Dancing in the dark

A friend asked recently if I could make a gift for her brother from some favourite song lyrics. Usually when I do a gift it's because I've had an idea myself, so it was a bit different to work to match her plan for what he would like. It took a bit of effort to make the shape of the person recognisable (I'm not used to doing specific figures/people, just generic "people shapes"), but I think I got there in the end. Hope he liked it!

Quilling on canvases

It's November, so that means it's time to be sorting out Christmas presents. Not mine though: I have a few commissions I need to sort out that are going to be used as Christmas gifts, so I need to concentrate on them.

Before that though, I did a few other quilled items to put in my Etsy shop, one's a new design for a commission, and the other one I've done plenty of times before, but not for a while. I like doing the mini canvases, they frame the quilling really well, in a compact space. So here they are! :)

Rabbit

Ladybird

I suppose I'd better get back to those commissions now - I love commissions, but they can be tricky to do when you're being asked to do something that someone else is imagining rather than you!

A day of presentations means a day of doodles

I had a full day of training recently, but there wasn't much I needed to make notes on during the day, so I filled my time with some doodling again.

Morning session, part 1

Morning session, part 2

Afternoon session, part 1

Afternoon session, part 2

I put them in my Etsy shop - doodles for all!

From a mental to a manatee

I  take part in a mentoring scheme for my professional body. I refer to myself as a mental rather than a mentor, and my mentees get used to being called manatees. Recently, one of my current mentees nominated me for an award, and somehow, I won it! She joked that she wanted 10% of the prize, which I swiftly agreed to (while declaring that she should have asked for more, but a deal's a deal... ;) ). As a thank-you for the effort she had to put in to somehow making me sound good, I thought I'd make her a wee gift, to go along with her cheque....so this is the development of a manatee :)

 First came the drawing, sketched from one I found online. Theses sort of filigree filled drawing need clear and simple outlines, so I quite often look for line drawing versions of the shape I need, so I can see how things look when broken down into simple parts. Then I sketch my own take on them.

Then I duplicated the sketch onto a watercolour postcard, and inked the outline over the pencil.

I started to do the filigree infill, but it became clear that the body outline could end up a bit lost.

So I started to thicken the outline, while making sure the filigree stayed a wee bit clear of it, and kept filling.

I wasn't quite sure how to deal with the snout, so I left it alone for a while to think about it, and kept filling.

And filling...until finally...

 A completed manatee!

All ornate and fun!

I sent the manatee off to my mentee this week, and she received it today, so now I can post this without it giving away the surprise! Thanks for nominating me, Miss M!

Starry, Doodled Night

I had been doing another drawing yesterday (which I can't unveil yet), and still feeling in the mood to craft, I asked for ideas of what to draw next. Mobeena Khan (@greebstreebling) suggested Starry Night, by Van Gogh. Replicating famous art isn't something I've ever done before, but when I looked more closely at the original, I felt I could see a way to do it. So I sketched in in pencil some main shapes that I could pick out from the swirls:

Then I started to draw things in a bit more "properly", and thicken up some of the original thin ink lines, and begin with the filigree doodle infill:

And continue with the infill...and add the details to the sky:

And keep going with the doodles and details until it felt like every space that needed it was filled.

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. I'm thinking about getting prints made of this one, whenever I get a chance to get to the print shop. It's half the usual size of the prints I get made though, so I'm not entirely sure the print shops machines can cope with how small it is!

Anyway, I'll leave you with the lovely Starry Starry Night by Don McLean.

Another conference, another doodle...or four

I was at a conference all day today, so I put my "brain's listening, hands are drawing" approach into action again, and occupied my hands with a watercolour postcard pad and a 0.05 nib pens.
This is the result:

 Introduction and First Keynote Speaker

Session on "Professional Knowledge and Skills Base"

Parallel session on a CPD23 experience

Final session keynote - it started as nothing and ended up suggesting itself as a bat

All of these postcards are rehomed or on offer to people - some of them to the people whose sessions I drew them in. I hope they're not offended, but it really is something I do to keep my hands busy, while my brain is occupied listening!

Another meeting, another doodle...

I had a 2.5 hour meeting at work recently. As it covered everything the whole department was doing, there was very little input I could make so I was mainly there to listen. Of course, when listening, my ears and brain are in use..but my hands and eyes are free, so doodling tends to happen.

This one ended up with a shape forming suggesting it be a floating island in the sky, with a volcano pouring smoke out of the top...

A great ape

A while ago, I went to visit a friend in London. I wanted to bring her a personal gift, and I knew she liked orangutans, so...

I found a good clear and translatable-into-simple lines image online, and a poem mentioning orangutans, which begins "Purple orangutans hurtle through space", which I used to overwrite the lines. By the way, you have no idea how tricky it was to find a "fun" poem about orangutans!

So, I put them together, and this was the result - I think he's got a cheeky look to him!

The joy of meetings

I attended a "summit" at a previous workplace a few months ago. Although the content of it was reasonably interesting/capable of keeping me awake, I had a notepad, and no real notes worthy of taking.
So, instead, I doodled.

This just started out as a random shape, and as it grew, I started to see what i thought was a shape in it, so I built it from there.
Tempted now to do a similar one for prints, in the style of the maps - draw an outline, and fill it with doodles, but in this case, then remove the outline.

Whaddya think - a design worth me doing?

