“Je ne travail pas, je m’amuse” ~ Jean Giraud (aka Moebius)
As you can see from the above illustrations, my long absence is because I’ve been honing my illustration and digital skills. There’s a large chunk of my recent work that isn’t documented on here, which are on my Instagram account, although there are also quite a few below.
With all the excellent, thoroughly enjoyable online courses I’m taking, (thank you Domestika) I’m simply drawing and painting whatever I want and in the process, my ‘style’ seems to be steadily emerging. Style, however, is a tricky beast as it is constantly changing and evolving, like any organism – which is true of any creative…if they’re any good.
This illustration adventure I’m on is giving me so much pleasure – I often feel inebriated with pleasure at the end of a creative day.
“The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you create with it is everything.” ~ Sean Gerety
I’m sure you will have heard of Procreate.
Procreate is an award-winning illustration, drawing, painting app, developed exclusively for iPad. It feels like you’re drawing on paper. It has a simple, intuitive interface and comes loaded with more than 200 brushes. It is MAGICAL!
Oh joy! Procreate has totally changed my creative experience! It’s easy and great fun to use and highly addictive.
I feel empowered to do what I want to do, especially when I need to rest (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) as I am able to draw lying down.
Herewith some of the images that I completed for the projects on the course, which demonstrate that I understand how to properly use certain elements such as layers, masks and brushes.
Red Apple, using “Watercolour” Brushes in Procreate – my first ever Procreate image!Green Apple using “Pencil” Brush in ProcreateSeveral Elements used to create this – followed a tutorial on Youtube.My first and only Animation created using ProcreateLeaf using “Watercolour” brushes in ProcreatePolar Bear created using “Pencil” and “Texture” brushes in ProcreateCute Bunny created by following a YouTube tutorial on Procreate.
“Don’t wait for permission to go out and create.” Baz Luhrmann.
What is Hirameki? I’m so glad you asked! It is the Japanese word for ‘brainwave’ or ‘flash of insight’ or ‘flash of inspiration’.
My Hirameki moment was during the final stage of my first online Illustration course with Domestika. I just knew that, despite being very comfortable in a life drawing class, I was not and had never been an artist. I am an illustrator! It set me free – I no longer suffer from imposter syndrome.
I’ve previously said that I thoroughly enjoyed the course, but there was one thing that I could not get my head around. The tutor discouraged overthinking; I was to turn off my brain, adopt the mindset of a child and connect with my own inner-child. Hmmm! For years I worked as a hairdresser because I love obsessing over style, shape and design. It’s the attention to detail and the precision that excites me. Overthinking my creations is sheer pleasure.
Herewith my results of the final exercise – four double pages of a sketch book using the techniques demonstrated throughout the course.
Eventually I decided that I’ve filled the brief to choose a painting that excites me and reflect on how different artists may have interpreted it. I think I’ve also ‘let go and experimented without fear and played, simplified and allowed myself to feel the work using different material and techniques.’
So this is my third and final image, depicting my assumption of the approach of American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. His vivid, sensational work draws on popular imagery from advertising, comics and cartoons, with their easily strong, comprehensible lines, flattened designs and strict colour pallet of primary colours. His instantly recognisable two-dimensional imagery is known for colouring much of his canvas, and especially women, with his signature Benday dots.
His female nudes referenced 1960’s comic book caricatures, with his compositional technique of contrasting stark geometrical shapes and lines with the curvier form of the female body.
His artworks looked machine-made, but were carefully designed and rendered by hand.
The above image was created digitally. I wasn’t able to reproduce the Benday dots to produce tones, but I had a go. I’ve made her look like she has a very bad dose of chicken pox, but she’s still smiling!
Broncia Koller-Pinell had a considerable influence on Egon Schiele. She and her husband were his influential patrons.
Schiele’s dynamic, raw works have a beautifully frugal sense of line, the line being a dominant element in the structure of all his works. He was more interested in contour than volume. Schiele ranks as one of the greatest draughtsmen of all time. He had a remarkable touch when building a line and contour of any figures, his extremely distinctive style was formed on one main foundation and means of expression – the line.
