Day 15: Baby Penguins
Still working on catching up with #The100DayProject animals ... so here's a few baby penguins for it! If you'd like to see the rest of them, click HERE. I've a lot of catching up to do, so off I go to pick another animal, though I may concentrate on panda bears for the next few days as practice for my book illustrations.
Drawn with Derwent water-soluble sketching pencils, painted with Winsor and Newton watercolours, in a Stillman & Birn zeta sketchbook. Cheers.
via www.marianablackillustration.com
Day 4: Baby Armadillo
It's not that I have so much free time on my hands that I have to join a Drawing A Day challenge (cue hysterical laughter here) -- it's that I really really need to draw a lot of animals for these books I'm illustrating, so when the opportunity came up to join #The100DayProject on Instagram, I immediately grabbed at it. Forcing myself to get started on those animals, particularly ones that are in some way related to the panda bear and elephant habitats.
To read the rest of the post, please click here: 100 Days of Animals.
I've been playing with panda bears again, this time on linocuts. Considering making some greeting cards out of these prints, what do you think? Here are a few more experiments: Playful Panda Prints.
I've been trying to work out of that box, to leap from my safe comfort zone. Not an easy thing let me tell you, despite the fact that I'm a huge fan of change and of learning new things in life and of fearlessly (ahem) exploring the unknown.
I've also been known to dip my toe in the water, scream "argh it's freezing!!" (slightly colder than tepid) and dash wimpily off across the sand as fast as I can manage. So. Not as easy as it seems. Still, here are my (artistic) attempts at leaping into that crazily unsafe unfamiliar space ... first, in painting as loosely as possible, and second, at carving rather than drawing ...
I'll admit that they aren't what I'd call works of art (or vastly different from my norm) but that's not what I was trying to achieve. I'm just experimenting, enjoying something new. I'll get there, bit by bit.
These were done as part of my college course, and will be reblogged over at my children's illustration blog, so to take a peek at that, just click HERE.
This was an experiment. I was feeling relatively blocked and unmotivated when, in ceramics class, one of my tutors -- knowing me quite well by now (have I mentioned the amazing tutors we have at my course at Banbury College yet?) -- brandished a paintbrush and a set of watercolour underglaze for ceramics. Seriously? Wow, why hadn't anyone shown me these before? So I played around with them on a tile I'd made of paper clay. I'm not all that happy with the end result but loved the process and am planning on making and painting more, with relish.
I shall have to consider adding some of these to my own private stash of paints. Meanwhile have a fantastic week. Cheers.
This was originally posted up on my new illustration site, so I'm linking to it here: Mariana Black Illustration. I'm trying to find some way of being less repetitive with the blogs, and sharing illustrations over both without getting too annoying about it! I may end up putting different ones here and there and just carry on linking to both with different news on each blog ... let's hope that works!
Meanwhile, here are my latest sketches of elephants and pandas, as research for my children's illustrations. Just getting to know the animals a bit better ...
I'll be spending more time this week on my art and college work and posting all of that up here, so please do pop by soon for a peek. Cheers.
Just a quick glimpse at what I'm playing with right now ... more elephants of course. Though I shall be starting on a new animal soon as well. Experimenting, I love it.
Wishing you a wonderful week. Cheers.
I've illustrated flying elephants before, and even tried updating the older version (click here to see it - Illustration: Flying Elephants) a while back. There's something about the image of these colourful elephants flying joyfully across the sky that attracts me, so I thought, as I'm drawing elephants at the moment anyway, that I'd give it another try. This time in watercolour.
The above image is the final scan knitted together (it's on an A3 page and I only have an A4 scanner so I had to piece it together in Photoshop.
Here are a few of the progress shots ...
What do you think? I'm going to have to tweak them further digitally, clean them up a bit, then start placing them on products at my online stores as I'm actually quite pleased with the result.
Have to dash as I'm about to go away for a week. I've just moved home too, so blogging has been erratic. Please bear with me while I get my life back into some semblance of order and start having fun with my art once more. Cheers.
I've been hugely busy, and at the moment my life has been turned upside-down while I explore new horizons that lie before me, but I'm also slowly getting back into my work routine ... with exciting projects coming up that I'm already in love with.
I'll elaborate on those projects (that will be incorporated into my coursework for next year as well) a bit later on, but here's a hint:
I'll just add that it's something I've wanted to do for years but never quite had the confidence to tackle before ... It's going to be a lot of fun!
With that in mind, I enrolled in a couple of online classes as refreshers and also to learn something about the practical side of illustrating children's books. I've just started on the first one, Picture Book Illustration: Animal Characters by Eric Johnson, on Craftsy, and have been sketching elephants for the first class. Still need to do more drawings and still need to learn a lot more about them, but here's a bit of a start:
I'm also being reminded of how grounding and therapeutic just having a pen, pencil, or brush in my hand is. I've missed it these last few weeks. As it is, I shall be moving house very soon so things will get slightly chaotic once more, but I'm sticking to my art therapy - I need it.
Cheers.