A rather pleasant pheasant

My neighbour, who commissioned me to make a duck as a gift for a friend of hers, then followed that up with asking me to create a male pheasant in flight for another gift. You can tell what one of her hobbies is!

So, a distinctive bird like a pheasant is good in some ways, and bad in others. It's recognisable enough that it can be stylised into certain shapes and still be recognisable - good. But if it's so recognisable, it has to be done well in order to look right. - bad.

So, on Sunday, I spent 7 hours sketching, experimenting, and fiddling, until I finally made something that I'm kind of proud of!

It began with the eye and head/neck. I needed to roll two colours of paper as one strip to get the green/blue tone I wanted. I tried doing the red area and the green/blue area with metallic papers to begin with, but the don't stick well to each other at the best of times, and couldn't cope with the pressure I was putting them under.

The head then gained a white neck section, a dash under the eye, and the distinctive narrow beak.

This is what took all the time: translating that drawing there into a self-supporting multi-level 3D piece!

This is the nerve-racking stage: I know what I want it to look like, I just have to believe that it WILL end up looking that way, despite appearances!

I completed one wing, and I really quite like the "powering forward, wing caught mid-beat" effect that a single wing gives, but I'd got everything ready for a second wing, so...

I completed it with two wings, yay!

Fly, little pheasant, fly!!

And, of course, what's better than one pheasant? Two pheasants! 

I created a duplicate bird to check how long it would take me to make it again in future, and have a blank to work from if I want to do another. It took me over 3 hours to make the duplicate, so I think this one will never really be cost effective to make, unless people would be willing to pay £60 or so for a paper bird!

A personalised map of South America

A friend wanted a memento of his daughter's travels around South America, marking events and places personal to her, so he asked me to create a personalised map relating to her trip. It was an ongoing process, as we worked out how it was going to work, so to begin with, I started off by doing the outline of South America...

Then, it was decided that rather than doing the whole continent, I'd only fill in the countries that the daughter had actually visited, so I went back, and outlined the countries. I also got information on the things that the daughter had been up to, and I started working out which of those I could recreate recognisably in a tiny stylised way, and began placing them in pencil around the map in the appropriate places.

Once the main items were in place, as I waited for more information on Brazil activities, I began to darken the country borders to make them clearer when the doodles were in, and began doodling in the edges. I really quite liked it at this point, with just touches of filigree at various random places.

Once I had the final bits of information, I got going on the filling in. So, 8 hours of work later, this is the final map, incorporating llamas, quad bikes, cycling, wineries, lots of drinking, Gay Pride, many credit and debit card losses, a capybara, a boat ride, Machu Picchu, a bungee jump, a piranha, a inter-peak cable basket, lots of hiking, a sloth, an anaconda, a cockroach, a phone in a drink, a waterfall, and the staple of travellers everywhere, table tennis.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and hopefully the recipient will be too :D

Pride and Prejudice

Someone on Twitter suggested that Jane Austen would be a good image to do, so I went looking for an image of her online. I'm not a great reader of that sort of classic literature, and I've never read anything by her, but I've been to Bath, so I know that there's a recognisable silhouette of her. Luckily, as it was drawn many many years ago, it's out of copyright, so I was able to use this for my drawing.

Then, since I'm not a fan of her books, I needed some help with what would be a relevant quote. For something like this, I need a fair chunk of text, but it needs to be able to cut off when I run out of space, and still remain coherent. It helps if the sentences are short too! So, I got a few good suggestions, and I used the text listed below to make the final version:

""In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit."

And then, after I put that in my shop, I added a postcard version too :D 

At some point, I'll need to get to the print shop to get some prints made of the large original, but right now, I'm just too busy!

I don't always get it right....

Recently, I made a fantasy island map. I took my time, and filled it all in: lovely. I crumpled it up, as part of the ageing process: good. Then I did the next step: singing the edges. Unfortunately, in this case, the singe became a burn! It unexpectedly caught light, and ate into the body of the map, and it was quite a struggle to stop it from burning up the whole map!

Gah: what a waste of time and effort! It's eaten too deep into the paper for the map to look nice, so I can't sell it. Oh well!

The Walrus and the Carpenter

I asked on Twitter what classic texts I should think about doing next, and one suggestion was the Walrus and the Carpenter, from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass". A walrus is a nice, recognisable shape, so last night, I gave it a shot.

First I sketched a few body shapes for a walrus...

Then, I outlined the one I liked best, and went over it with the text of the poem.

I think it's worked out pretty well, even if I do say so myself, so I've popped him in my Etsy shop.Another stock addition!

Shakey Willie...

When I'm trying to make a new image design, I usually work with classic texts, and tie a recognisable image that I can create from that text to a part of the text that relates to the image, e.g. the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes is created from a section of text that relates to the description of Sherlock. Sometimes though, the image can be a bit tricky....some things just don't work out so well as a silhouette, and in particular the lack of facial features can make some things look odd.

This is what I think I've ended up with when I've tried to do William Shakespeare. I sketched out what I hoped was an OK rough outline, based on the famous portraits/etchings of him:

Then I wrote out the text outline (using Hamlet's soliloquy , and it just didn't look quite right, somehow. So I sketched the light shape of an oval frame, like a painted portrait would have. Then I felt it might need a suggestion of facial features...but even those don't look quite right to me. Sometimes I don't know if I'm just being over critical, or if it's something best abandoned as a bad idea. What do you think? Leave it blank? Add hints of features? Chuck it?

Gah!