Doodling

Hi there, how are you?

We’ve been away this week, dealing with home helps, shopping and general elder care so doodling is all I have really managed. I’ve just been pulling up old photos on my phone in the odd moments I could find.

They are mainly drawn with fountain pens that are still filled with red and blue ink left over from Inktober, might as well use it up.

The little blue frogs (above) were masters of disguise. From the top they are the same colour and texture as the rocks they were sitting on and incredibly difficult to see. One little frog was sitting on the glass of the aquarium and unbelievably was a lovely pale blue.

I snapped it’s picture as it hopped across the glass.

The fuchsia are all but finished now, just a few weather worn flowers hanging on so I snapped a few photos before leaving. Glad I did they came in very handy.

Penguins at the zoo quickly sketched in red ink, maybe I should have used the blue?

They’re a bit scratchy but I like the way they turned out.

These were flowers in the botanical gardens they are a pale yellow and looked lovely blowing in the autumn breeze.

Here they are drawn with a red crayola pencil as that was all I could find at to draw with at the time.

These are all very sketchy and drawn mainly to occupy my mind, I find just a few minutes each day to take my mind off things, a little meditative and relaxing.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

Inktober 2022 Week 2

05 bleach blossom 2

Hi there, how are you?

Here’s week two of Inktober 2022.

We were away for a few days towards the end of the week but I managed all of the days even if some were a bit scrappy.

1. Cherry blossom 2, (above); this was the second attempt at a technique using bleach the first attempt is in last weeks post.

2. bunny, trying to make it fluffy was not as easy as it seemed.

3. squirrel, using salt and splattering to make some texture. The salt almost worked maybe it was too dry, it looks interesting though.

4. fuchsia, a quick stylised version as we were away from home. Trying to keep the momentum going.

5. frog, another quick one, the colours ran together in places to make some interesting merges. If I’d been at home I probably would have started again but there a few good bits I like so I’ll call it done.

Nine down twenty two to go, hopefully I’ll make to the end this year.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. till next time, have fun

Frogs: From Sketch To Watercolour Experiments

just hanging around — Just hanging around

Hi there, how are you?

This week I’ve been experimenting with frogs.

It started with me not knowing what to draw. I typed frogs into the search and drew the first few frogs that showed up in the results.

Nothing special just something to get the pencil moving.

I liked the little round one sitting on a branch, drew a circle and placed the frog on top then drew branches and leaves around it.

Next I started to experiment with watercolour.

For the first painting I wet the back of the paper to stick it down to the board to stop it from buckling.

That worked but the watercolour wicked off all over the place and left some unfortunate cauliflowers. I’d also forgotten to mask out the leaves so my little frog was sitting all alone on the paper.

I tried lifting the colour out for the leaves but I hadn’t picked very lifting colours so in the end I painted over them with metallic watercolours.

just hanging around watercolour 1 — Just hanging around watercolour 1

I masked out the leaves in the second painting and painted the background onto a dry paper. The colours are less washed out and no weird cauliflowers.

just hanging around watercolour 2 — Just hanging around watercolour 2

As usual I prefer the sketch though there are parts of both paintings I like, lessons to take forward into new paintings.

They do look slightly better in person and of course very sparkly hehehe. The only way to learn these things is to do them

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. till next time, have fun

Painting Octopus and Tadpoles

blue octopus sketch — Blue octopus sketch

Hi there, how are you?

I made birthday cards recently for family members. We like to make each other cards, they’re more personal and it’s always fun to see everyone’s ideas.

In my sketchbook I had sketched out a page of inky octopus with two brush pens, one black and the other a pale grey. The legs are a lot of fun to draw and usefully it planted an idea for a card in my head.

The image at the top of the post is the sketch for the card. I liked the colours but thought the fine liner was a little heavy.

In the card I used a thinner fine liner, it looks much better. The colours are burnt orange and Prussian blue, together they make some lovely soft greens.

After painting the octopus I decided to add a background. This is where planning would have been very handy as painting in the background in first I could have given it a nice gradient (very hard to do painting around all of those legs).

He said he liked his card and that’s the important thing.

The next card is a little frog looking down under the lily pad into the water. I’m not sure why the frog looks brown here as he is green on the card?

I painted in the background first this time, see planning.

I enjoyed painting this and apparently the tadpoles were a big hit hehehe.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun

Quick Blobby Sketches

humming bird blobs — Humming birds from blobs

Hi there, how are you?

I have been in a funny mood this week, wanting to draw something but not knowing what to draw. Normally when I feel like this the best thing to do is just play.

I made lots of blobs of colour on the page, some yellow and some blue. Then with another colour tried to turn them into humming birds.

They’re very scrappy but they are interesting shapes.

I did the same thing with frogs; this time I put yellow blobs down first and finished with green.

