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Showing posts from August, 2012

Colour seascape from an old graphite pencil drawing: Derwent Artbars and Derwent A3 hard back sketch pad

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Detail of the rocks and grass I'm suffering withdrawal symptoms, not having been to the coast in ages due to family health issues.  So I got out some pencil drawings, done in a sketchbook last year, and decided to work from them in colour. I've sketched and painted in the area a lot over the years and  so have lots of memories of the changing colours - the turquoises and deep blues of the sea on a fine day, the jade/viridian of shallow water, the pink and mauve reflections on the wet sand, the misty soft colours of the far off rain clouds and the currents, movement and drama of the sea. The rocks here are sort of warm honey colours, though they change in less than  a mile to deep dark granite. detail 2 The finished image - which loses something in photographing it - the very  softest, palest colours never pick up well.  There are more pale, cool neutrals in the sand than show here.  Finished piece It's worked entirely with Derwen...

Illustrations and absence

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 Quick doodle, planning for illustrated book, Sam doing his tables, watched by Lucy, pencil in S&B sketchbook Sam is nearly 5 and addicted to maths (I'd think he must be a changeling if he wasn't the image of his father!)  so I thought I'd do a times tables book for him with illustrations. He was working out the odds on horse racing with his grandfather last week - having asked what the numbers 10:1 onscreen meant.  We were working out what happened if you put £3, £8, £10 etc on instead and what your winnings would be - he rattled off the answers.  Maybe not quite the way his teachers intended tables to be learned! This is a preliminary doodle, thinking how to go about designing the book. And these ............ ........... are ideas for showing the multiples for 5x and 3x - the problem is by the time you get up to 12x12, that's a lot of little images!  So how to solve?   Go for simpler shapes?  have fold out pages?   ...