Although there is obvious toning on the body, I perceive an appealing sense of flatness to it, as with many works by Schiele. The lines do all the work. Weight is the essence of form. It is comprehending the solidity of the form.
Can you tell I’m passionate and excited by great lines?
Schiele rarely portrayed graceful nude bodies like this demurely seated female nude, most were curiously distorted and uncomfortable. His interpretation of his models presented bony, knobbly bodies in angular, knotted poses. Evidently, he liked to challenge rather than please the viewer.
His lines show a tendency to peak at points of tension (the outline of the hip, the top edge of the left shoulder and forearm), a trick that makes the contour static but not heavy. This was difficult to replicate as the model Marietta has considerably more flesh on her than his usual models appear to have.
Carefully outlined in black crayon or ink on tinted paper, crayon has been used to decorate the figure. He often left his portraits in an unfinished state, and rarely with any background details.
“Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that’s easy. What’s hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” ~ Charles Mingus, American jazz musician.
The second unit of my first online illustration course, was unexpectedly, both an intellectual and a creative challenge. I’ve had to think back to school history of art lessons, analysing paintings and artists – it gave my brain a much-needed nudge.
I was to choose a painting that excites me for some reason.
Then, I was to try out different versions of the same image, but demonstrate how different artists would have interpreted it, using a variety of materials and techniques.
The initial painting was to be faithful to the work and its meaning.
I chose an enchanting nude portrait of Marietta 1907, by female Jewish artist Broncia Koller-Pinell. I knew nothing about it or her until I stumbled upon it when it was tacked on at the end of an Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt exhibition at the National Gallery in 2014. There is nothing quite like seeing it in real life – it blew me away, I gazed at it for a long time and couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.
The portrait of this lovely seated female nude has a simple L-shaped composition, with little attention given to the background other than graphic elements; blocks of flat, pale colour and a gold rectangle behind her head. In this way, she gives the nude particular significance, focusing entirely on the harmonious lines of the subject’s body. Paintings of nude women were still considered scandalous in 1908, especially when made by a woman. Although nude, there is nothing provocative in this pose.
I was drawn by her efficient use of line, conveying the contours of the body. There is much information and intent in each line, which limit the functions to construction and not description of specific anatomical data. The fluid, precise, pared back line defines the edges of the form, effectively creating the structure of the body, traces contour and leads the eye from one part of the work to another. They have their own merit. They inform the rise and fall of the surfaces as the line travels over the breasts, the rib cage, down to the navel, over the abdomen and finally, down to the pubic area. They describe the mass and volume of the form. Every single mark is intentional.
Herewith my quick watercolour, attempting to be faithful to the original painting.
This was to help me unconsciously assume the structure of the work and its meaning. A copy of the original is below, which was a postcard bought at the exhibition.
“The traditional role of the Illustrator lies in the visual narrative, it is a practice with its roots in storytelling.” ~ Marshall Arisman
To shake up my creativity, I’ve signed up for some online illustrations courses, the first of which is both more difficult and enjoyable than anticipated.
Unit one required me to create an illustration from random items seen at a flea market. As Lockdown is in progress, nipping off to Portobello Road market was replaced with online searches.
Stalls crammed with worn teddy bears and others stacked high with gaudy crockery, I decided to create an illustration for children, showing teddies attempting to climb into a teacup.
Indecision meant that both a watercolour and a digital version of the teacup were created.
Drawing hyperactive teddies proved more difficult than I’d imagined, but I got there in the end.
An empty room is a story waiting to happen, and you are the author. ~ Charlotte Moss ~
The sweet. beloved boy is now a 6’ 3” tall +man. That soft little fat-cheeked face is angular and has stubble. He achieved a distinction in his M.A. degree, flew the coop in July for a house-share with good friends, has just exchanged his sound engineering job for a dream lecturing position in London and he’s happy. We could not be more proud…and relieved!
