Celtic Hearts Entwined

I finished the Celtic Valentine card in a bit of a rush - like, while I was making the first cuppa on the morning of Valentine's day. I was reasonably pleased with it but the longer I looked at it the less happy I was.

So I started again.

Watercolour and coloured pencil on Fabriano Classico .5 HP 140lb. watercolour paper

Happy now Awa Rich?

Yeah, well, y'know... Get'n there.

Celtic Hearts

Last week's brief at the Putney School of Art and Design Illustration class was to create a bookmark or a Valentine's card.

Several people produced Valentines bookmarks so I was not being original. I removed some bits after the show and tell session as the general opinion was that they were unnecessary. I had to agree.

I was going to do more to it but this morning I decided it was done. There are more ideas germinating from this project.

There always are Awa Rich. Thing is to do summink about 'em!

Can you see 6 hearts?

(Watercolour and coloured pencil on 200gsm cartridge paper)

So, That was Christmas

My Christmas card this year was another in the series of warning signs, suggested by Nissa - a member of the illustration class at Putney School of Art and Design.

I created it on an iPad using Indeeo's iDraw app. This is a powerful but simple vector illustration app that does what Adobe Illustrator does but at a fraction of the price. There's also a OS X app for your Mac which syncs with the iPad app via iCloud or DropBox.

I often rough ideas out on the iPad then tidy them up on the Mac. I created this one entirely on the iPad.

Vector graphics can be tedious and time consuming to create but they have several advantages. I mentioned scalability in a previous post. Also, each item you draw remains a discrete object that can be changed easily. You can group objects and create layers, making editing easier.

When I found a problem with various components of this drawing, doing something else while thinking about it and trying out different solutions was great fun, like solving a puzzle but with something to show at the end of it. Vector graphics seem to lend themselves to iterative improvement.

I've only dabbled with vector illustration but I'm beginning to see how I can use it more effectively. The ability to create a collection of reusable objects is useful and can help cut down the time it takes to create a drawing.

The flywheel wouldn't stop spinning and I couldn't leave it alone.  There was a beautiful clear sky on Christmas eve, and a brilliant crescent moon behind the trees - so bright you could see the unlit part - Old O'Ryan marching high across the sky.

Creating the trees was interesting - here's a clue. Self similarity (for those of you who were swept along by the chaos theory fractal thing a couple of decades ago).

What that needs is a Wowl Awa Rich!

Yes, I was thinking that myself.

Just Bear, With Me

Last Friday was the last session of this year at the Putney School of Art and Design Illustration class. One or two people were collecting contact information and a couple of my classmates were enthusing about Facebook. I sent them an email a few days ago asking them to sell the benefits to me, as they both had sensible shoes on the subject.

I received a reply from one of them last night to say she hadn't forgotten about this but was up against the Dead Lions so "bear with me" - adding a comment about the oddness of that phrase, and perhaps there's a sign in there.

That's all the prompting I needed and a maelstrom of ideas swirled around my head - or was that just the wind in the poplars.

Good title for a book Awa Rich!

Here's a preliminary sketch - thanks for the nudge Sharon http://creativefoxblog.blogspot.co.uk

Just Bear, With Me

More Signs

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook for the Sign a Day Week thing.

The left hand page was inspired by the genuine HazMat sign for Oxidising Agent. You can see from the notes I was wondering what it might represent in a social context. I opted for Bad Hair Day.

The first one, which is more like the original, proved more popular. The second one seems to represent more than a bad hair day. And yes, I reused the flames from the Pants on Fire sign.

In the pages below you can see the original drawing for the Do Not Exceed the Speed of Light sign and some signage people experiencing distress as there is a problem with the toilets.

A couple of weeks ago I was having similar distress during the show and tell session in the illustration class. After several visits to the two occupied toilets I gave up and crossed my legs. Later, I stuck this sign on one of the toilet doors. I was delighted to see it was still there a week later.

Return to Stinkytown

The very first post on this blog was a recipe for curry made from flatulence inducing ingredients, inspired by the illustrated children's book Stinkytown by my friend Linda.

Click the link below to see the dummy Linda produced for the Putney School of Art and Design Children's Book Illustration class.

http://stinkytown.weebly.com