Next stage of commission

Hi All
For all those who know me you'll probably remember that I've been working for over 2 years on a commission for a group who work in the gaming industry. Well last week I have been given some more work to complete the project. Although I cant tell you whats it's about nor can  I show any of the drawings I've done, due to copyright, I can discuss the process with you!
As mentioned before you will all find your own process by which to work by, but I find with most professional artist's - we all start in our sketch books..
So in mine there is now experiments with the formats for the final pieces as well as the first sketches of creatures that require some dynamic gestures. As you can imagine if you don't understand anything about anatomy then your going to struggle with doing any believable figures whether they be animals, humans, android's, aliens and beasts or what ever you think of . 
While doing my first few sketches which should have been relatively easy, turned out to be more time consuming than expected, why? because i didn't have a firm grasp of quadrupeds and their anatomy.

Moral of story?? study the basics first! - bones and muscle are probably the most you'll need know as an artist. This will give you some aspects of perspective to.There a number of good artist anatomy books out there, find one and take your time to draw each section, and another thing don't just draw these parts just once it's not enough to help you learn properly nor is it helpful in using what you have just learnt in other pictures. So utilising what you have learnt wont be evident in your later works!

Michelangelo

Leonardo Da vinci 

Leonardo da vinci

They did, so can you.

New challenge fill those sketch books with anatomy!!

hows it going?

Hi All
Has anyone started their story yet? anyone started doing sketches in their sketch books?
Well I have I started with some ideas that are based on the key elements of the story I remember. This is opposed to reading the story again just yet, because I wanted to let a little more imagination take place.
And as memories play tricks on us I thought it would interesting to see what I come up with.

As you know I chose Alice in Wonderland, while I was thinking about the things I remembered from the story - I realised that I could separate certain elements from "Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass".
So I have decided to continue with this for a little while longer until I feel it necessary to get the stories straight. I also thought about the original author and how he had come to write it. It was quite interesting to find out who Lewis Carroll was and what kind of life he would have had, and who was Alice? Alice Liddell that who she was, with this in mind I want to now do some drawings in ink of the real Alice - who by the way had short black bobbed hair. There's alot to play with in the history of the story so I'm going add some of the real life stuff into the drawings, such as the tiny door - which was the canon's garden gate at the cathederal where Alice and sibblings where not allowed to play, but could only look through the gate. The rabbit hole referred to the quick passage the deacon took to get home from the Cathederal to his home.

 Ooo theres so much to play with, this could take a great deal longer than I had antisipated, so I decided to start with little pen drawings which I have been doing on trading cards and postcards. This was in the hope it would take quite so long!!! Wrong...... it's just as long as I dont generally do things too small.
The next problem is where do you keep all these little cards so they dont get mucked up?

In a scrapbook! thats where - I had to construct this from board that you can buy from making little scrapbooks. I'm not sure which is taking more time?

Your turn!!! try combining some of the crafts you do with your drawing/painting and see what happens.

I've been using trading and postcards in watercolour paper all available from the SAA (society for all artists) which means I can add colour if I want to, at a later stage. remember you can have more fun in your sketch books where you can experiment with lots of different looks.

New Website

Hi All

I had a thought this morning, that I should probably be spending most of my time working on my new website, but as it,s the summer hols I've spent most of time with my youngest trying to sort out their bedroom. Who would have thought that it would have taken 8 hours a day to go through all their stuff and rearrange the place. While we were doing this we came across some old art work stuffed behind the beds and wardrobes -belonging to my youngest, who immediately said "throw that" didn't even think twice. Only one did she keep! her Viking boat. Perhaps we should all take a leaf from a child's book, children don't seem to view their art the same way adults do. Children don't think about these pieces as works of art that are precious, they just see them for what they really are -  something I did but can do AGAIN!!! only this time better.

While I was there I found sketch books from my eldest who is a little more proficient in her drawing and I don't think there was a clean page in it, the corners where all turned up, fingerprints, smudges, doodles at the side of a drawing that have no relation to the piece, and tears through the some of the pages. Again no fear - of the white page and no fear of getting it wrong. And when it isn't right they have no fear of starting again!
So how many of you can say the same?
Which brings on to my point about about the website - after having lost the original work of the web site, I started again from scratch, only do the same thing again, by that I mean, I worked for hours on a page then forgot to save it properly. so when I went back to it the next day I could find it and had to start again - for the third time. Now going back to the child book thing above, having lost the work for a second time I decided that I was going to re-illustrate a child's book that would then become the website and now have a theme to it. I chose Alice in Wonderland, always one of my favourites and if you do the research in to it's author it's even more interesting.
So you know that sketch book challenge I gave you - why don't you try taking a book and creating the illustration s to it???

oh the wounders of technology!!

