Blue Morpho

I went to the Horniman (fnurk) Museum. It rained a lot. It has a butterfly house. In the butterfly house was an amazing iridescent blue butterfly called the ‘Blue Morpho’. It was beautiful. I very nearly bought a print from the gift shop afterwards, but I didn’t. I thought that if I cared enough when I got home, I could paint my own. I did, so I did.

I didn’t get very far. I intended to do a really detailed painting, but I was doing it from an image I found online. I’ve always had a bee in my bonnet about drawing or painting from photos, so the thought of spending many hours working on this was pretty unsatisfying. So I stopped.

This story isn’t over though. I found a kind someone in Bristol that has a real framed blue morpho who offered to lend it to me to finish the painting. One day.

Life Drawing March 23rd

So ends another all too brief (half a…) term

Not sure if I’m going to make it to next to term. I’m too deep in to speaker building and a DJ world at the moment so drawing might have to stay on the back burner for a bit :/

Who knows though. Can’t plan much at the moment in this wibbly wobbly world xx

Life Drawing March 9th 2017

Starting to get a bit bored of water colour and line, still enjoying it though

Time to come up with some new experiments… any ideas?

Life Drawing March 2nd 2017

Life drawing. From Life. With Paint.

Bottom left is may fave.

Barry Whale and the Underwaves

Finished my painting last week. Dubbed “Barry Whale and the Underwaves” (thanks Dad!)

Sploshed in the BG

Bought a new fancy 36 set of half pans. Didn’t use it. #facepalm

Peeled off the masking fluid

It was terrifying. Again.

I think I should have let it dry more. I was a bit over-enthusiastic to see the results

But it just about worked. Knackered the paper here and there. And I had to touch up some of the inking. Nothing major

Boshed on with the colouring paying scant regard to what it would look like. Couldn’t decide whether to colour “Robbie ‘the rock’ Lobster” natural blue or red. Daughter chose red.

Finished it and got it framed the next day at the local framery. Framey. Frame. Frame. McFrame Face.

And somehow completely forgot to take a photo of the finished thing in my haste. Now its hung above my daughter’s bed.

So I just snuck in to take a cheeky snap. She didn’t wake up. Phew. #dadlife

Using Masking Fluid is Terrifying

…and knackers your brushes. Which is not entirely unexpected. So don’t use good brushes.  I took my own advice.

I finished the inking last night (this morning… *yawn). Showed it to my daugther this morning (the world’s harshest critic, after my wife). Her favourite was Gerry Shark, but apparently she loved the rest too. Bless. She also dropped the bomb that she (*eyelash flutter…) wants to help me paint it. Eep. Erm, OK.

I figured that I can get her to drip some paint on to the background for the sea and stuff. As long as I mask out the main characters which I’ll paint later, it should be alright… right?

Masking fluid is weird stuff. I’m sure there must be some sort of proper way to paint it only a google away. But, Sunday.

Colourful Fish

Colourful fish are colourful

Apologies for the bad photo. Its Monday.

Colouring Ronnie and Reggie

Did some painting. BG first, then detail.

Started on the fish. Detail first, probably no BG.

Fun, had.

Barry Whale Does A BIG Splash

I wanted to paint the first Barry Whale, but was scared of ruining it, so I knocked out a second 5 min test Illustration last night.

When I proudly showed Daughter #1 my efforts this morning, she loved the test image (because Barry Whale was doing a big splash) and barely noticed the one I took ages doing. Typical.

So I had a bash painting it with Watercolours and white acrylic highlights. Nice to be flexing the artistic muscles again, I’m enjoying it. Got more plans in the pipeline.

Decks Picture Technical Drawing 5

Finished blocking out the line drawing. Phew.

 

Still lots to do. Get the z order sorted and block out as white to do that. Then start colouring.

Also had a bit of an epiphany with how to test the painting on canvas technique with acrylics. More to follow.