There’s less laundry and the food bill has been cut by more than half but god I miss him breezing through the front door and so long to receive one of his wonderful bear hugs.
Covid means we only “see” each other during our weekly online chat. He’ll be spending his first Christmas day away from home with the family of a nearby school friend, so we’ll get to see him briefly, wearing our masks, each in a corner of our sitting room. I’ll throw one of those see-through dust sheets over him so that I can have one of his longed for hugs, plus it will make him laugh.
His room is freakishly immaculate, screamingly silent and vastly empty! Not wanting to make it unrecognisable, (I can’t bring myself to call it our spare room) I had fun creating this watercolour to break up the now offensively naked walls.
Using beech leaves, I had my first go at mono-printing, which, if you’re interested, doesn’t really work with watery watercolour paints, so I also block-printed and then drew over the top using “pens” I’d fashioned out of beech twigs. They worked really well, although as you can see, the ink did run sometimes off too quickly, but I fixed that by wiping the point on the side of the ink bottle.
Is it possible to have too much gold paint? Yes, I went a smidgen too far, but think I got away with it.
I’ve ordered this inexpensive frame – and yes, the colour theme of the room is mainly blue…for boys!
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance ~ Alan Watts ~
When updating my website, for ages now, I haven’t been able to shrug off an ever-increasing feeling of dissatisfaction – of being a little bored by my art. It’s all safely predictable, moderately sugary and intrinsically pretty-prettyyyy pictures.
Nothing wrong with pretty pictures, à chacun son goût! But a shakeup has been looming; I’ve felt creatively stale, frustrated and itching for something less stagnant.
Much sobering reflection made it clear that progress would not come without risks. A fresh, less rigid approach and a stripping away of complacency was imperative.
So I purposefully read encouraging blogs and appropriate books at length, boldly experimented, played around with a variety of mediums, enthusiastically made multiple interesting marks… ad nauseam.
You’ll see from these tulips that I’ve been toiling away at it since the beginning of the first Lockdown in March.
But! It was staggeringly difficult to detach myself from the snug and familiar. I could not do it! I was simply not up to the challenge! My tentative toe-dip into diversity just didn’t happen. It was intensely disheartening and my self-confidence was deeply bruised. In my cupboard lies a substantial pile of discarded attempts, the backs of which will serve as scrap for practise.
It seems that these images below may just be as wildly radical and loose as I get.
The first, (poor photo) of freshly picked sedum, is definitely loose; it took three minutes to paint. But I wouldn’t want to frame it to hang on my wall.
This is the grisaille underpainting to give depth. A dish cloth and ink were used to make the pattern at the base. Perhaps I should have stopped here.
Lastly, the finished watercolour of the same sedum, neglected until it faded to appealingly gnarly, grungy and almost deceased, it’s water appearing to have developed algae.
It doesn’t exactly signal a seismic shift from my usual work, yet it is unquestionably less sweet and pretty, albeit even more controlled! I’ve merely used a few different products and techniques, some of which didn’t work.
This would definitely not be hung in my house; It is ugly, I genuinely loathe it and will NEVER paint sedum again! Initially, this experiment left me feeling disconcertingly adrift and unsure of what to do next.
So why have I bothered posting if every image is a disaster? Well, I decided not to be embarrassed about my failures because we all have them and I realised that there’s no shame. I tried something different and it doesn’t matter that the result isn’t as hoped.
It’s only natural for creative people to periodically reinvent their methods in order to progress. I’ll continue to aspire to further spasms of idiosyncrasy and looseness in the hopes of creating something that surprises me.
At the very least these images may briefly divert you from the extraordinarily bizarre ongoing worldwide events, not least the brainless, boorish, bovine buffoons who ostensibly purport to lead what remains of our countries.
Well done if you have made it to the end of this elaborate autoethnographic (word courtesy of my son) discourse.
Luckily for you this post has no audio – you’ve been spared hearing the many long, shuddering sighs that accompanied it.
PIGMENTS OF MY IMAGINATION 