Hi All
The title should say it all, but of course it doesn't, i hope what happened to me doesn't happen to any of you.
This week while working on my new website I managed to delete everything from my computer by accident!
That is everything from my photos to my new web pages which I'd spent months working on. I know your all asking how do you manage that - well it's like this you see - i run vista on my laptop which has this stupid hover mode on it, so the cursor when moved over anything will automatically take you to or do what it hovers over. So this means as I type this I don't need to use the cursor so it's left somewhere at the edge of the work, but in my case my cursor will jump to where it's left and continue typing where it jumped to.
With most things I'm usually very careful because i know this can happen but what happened on this particular occasion took me by surprise. I was trying to delete a file and left my mouse right at the top of the page sort of on the address bar. I was using the nav keys to go through the files and delete the ones I don't want, while doing this I get a dialogue box come up asking me if i want to delete this file, which of course I do because that's what i working on - only i didn't realise that the next box says are you sure you want to delete files? I hit the enter button to confirm but still hadn't read the whole sentence which must have said permanent delete on it.
Well i could have died when I realised what was happening - the cursor which was now hovering over the very top bar which read C:/computer/pictures and was hurriedly deleting all my files PERMANENTLY!!
Shock horror nothing i can do, but try to find a piece of software that will retrieve them.
I find one but it wont restore them in one piece their fragmented so I still cant use them.
Losing 4 months of website building was bad enough but when i realise that some of my photos of paintings I'd done had gone I was mortified. Many of these don't belong to me anymore and we have no idea who purchased them.
Don't you just love computers!!!
Guess what I'll be doing all summer ha ha
Moral of story make sure you back up everything somewhere else!!
Back to the drawing board.

recording your progress

Hi All
I've just finished teaching for another day, and one of the things that struck during the lesson was that students and sometimes myself, don't have evidence of the their progression through the one piece their working on. During many lessons due to time constraints we neglect to start with the basic drawing in our sketch books and the all the refinements that go with that.
So for me my process would start with research first of chosen subject then a series of sketches - not just one. All writing and notes should be your sketch with your first initial sketches. Many times I find students telling themselves they are unable to draw something again but all should be in the habit of repeating the draw/sketch multiple times.
This process alone benefits the understanding of the form your drawing but also other components such tonal value, perspective, negative spaces, colour theory, composition and use of equipment and supports.
Might sound like a lot to get round but like everything, if you repeat it numerous times you'll remember it and use more often.
The other benefit of this process is to explore the subjects and expand the imagination, how many of you have told yourself you have an imagination?? not true it's all there your just not using it. So I challenge you to take a sketch book and fill it with only one subject but explore it from different angles and even close up and then change some of the aspects of it. Then try changing the format from say rectangle to square or to very narrow to horizontal or even vertical. Then you could play around with different media or colour changes.
Guess what I'm off to do now?? exactly what i preach - I'm off to my sketch pad where I'm going to explore some more ink drawings for my website. Talking of which I'm looking at creating an all new website called INKSTIC hence the ink drawings!!!  ciao for now xxx

I posted a while back that I had thrown out some of my early work from college and school. Well I thought you might like to see of the stuff I saved to remind how far I'd come! If there is any one else out there who wants me to show of their early work feel free to email. While looking at these remember I only had poster paint and charcoal to use for most the work and few pastels. My kit's got a lot more involved since then, and a lot more expensive. Workman and tools springs to mind!!! hope you enjoy. 

The first one below was done when I was 14/15 years old and the charcoal ski boots was a still life I did when I was 16 it got a grade A but not for me, for someone else who pilfered it from my portfolio.

this one is a life drawing done in college of my friend Maria Juan Branco of 

Portugal

This one is the first ever etching I got to do, the brief was to Illustrate a poem or something to do with the weather. I ended up doing a colour version but even at college I would revert back to my Rotring Isograph pens. I'm still using them even now, yesterday I managed another 2 pen sketches on water colour post cards, it's not really the right surface to be using the rotring pens on as the surface drags up and sticks to the very fine nib. So you can only do a little work before having to wipe the nib carefully, not my forte! f your wondering what they should be used on it's Bristol board, it has a very smooth surface that wont cause the nib to drag fibres up. Anything with a very smooth or even slightly shiny surface works well too.

It's a way of keeping your eye in and exploring ideas on a smaller scale that could potentially become a bigger more in depth piece. I'll upload them in a couple of days when I've photographed them.

I thought I might take one of the pieces from school and redo it to see how much of a learning curve I've travelled, it could be quite interesting. But for now I'm still concentrating on my website I can it taking a lot of months to put together. Till the next time  try redoing a piece from your past and post it on here if you like!!

Kat  

web design

 Hi All

I'm still trying to  learn how to use Dreamweaver to build my website but so far I have been unable to design it the way I want it. So I'm doing a mock up in serif webplus so at least I can have something to show for all the time I've sent on it.

I wanted to show you all I've been busy doing some art work for the website, I wanted some fun pieces done in ink and water colour

These are a few of the paintings I have managed to do all on a similar theme, I sat and wrote myself a list of just of the pictures I wanted in my website, I gave up after 1/2 an hour as the list was getting to long. So I just made a start with these and some small ink drawings.

You wouldnt believe how difficult it is to get a hompage the way you want it when your an artist, but I;m determined that one day I'll crack it. 

I've been asked what colours I'm using as they are rather bright, well I'm hooked on W/N Opera rose and Schminke's may green, and cadmuim red pale, you'd be surprised at the flesh tones I've been able to get from these 3 colours, I love the cleaness of the rose and the green and the vibrancy I can get.

Why not try permenate rose if you dont have opera rose and green gold these also make fab flesh tones, do yourself a colour swatch first so you can see just what they can do.

I'll leave with that one!!!

Kat