This is part of an ongoing series. This time we pass through The Great Exhibition and meet the different characters there to view art or just to socialise and hang out.
Currently exploring image making with fountain pens: immediate mark making, no pencil, no eraser. I'm enjoying the discovery process and embracing the stray mark made with semi-blind contour and continuous line drawings.
Over the course of a few months, I got to work with Good Karma For All on what you might consider a "passion project". The job consisted of freehand painting murals on every single (large) wall and hand-lettering inspirational quotes all over the inside and outside of the building.
BEING GREEDY CHOKES ANANSI From Favorite Folktales around the world by Jane Yolen. One time, Anansi lived in a country that had a queen who was also a witch. And she decreed that whoever used the word five would fall down dead, because that was her secret name, and she didn’t want anyone using it. Now, Buh Anansi was a clever fellow, and a hungry one too. Things were especially bad because there was a famine, so Anansi made a little house for himself by the side of the river near where everyone came to get water. And when anybody came to get water, he would call out to them, “I beg you to tell me how many yam hills I have here. I can’t count very well.” So, one by one he thought they would come up and say, “One, two, three, four, five,” and they would fall down dead. Then Anansi would take them and corn them in his barrel and eat them, and that way he would have lots of food in hungry times and in times of plenty.
THE LITTLE OLD WOMAN WITH FIVE COWS
From Favorite Folktales from Around the World by Jane Yolen.
One morning a little old woman got up and went to the field containing her five cows. She took from the earth a herb with five sprouts and, without breaking either root or branch, carried it home and wrapped it in a blanket and placed it on her pillow. Then she went out again and sat down to milk her cows.
Suddenly she heard tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, on account of which noise she upset the milk. Having run home and looked, she found that the plant was uninjured. Again she issued forth to milk the cows, and again thought she heard the tambourine bells jingle and scissors fall, and once more she spilled her milk.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnnCvkZpxW0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is a picture of the lady at the cash register who bags produce at the produce store. She let me take her picture and I painted from it. I gave the picture to her but she wishes it had been done before she gained weight. : (
Taken me a while to finish this one - not feeling very focused lately. Also, I restricted myself to using Bic’s yellow ink, which is way more vibrant than the cheap 10-colour ink click pens that I usually use.
I printed my black and white zentangle drawing on marker paper and colored it with alcohol markers. At first it was a bit to garish with too much contrast, so I painted a warm grey over the whole piece. That gave me what I was looking for. Of course, THEN I completely undermined that with making a bunch of wild colored ones (two shown here) by playing with them in Photoshop. I shall be using this (along with my Zentangle koi posted la while back) for printing blank cards that we sell for charitable (mostly foodbanks) organizations.
This started as a pencil drawing (see the 2nd image) that I scanned and put into Photoshop. I tried various filters including: Smudge, Ink Outline, some Splatter, changed the Exposure and added a Sepia Photo Filter. After a couple of hours of playing (I’m not very knowledgeable about digital possibilities and just use trial and error) I ended up with a dramatic image with which I am quite happy. The reference was a magazine advertisement.
I was looking at what Pixabay might offer as inspiration, and found this fish. Perfect for a ballpoint pen drawing. The incompleted drawing in the second photo was taken before the final "glaze" of little scribbles of turquoise pen across almost the whole surface. It was a happy accident that made for a shimmery, iridescent fishy quality.
The Encanto became one of the most anticipated and memorable cartoons of last year! Because of his intriguing and magical plot, it interested both children and adults. If you haven't seen this movie yet, be sure to watch it! You won't regret it!
