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 2020 week 4

Hi there, how are you?

Week 4 of Inktober finished. It’s quite interesting to see this evolve. I didn’t have much of a plan at the beginning except to use my new ink. Some are working better than others but over all I’m happy with the way it’s going.

Day 18 – hummingbird. (above)The fuchsias are almost finished now but there are still a few flowers hanging on to remind us of summer. I love drawing the petal shapes and frills.

Day 19 – seahorse. Seahorses happily swimming around in the sea. My attempt to have them floating in a background rather than the usual blankness of a sketchbook page

Day 20 – cat. Taking time to smell the flowers. Usually I avoid cats because they’re difficult to draw, I started small here with a silhouette.

Day 21 – rabbits. Washing up before a meal. The youngling wanted me to draw a pumpkin, I embellished a little (hehehe.)

Day 22 – wild rose. Holding on to the summer, remembering little birds in the hedgerows

Day 23 – mouse. Little mice having fun amongst the poppy pod’s. Mouse was on a prompt list and I like drawing mice so I drew three and some poppy pods to climb over.

Day 24 – guinea fowl. I love watching these birds, so comical and the hair! May have gone a bit dark on this one, it still makes me smile though.

Every day I wake up wondering what to draw, usually by the end of the day it’s solved and drawn. Hopefully I’ll have enough ideas to last to the end of the month.

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

Humming Birds And Fuchsia Watercolours

hummingbird and fuchsia with a background

Hello peeps how are you!

After all these weeks of drawing and painting fuchsia with hummingbirds I have finally made some little watercolour paintings (phew).

I’ve painted humming birds before but they always look clunky and they seem like such delicate little birds so I’ve tried not to be too heavy handed and lighten them up a little.

Usually I just fill up my sketch book but I wanted something a bit more finished this time to give as a gift.

They look a little better in person, the scanner always seems to wash the colours out.

In the painting above I over worked the flower (got caught up in the details). I couldn’t decide whether to paint a background or not so I tested it out on this painting (you never know till you try); maybe the bird could have been a bit darker to work though.

Next are some tester flowers to check colours and practice shading, they turned out pretty well I think.

fuchsia watercolour sketch — Fuchsia watercolour sketch

This is the same bird as the top image I just flipped the drawing over to transfer it onto the paper; I couldn’t decide what colour to use so I think this is a mixture of several birds.

The flowers are a bit pale but on the whole not a bad effort.

hummingbird and fuchsias — Hummingbird and fuchsias

This is the one I like most, the colours and composition work so this is the one I’ll use.

green hummingbird and fuchsia flowers — Green hummingbird and fuchsia flowers

I may have taken some artistic licence with these birds, I’ve never see a real hummingbird, only photos. I know they’re pretty small but how small compared to a fuchsia flower I’ve no idea, hopefully its not too far off.

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

Humming Birds And Fuchsia Flowers

fuchsia brush pen doodles — Fuchsia brush pen doodles

Hi there, how are you?

This week I’ve been looking at the fuchsias a little more closely, its interesting (to me at least)that every flower is not identical. Most have four petals on the “skirt” but one or two have five or have some tiny half petals. I am also enjoying the way they curl and furl around each other. It’s surprising what you see when you slow right down and take notice.

I spent a couple of days drawing the shapes with a brush pen on yea olde printer paper, you know the kind that used to have little holes down each side hehehe. (We used to have boxes of the stuff for the kids to draw on when were tiny; I found a small box when I was tidying out a cupboard, seems a shame to waste it.)

It’s actually really lovely to draw on with a brush pen because its so smooth, the bristles glide along the surface, so much fun.

They were just supposed to be little black and white studies but I was bored watching TV and started colouring them in with watercolour.

They’re a bit cartoony but I like the way they turned out, surprisingly I managed to get some nice shading on the petals.

I found a scrap of watercolour paper left over from the peregrine falcon card I’d made for fathers day. I had intended to use it for colour tests but then I drew lots of flowers and painted them, as you do?

It was cut from an A4 piece of paper and is roughly three inches wide and twelve inches long.

The youngling said it looked like a giant book mark, I think I’m gonna need bigger book hehehe.

long watercolour fuchsia — Long watercolour fuchsia

The next two images are on the back of the flowers above. If I’d posted it at the original width they would look very tiny, like I was painting beetles again. I digitally cut it in half so you could see better.

They are more colour tests, this time for humming birds.

hummingbird colour tests 1+2 — Hummingbird colour tests 1+2

hummingbird colour tests 3+4 — Hummingbird colour tests 3+4

I think I need to do a few more because although there are some parts that work most of it don’t. (Where did that orange come from??) Lots more practising to do.

Hopefully I’ll have a nice little painting at the end of all this but the fun is in the process rather than the end result.

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

Fuchsia Flowers, Not As Tasty As You Think

fuchsia sketch(watercolour and gouache) — Fuchsia sketch (watercolour and gouache)

Hi there, how are you?

A month or so back I bought two little fuchsia plants from the supermarket, (it’s the only outing we have at the moment besides a walk.) They were very small pots about the size of a plastic drinking cup.

One plant is a trailing variety (I’ll need to find a way to raise it up somehow to keep the flowers off the ground) the other says its hardy, we’ll see if that’s true in time.

