My new blog is up and running – not finished yet, there’s still more to add, but I’ve made the first post today. After a false start, I’ve actually gone over to Typepad – I can do pretty much everything I want to with it, and it’s rather easier than setting up a WordPress blog with a host. So I’m sorry WordPress, I loved you, but we must part because I’m not a techie

Anyway, please come and say hello!

(I’m leaving this blog up though, as it’s an archive of my direct response drawings).

Strong Arvid

isn’t he just – a direct response drawing with details (and weights) added afterwards.

This is another one which has it’s origins in the incomparable Swedish Outdoor Life.

Things have been busy round here – and hot! It’s so stuffy here. August has wrapped us in a warm damp blanket – urgh. Still the corn is high, the courgettes are coming on and we have a bumper crop of garlic and red onoins to lift and dry this weekend – so it’s not all bad.

An update on the Lauren Nassef/Samantha Beeston issue – SB has stolen more than 32 drawings by Lauren – and a few others by other illustrators too. There are images of her website on Book-by-it’s-Cover and even her header was one of Lauren’s drawings. Incredible! What was this girl thinking?! I’m astounded.

I’ve just discovered that one of my favourite contemporary illustrators has had her work stolen and used by a young British designer by name of Samantha Beeston. Not only that but Beeston won an award for the work – but of course, it’s precisely because she won the award that she has been discovered – poetic justice, I think.

You can see Lauren Nassef’s extraordinary drawings here: http://www.laurennassef.com/

And some photos of Beeston with the stolen images here:

http://www.texprint.org.uk/2009/winners_2009.htm
http://www.newdesigners.com/page.cfm/Action=ExhibitorLibrary/LibraryID=3/ProductID=327/viewHiRes=_self/

I’m appalled that she did this and staggered that she thought she could get away with it.

Since copyright law applies regardless of whether one displays a copyright statement on one’s blog or not (or so I understand it anyway!) I have never displayed a statement, but clearly there are people out there who need constantly reminding that plagiarism is not only morally repugnant, it isTHEFT.

Running on the Beach

This one’s taken from another photo in Swedish Outdoor Life.

I’ve been neglecting this blog I know – the last couple of weeks have been, not exactly busy (I have ME: life is never busy exactly!), but by my rather low standards, full. I’m adjusting to pacing myself so I avoid crashing out completely, I’ve had a medical assessment that I found rather stressful and I’m doing an online course, which is fabulous (more about this another day) but takes up a lot of time.

And then there is the Exciting Thing.

The Exciting Thing? The Thing that is so Exciting it warrants capital letters? Yes that Thing. And what is it? I’m going to be featured in Carla Sonheim’s fabulous new book, Drawing Lab!. Oh yes I am! Now how great is that?!

So much so that I had to spend some time simply being excited. I know. But really, I am only 6 years old you know, I just have a large vocabulary so you think I’m 43.

Drawing Lab is aimed at mixed media artists who would like to include drawing in their work, and it’s going to be full of interesting, varied and most of all fun drawing assignments. I am so honoured that Carla asked me to be a part of this. It will be out in 2010, which is not too far away now….

Red Dragon Pie

Bliss Balls

Recipe for a Food Coop

I did these illustrations a while ago – they are for my local food coop – they are going to be screenprinted onto aprons, bags and tea-towels and I can’t wait to see them finished!

Give yourself a treat – SuziBlu’s hilarious but salutary re-telling of the story of Persephone. Must see viewing for all girls (no matter how old) everywhere. You will see hats at first, then Suzi gives a little intro. It does take a while to load as the whole film is about 30 mins long, but it’s worth it!

So in my last post I said I was building a webiste…well it ain’t going well! I thought (oh my arrogance!) that as I was familiar with WordPress (I’ve used it for three years in the free version) using it with a host, as my content manager, would be reasonably straightforward. It. Is. Not. It just all seems to be very technically demanding and I have few techy skills. Added to this, WordPress has been updated and there are one or two glitches…and, frankly since it’s been three weeks and I haven’t even got the thing off the ground yet – I haven’t posted or uploaded any content – I’m putting it on hold. So scrap that last post, for now drawing diary stays right here!

And so here are a few more sketches:

Hungry Man I

Hungry Man II

Hungry Man Satisfied

I hope you are all having less technologically frustrating times

The announcements first I think Dave and I are now engaged to be married! Actually he asked me two weeks ago but I now have my ring back from the jewellers (it was resized) so it feels more real. We are so happy. And happy with the ring too – it’s an antique, Victorian, which means we avoided the blood diamonds issue and it came from a charity so the money we spent went to a hospice. Good all round, I say.

And the second announcement is that I am setting up a website – I’m using wordpress as my content manager so the front page will be a blog and drawing diary will be moving over to the new site. It will be renamed though. I’ll leave this blog up however, as I wont be transferring all the content. This means that updates here will be a little sporadic until the new site is live.

So to the life drawings – I love life drawing but unfortunately there isn’t a good class I can attend locally so I was really pleased to find this site – there are videos of real models posing – and you can also download files of images for drawing reference. There are also a number of tutorials and articles too – all excellent. The snag is you have to pay for it: a monthly sub of $12.95, but they have a trial deal up at the moment – you can join for a week for a dollar to try it.

The following are some drawings I made from the four minute pose video, with a male model – I did them all using continuous line without looking at the paper – fun.

Life Drawing: one - four

Life Drawing Five

I was in town with Dave on Wednesday – or rather, he was in town, I sat in a cafe for most of the time – after we’d done the errands which needed both of us anyway. I didn’t do much sketching being way too hot and way too tired (we’re having a heatwave here and us poor Brits are just not used to it). I did try doing a continuous line drawing with my brush pen though:

i founf this more difficult with a brush – the fibres are so flexible it’s almost impossible to tell whether the brush is hitting the paper or not unless you are looking. Consequently the direct response drawing I tried was a complete failure – most of it wasn’t even there! I had just drawn it in the air.

Anyway, I did another but with my fountain pen:

And rounded off with a portrait of the first chap with the brushpen. I didn’t finish it though:

It looks set to be a hot weekend – I hope you all have a good one and happy Independence day to all you Americans out there!

Pierre Bonnard

This was an interesting exercise – it’s based on one I found in Charles Reid’s book The Natural Way to Paint.

Firstly I did a continuous line drawing (which CR, confusingly, refers to as a contour drawing) of Pierre Bonnard from the photo in the book. Then, as Reid instructs, I squinted at the photo to see where tonal boundaries are strong, and where they are almost indistinguishable – I then erased the lines which divided the areas of the same or similar tone. Then I mapped out the areas of tone and added hatching.

Because I was working on brown paper I then finished with some white. Because the photo had little tonal variation, but I was working on brown paper, I found it almost impossible to give an accurate rendering of the tones, nevertheless I like the overall effect – despite the inaccuracies in the original drawing (I didn’t make any corrections when I was erasing lines).

Reid’s book is interesting – I like his approach – I also like the fact that he spends some time talking about brush handling and delivering paint to the paper – which he seems to do rather differently to many others. If you like loose watercolours with plenty of wet-in-wet techniques and would like to explore painting figures I recommend it.