Reflecting on the current pandemic, only to realise things this time last year gave plenty of us something to gripe about too...
How times seemed simpler then.
Saw this missing cat poster whilse out running errands the other day which started off with the sentence "Answers to Esme", and those words have been circling around in my head ever since. Naturally, the end product here had little to do with the finished artwork!
A fairly special one for me this week, as today’s post is inspired by what would have been the time of Beltane celebrations. As it is, we celebrated at home in our own little ways, and in the case of myself indulging in my usual habits! Drinking and of course drawing, the usual stuff...
“Hikyaku - literally "fleet feet" or "flying feet." These running messengers played a critical role in delivering items and messages, given that in Japan's mountainous terrain, other modes of transportation, like horses or carriages, weren't very practical.”
I always tell students to start a project with quick sketches to develop a shape language. Plus research, then you can start to generate ideas. This is one of who knows how many small sketches I'll do to start this project. #ideation #designsketches #pilo
I have dragged this typewriter around for more than 50 years. I found it in an antique store when I was in college. It's still fully useable, except that it's REALLY hard to find ribbons. Basically, it's just another object to dust. But it is a beautifully made object. The basic shapes and perspective were blocked in with a 2H pencil, then I used a Sakura 005 micron pen to do the contour drawing.
Once again playing with shapes, colours, marks, and loads of squiggly, smudgy ink lines. No pressure. Just trying to get back into splashing around with paint and seeing what emerges.
Artwork on "the other side" - playing with the bleed-through from the watercolor and intuitiviely allowing the shapes to arise. Created using watercolor, coffee, ink, graphic pens and unipen
All the faces above have the same blot or cloud as a base. When I am sick of the faces I draw automatically, I make a nice, oddly shaped blot and then look for faces (or whatever) within it. This time I did it digitally so I could see how many different faces I could get out of the same cloud. This time I stopped at thirteen, but I am sure there is more.
In celebration of Year of the Tiger, I illustrated this Tiger with vector shapes and then shades the shapes with a variety of pixel brushes. Then I doodled some abstract brush strokes as the background with a red and gold color theme.
