't posted in awhile due to the school holidays....anyway here is my latest pieces.

Some quickish ink sketches. I am still trying to improve my black and white image making.

A mostly wet day with very little at the end of it....this painting produced and a wincing large amount spent in hobbycraft.

And a bit more printmaking....just for fun

This photo isn't great but I made a butterfly stamp out of children's foam. 

Home screen printing

Over the last few days, I have been trying out my home screen print....to varying degrees of success. After an initial attempt that put a hole in my screen from scrubbing with mr muscle, I bought the speedball cleaner and am now much happier. I have learnt that it would be better to use a standard size paper for aligning the image (next time I will do this!). I think I would also go for a rectangular image next time as well. I have enjoyed the process although it seems extremely long winded. I will definitely try to design some more images for screen printing in the future.

Tiny sketch paintings

Had a lovely day painting today. I was inspired by a sketchbook I saw of small painted landscapes and I had to go and try it. I have really enjoyed it and I think I will do more. Next time I might concentrate on really muted colours, because I think I like soft palettes to look at. 

Ok I also love Ellen heck and after looking at her lovely images I decided to play around with an old drawing......

My tutor suggested an excercise as a way to learn about character design. His method was to go and draw stuffed animals, drawing parts of different creatures together in the same image. I thought that I would try this in our local museum. I like to draw what I see, but this was a way of drawing without being quite so literal. It was a useful excercise. I also had to draw a badger and deer for a wee project. I will have to think about where I go from here.....

Lino day

Have tried to do some Lino cutting today. This is something I haven't attempted since school, so I am clearly a novice here, ancient as I am! I enjoyed it. I cut the Lino twice so that I had two tones of green with white. It is meant to be those plants that are in hedgerows everywhere at the moment. If Google is to be believed, then they are called; umbelliferae.

I went painting on wotton hill today....it was very hot!

Handed in my work....now for a new project!

I am still looking at black and white illustration as research for my essay. This has the result of making me try things out, and avoid any writing.

Thinking about an essay at the moment. I am trying to write about key elements of black and white image making and so I put off reading to do some drawing.....I did notice how at one point the buildings were a lighter tone than the background hills but as the sunlight got brighter the tone of the buildings got much darker than the background. I thought this was interesting and then read about monets haystacks and how he painted them in different lights, and what this then created. It made me think how we perceive things as having a colour that is constant, but actually this is a fallacy and it is always dependent on the light and reflections around.

Have not posted anything for a few weeks but I have been working hard, on structure and story telling....however this is not producing images for my blog but have a double page spread, that I think is getting there. ( I will probably continue to tweak for a further hundred years. I am finding that illustration is a time absorbing activity). Happy Easter x

Another day done.....

So it has been slow progress this term with many wrong turns. I feel now that I have made my fourth dummy book, I am slowly going forwards. 

Battled with a dip pen and lost, decided to use watercolours instead.

First attempt at mono printing

I have no idea how to clean a roller, washing up liquid did not cut it. I have ended up with a house full of black rags......maybe I need white spirit!

New term.....sequential image ( aka made up stuff in a specific order)

So I haven't posted anything in a looooooonnnnngggggg time. I feel in this case that I can truly blame it on the weather. Bugs caused by the damp weather has caused my house to cease production as I have been up again and again at night with sickly children. Anyway, the kids are now occasionally back in school and hopefully I may get to do the occasional scribble. Fingers crossed.