The details were picked out with a fountain pen.

More little birds in black, brown and grey; I used pinterest birds to make the shapes this time.

sketchy humming birds — Sketchy humming birds

Stephanie Fizer Coleman has a video about putting texture onto sketched shapes. She makes lots of painted papers and scanned them into the computer to use as texture resources.

It looked interesting so I gave it a go. I used a sketch of a little flying frog (seen in the bottom corner of the image below) and used a painting that had lots of brushstrokes and desaturated it for the texture.

If I were to do a lot of this kind of thing a lot I’d probably have to make my own purpose built textures first.

This kind of thing takes a lot of practice to make anything decent. It was just fun to play around and so something different.

computer textured frog — Computer textured frog

I’m also using “ye olde drawing tablet” from the times when windows 7 was a thing. I was thinking of buying one but wasn’t too sure it’s something I need so I rooted the kids olde one out to see how I get on. The pressure thing doesn’t work any more although it did manage to find itself a driver. All I can say right now is it’s going to be a bit of a learning curve.

Ahh the possibilities.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun

Inktober 2021 – Acrylic Ink Week 2

05 fresh honesty 2021 inktober — 05 fresh honesty

Hi there, how are you?

Week 2, still doing the Inktobers but not every thing is postable or is the beginning of something and continued the next day.

Honesty 1 – I splashed some ink around to make a background. Earlier in the year I found an honesty plant at the back of the botanical gardens. Every time I visit I take a few photos to sort of document it’s growing season. It has small purple flowers then the pods develop quite quickly.

Backgrounds – experimenting with the ink, dropping colours onto the paper and moving it around. Salt also works on these inks which was a nice surprise. They’re all a bit grungy and drippy but it made some interesting effects.

Honesty 2 – this is the honesty a little later in the season. Love the autumnal colours in this one and the salt effect. It’s one of the backgrounds made earlier in the week.

Happy frog – I like this little frog, he looks very cheeky. I discovered some of the inks are translucent so don’t cover other colours well. In some parts I tried a little white ink under the colours to make them stand out. Maybe I should have changed his colour to make him stand out more.

Sitting frog – another frog; a lot of frogs in my head at the moment apparently. It’s painted on another of the pre-made backgrounds.

I don’t think any of these are beautifully rendered but I am learning a lot about the inks properties and hopefully how best to use them.

I haven’t managed posting every day the main problem I have is I need to be sitting at the kitchen table to use them so I can spread out and not have ink spilling everywhere, so everything has to be moved and put away, brought out and set up. It’s quite a palava.

I am looking forward to more experiments next week.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun

Tiny Sketches – Trying To Find Some Inspiration

Hi there, how are you?

I’m trying to find ideas but at the moment nothing seems to be inspiring me, so I opened up pinterest, typed in a word and drew a few tiny sketches. It’s usually best not to think to hard about this or I just end up diving down a rabbit hole of pretty pictures.

I’m drawing in an A5 sketchbook (roughly 5×7 inches) so each little sketch is about 2 inches in size and coloured with watercolour. Its amazing what you can get done in a short space of time.

Lots of birds because I like birds. The shapes and colours are a little off but I like the way they turned out.

I’m pretty sure I’ve drawn that wren before.

Fish are always fun especially the fish with flowing tails, these were the best of the bunch, I need to draw more fish.

Frogs come in all shapes, sizes and colours, they were a lot of fun to draw.

Note to self; I need to put more yellow out in my palette as some of these greens are a bit muddy.

The ideas are still percolating and maybe some of these will work and if not at least they kept me busy for a while.

Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun

A Few Painted Cards

A froggy fathers day

Hi there, how are you?

I have made a few cards recently, for various occasions. These are the few I remembered to take pictures of as most of the time I forget until I’ve given it away.

(above) A Fathers day painted with watercolour and brush pen. Some little frogs sitting on a log. The background is actually a bit more green than this image shows. I like the expression on their faces they make me smile.

I love ewe. I like a play on words and so does the other half. I used three colours to paint it, burnt sienna, cerulean blue and paynes grey. Interesting how many colours it takes to paint a white sheep.

This was made for our wedding anniversary (36 years!) time goes by so quickly.

Three brown mice. This was an idea from my Inktober drawings you can see it here. The background was Moonglow by Daniel Smith, it splits and divides into various colours of purple and mauve. I think I also splashed a little water over the top for some added texture. It’s interesting but I’m not sure it’s the best colour for a background.

Jellyfishes. Li Ching Heng makes some very good tutorials on instagram, I loved all of the tiny fish plants and details she had used in this one and I really wanted to try it.

I used some shiny mica paints on the jellyfish and some of the plants so it is quite sparkly in places. loved the way it turned out and once it was finished I thought it would make a nice card.