I potted them into bigger pots to give them room to grow, they are now are much bigger and producing lots of lovely flowers.

The big news is that slugs and snails are not eating them, whoot! They’ve been in the garden over a month and not so much as a nibble.

The weather has been rubbish, baking hot sun that left us melting into little puddles and rain with a side of thunder storms.

watercolour fuchsia sketch — Watercolour fuchsia sketch

Ive nipped outside when I could to quickly sketch my new flowers.

These are a bit scrappy, mainly studies to get used to the shapes and give a general idea of the colours.

I was using watercolour with a spot of gouache, fighting away with it then I found a brush pen in the pencil case, I had forgotten how much fun using this pen was.

fuchsia sketch with brush pen — Fuchsia sketch with brush pen

After scanning them into the computer I thought some of the flowers might make a fun pattern so I cleaned them up and made a doodly fuchsia pattern.

This is a sketch of something I’m working on. The idea is to work out the fuchsia flowers then break out the watercolour paper and paint them with maybe this little guy.

hummingbird brush pens sketch — Hummingbird brush pens sketch

Its a work in progress at the moment, in my head it looks pretty good, we’ll see if reality matches the idea though hehehe.

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

Happy Mothers Day Hummingbird Card

Hummingbird card

Hi there, how are you?

Happy Mothers Day people.

I decided to make a card, with a humming bird and sketched out a couple of ideas in my sketchbook; I liked the little bird on the grass but wanted something more flowery.

Hummingbird on grass

The flowers I’ve painted were based on quince flowers that are just starting to bloom in the garden. I’m not sure a hummingbird has ever seen a quince flower so call it artistic licence if not hehehe

Hummingbird practice sketch

They’re painted loosely and based on a Chinese brush painting style, I like the simplicity and the way they make every brush stroke count. It also stops me from overworking the painting.

2 hummingbird sketches on quince blossom

I painted quite a few sketches, they’re all very similar but I liked the image at the top best for the card, the little bird is a little rotund, obviously lots of nectar to eat around there hehehe.

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

Taking On A New Challenge

Hi there how are you?

After the marathon that is inktober I usually feel a bit flat. Drawing something every day isn’t a problem I do that any way, 5 minutes here half an hour there, mostly the drawings however are not very good. Over a normal week maybe half of my drawings are worth posting the rest are stepping stones to something else. During inktober though there has to be something postable every day!

This year I thought I would head of the burn-out by enrolling in a class. Create collections was one of the first classes that took my interest. I don’t know what a collection is or what you’re supposed to do with them but I intended to find out. ???

We started of finding colour palettes. Turns out I am already using most of my favourite colours and with a few additions they’re even more favourite hehehe.

I drew a lot of humming birds. I love the colour palette of the first one above; the others are placed against different colours to see how they looked.

This week we made a finished piece in a “collection” I thought I would use those lovely muted colours again but no, my brain had other ideas! I used a little painting of a geranium I had painted way back in August, painted some other bits and pieces to go with them and after much fiddling about came up with this.

I quite like how it turned out now but there were a few moments when I thought “why am I doing this!!” the class is full of illustrators and designers so I’m feeling a little out of my depth, all of the work I see in the class is amazing and well thought out, Then there’s me.

The challenge is on and I’m out of my comfort zone but I am drawing loads of stuff, mostly things not worth posting but there’s no sign of burn out so achievement unlocked.

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

Inktober 2019 Final Week

Hi there how are you?
Inktober is done, happy November!

It’s been an interesting and very enjoyable month, I liked the way brown paper looked when other people used it and wanted to see if I could get a similar effect.
I have used tons of pieces of paper drawing, sketching and working out ideas, hopefully it’s had impact on my drawing abilities.

1. iguana – (above)I took a photo of this iguana at the zoo, it was a bit blurry but good enough to draw from.

2. iguana – once I’d posted the iguana in instagram I realised it wasn’t quite done and needed more work, so I used my brush pen to give it a dark background and lightened the rock a little with a white gell pen, I like it a lot more now.

3. pigeons – this one made me chuckle, it was actually a photo of pigeons eating seed but once I’d drawn them it looked like two ladies having a cheery chat hehehe.

4. magpie – I love the way this one came out, I should have drawn more magpies, they look great on this paper. This was day 31 the last day of inktober

5. testers – although inktober was finished I had missed one day in the middle so I used some of the little test pieces. They were 3×3” off-cuts from the bigger pieces of paper. The two little bees were drawn with gell pens, I was missing colour and I hoped I could use the gell pens but meh, it wasn’t quite working for me. I used watercolour for two of the hummingbirds; it worked a lot better than I thought it would.

I didn’t use the prompts this year; I haven’t found a way to incorporate them into my drawings without turning out a lot of art that I feel no connection to. I have enjoyed other people’s interpretation of them though.

I enjoy the inktober challenge; somewhere in the middle I always get that low feeling of “how many more is there left to do!” If I can push through that it’s usually OK.

I never know how this month will impact on the future arty stuff I do, it’s always fascinating to see it crop up when I’m not thinking about it.

If you participated no matter how many you did congratulations and here’s to next year.

(too soon? hehehe)

Next week hopefully I will be using colour again, yay!

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