White Lumpy Weevil Drawing

Episomus turritus - shirokobuzoumushi - white lumpy weevil

A drawing in pencil and charcoal of a shirokobuzoumushi - Japanese white lumpy weevil - from some of my original photos.

Lizard Resuscitation Paisley

I found this cute & informative lizard health and safety sign on the internet today. A little bit of googling showed that it already has a long and illustrious career of being posted on the internet for giggles. There's even a tattoo...

The drawings are really quite special and so I give you: lizard resuscitation paisley *_*

Here it is:

Here's a clean, repeating tile if you need it for anything:

And the individual line drawings, just in case:

 

Orca Pod

Digital painting from back in 2003.

The Ruins

The Ruins, oils on board.

Translucent Egg Cards

I found that some of my ink drawings on certain kinds of paper looked really beautiful when viewed from the back of the page while held up to the light. I wondered how I might use this property - lapshades that reveal extra detals when the lamp is turned on sprang to mind.

So far all I have done with them is to turn them into greetings cards. I paint the picture on the front of the card, then completely cover it with a cut-out drawing of an egg. When the card is held up to the light, the original painting is revealed, shining through the egg.

Tui Nestling painting ready to be covered up by an egg!

You will need to do some tests to find a paper and painting technique that works well when held up to the light. Also a way of attaching the egg to the front of the card that doesn't show up would be good - spraymount is probably ideal, I have used double-sided sticky tape here, but you can see its outline a little.

Tui Egg and Nestling

Twisted Lizard

A little painting of a viviparous lizard - Zootoca vivipara. I've been looking at a lot of paintings by Keith Brockie recently - he's a genius.

Caledonian Pines

 Tree-fetish Tuesday #47

A handful of venerable pines in Knoydart - John Muir Trust are nurturing a new generation of scots pines in the area.

 Darranacorachs is a long abandoned farmstead deep in the spruce plantations. When I first encountered it (and painted this picture) there were still several buildings and some accompanying scots pines, but both the pines and the buildings have since been smothered in windthrown spruce trees.

Galapagos Green Turtle

Wildlife Wednesday #56

Chelonia midas - Green Turtle

Confused Little Ghost

Jormungand Pillbox

A pill box hand carved from yew wood, 2002. The interior was hollowed out using a hand drill, giving it a honecomb texture inside.

Oil Portrait

Over the last four weeks I have been learning traditional oil painting techniques for portraiture at Draw with Jake Spicer.

Below is an image sequence showing weekly progress on my practice painting.

Otters!

Wildlife Wednesday #49

A couple of unpublished story illustrations from 2003.

Poppy on the Posts

Fencepost of the Week #54

As far as I know, this never happened, but it could have! Farewell Poppy - most affectionate and much loved pet.

Ammonite

Yet another ammonite. There are no fossil records for any part of an ammonite other than their curly shells (and a small, mysterious clamshell-shaped bodypart occasionally found in association with them.) 

So, what they looked like is a legitimate subject for conjecture - their closest living relatives are squid (not nautili) and this is a pretty conservative guess as to what they might have looked like. I might try an alternative design next time - one with more face armour.

Fencepost Landscape I

This landscape painting was inspired by re-imagining this fencepost photo as a range of limestone crags.

It's a bit messy and undisciplined, which led to me doing the ammonite landscape as a reaction - which is itself a bit too tight and staid. I'm aiming for the middle-ground with my next piece.

Ammonite Landscape

First really involved painting I've done in quite a while. Ammonites make for great places to live... if they're big enough.

Draw 'Manifesto'

Saturday 3rd November was a big night for drawing in Brighton -  Draw's 6 hour themed life drawing event 'The Drawing Circus: Manifesto' The event was elegantly organised, very well attended and there was a great atmsophere in the place.

This time round I decided to work on a single long sheet of paper folded concertina-wise into a book form. 

All of my work was in charcoal with gold paint used for highlights, lending continuity to the finished product and affording me a really intensive block of practice to hone one technique.

Here is my work from the last big Draw event -> Grimm's Tales. Last time round I worked on a scroll - it was nice to not be impeded by page folds, but the finished scrolls are bulky to store and I rarely open them as they are awkward to browse.

Scrolls

I went to The Drawing Circus's Grimm Tales event on Saturday - I didn't really know what to expect except that I'd be doing a lot of drawings in a series, so I thought about buying a sketchbook just for the day. I heard that at a previous event someone came equipped with a really long sheet of paper folded up into a sketchbook concertina fashion. This sounded like a really nice idea, but it occurred to me that a scroll might work, too.

To draw on a scroll you need to modify a drawing board so that it will hold a roll of paper open and flat. Here's my solution:
- two binders (30cm rulers might be even better) gaffer-taped flat to the drawing board hold the paper flat,
- and the rolls on either side are kept furled by the use of a clothes peg on each.

Rolling on to the next empty bit of paper once a drawing is finished is a little bit more cumbersome than turning the page in a sketchbook, but you get the knack of it quite quickly. The procedure is to unpeg the right hand scroll, unroll a little more paper, peg it again, pull the paper across the board to tho the left, then unpeg the left hand scroll and take in the slack.

It is certainly an economic option - a couple of rolls of wrapping paper costing much less than most sketchbooks. And being able to unfurl the scroll and see all your drawings at once and in relation to each other is very satisfying.

They are, however, a little more bulky and less convenient to store than either sketchbooks or loose leaf drawings. They are also a little more cumbersome to peruse.

Anyway, I had a great time, got a lot of drawing practice in (approx. 55 drawings on the day!) mostly a bit scrappy. Next time I'll make a point of getting to one of the longer poses at some point to mix things up a bit.

The other new discovery I made this week was using gold paint for highlights on my sketches - very eyecatching, as long as the background is sufficiently dark. I have an oil-based gilt paste that works pretty well when applied with the finger. I think it's mostly intended for craftwork rather than painting.

Thanks very much to Jake and everyone else involved in making Grimm Tales such a awesome day out - there was a real buzz in the place. Looking forward to the next drawing circus. :-)

Badgers

Wildlife Wednesdays #23

So... what kind of wildlife has Brighton got going for it? Top of my list has to be badgers - there is a healthy badger population in the surrounding countryside and in the city itself. Being shy and mostly nocturnal, I might not get any good photo opportunities, so here's a picture instead.

Badger footprints are one of the most distinctive animal tracks in the UK - look for the broad heel pad, with four toes in front and one a little to the side - almost like a pudgy human hand - and the big claw points some distance ahead of each toe.

There are plenty more kinds of wildlife that I am looking forward to encountering now that I'm down here - dormice and crayfish and Lewes's burgeoning marsh frog population, and hopefully grass snakes.

Walk The Eck Flyer

I was asked to do a generic background image for all the flyers for forthcoming Walk the Eck guided walks. If you're in the area check them out - they will be great excursions despite my absence. 

Here's the finished painting:

Now that I'm in Brighton, hopefully I will find the time to brush up on my ink-wash techniques - I feel I could do so much better...