This week I thought post something new that I’ve been working on…as you know I love needlework and I embroidered bees before and wanted to experiment to see if I could create a 3-d butterfly.
When I saw the Holly Blue butterfly and was able to take some photographs of it (that I posted last week!) I knew that I wanted to create a piece of art about this insect.
So I decided to embroider one similar to the bee I did last year, but instead of being a flat piece I want to try and make it a little more three dimensional.
Just a little art post this week, for world turtle day (23rd May) I posted a pen illustration of a World Turtle. Well, I’ve actually finished it and I am so happy with this painting!! I wanted the trees to reflect the colourings of the turtle – which I decided had to be a greenish-blue and tried to give the castle a natural stone effect.
This week I thought I’d post a new piece of calligraphy art so I thought I’d share this one with you. Going postal by the comic and literary genius that was Sir Terry Pratchett, is one of the wittiest books out there (actually all the Discworld book are fantastic) and there are so many great quotes in them that Pratchett’s books are an endless supply of fun and clever phrases, which I love turning into calligraphy art.
The mantra of the postmen in the book is “Neither rain nor snow, nor gloom of night can stay these messengers about their duty.” which adorns the post office in large metal letters – its a fun play on the US postal service motto.
I thought I’d post an illustration this week, I’ve recently been reading fairy tales and The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen has always been a great favourite of mine.
“The little sea-princesses, were six beautiful children; but the youngest was the prettiest of them all; her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea; but, like all the others, she had no feet, and her body ended in a fish’s tail.”
In the UK and commonwealth this weekend we are celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her 70 years on the throne! The bunting is up, the flags are out and we the British are going to have picnics and street parties outdoors…even if its pouring with rain!
So I thought that on this the Platinum Jubilee weekend I would actually post the sketch I’ve completed of Queen Elizabeth II, its been lovely being drawing in the garden the breeze has been lovely. I had a few stamps and thought it would be fun to draw the side portrait that adorns British coins and stamps.
Although I love sitting with a set of pencils and trying to capture a persons image on paper, I’ve never actually posted any of them online because I’m A.) not very good at realistically drawing humans and B.) I have a phobia that people who view my sketches won’t be able to immediately guess who the portrait is of (which is mortifying!).
You may or may not know that this coming Monday (May 23rd) is World Turtle Day! I love turtles they are magical creatures and won’t be around much longer if we don’t look after them. I suppose that wasn’t helped by sailors eating them – I think Darwin famously struggled to bring them back from the Galapagos to the UK because they kept eating them on the voyage! (I mean they’re beautiful but don’t exactly look appetising do they?!)
Anyhoo, World Turtle Day was created so that people could celebrate turtles (and tortoises) and their sadly disappearing habitats. I remember as a child my neighbour had a tortoise and use to pout it in a shoebox on the winter to hibernate – which as a kid was hilarious because it would wear your shoes if it found them!
So I decided to draw myself a World Turtle.
The World-bearing Turtle myth is actually Chinese mythology and Native American folklore. Of course one of my favourite authors (one Sir Terry Pratchett) imagined the Discworld which is carried on the back of a giant space turtle, the Great A’tuin. And of course we did (historically speaking) believe the earth was flat at one point in time.
I hope you’ve had a good week so far! This weeks post a few pieces of art about about one of my all time favourite book characters – the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland! And I thought maybe it might be fun to post some pages from my sketchbook.
And while the original Sir John Tenniel illustrations are in black and white in the book the Caterpillar is described as being blue (and precisely 3 inches tall) so I thought that tall my caterpillar related art should use blue tones. Theres a couple of cute drawings, some hand lettering art of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” and a brilliant Terry Pratchett quote!
So, enjoy some blue toned caterpillar/mushroom related art…I hope you like it.
This caterpillar is based more from the 2010 film directed by Tim Burton, I think the movie Absalom (although in the books he doesn’t have a name and is just referred to as the Caterpillar) is much more chilled out than the 1951 Disney version – who in my opinion was far too much of a diva and he yells at Alice far too often ! It’s drawn with crayons which are far harder to control than I remember them being as a kid!
“How Doth the Little Crocodile” is a poem by Lewis Carroll which appears in his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice recites it while attempting to recall “Against Idleness and Mischief” by Isaac Watts. It’s such a brilliant little poem and has always been one that stuck in my head.
This week I want to share an art post with you, Alice in wonderland is and has always been one of my favourite things in the world, the story is fun, the original art was truly incredible and the 1951 Disney movie was my second favourite film as a child (the top spot belonged to Sleeping Beauty!)
So this week I thought I post not 1 or 2, but 10 pieces of Alice in Wonderland related art.
Firstly, if you’ve read my other art posts then you’ll know just how much I love my set of Arteza brush pens. They work like normal colouring pens but instead of a felt tip they have a brush one (as the name implies!) but can be used with water to create watercolour paint – its so nice to have an amazing array of colours with the need to carry around all the little watercolour paint blocks, plus the colours are super vibrant too!
‘The little Blue Caterpillar’ sat on a Fly agaric mushroom complete with a few tufts of grass, is first drawn with ink and then block coloured.
If it hasn’t been mentioned before I love calligraphy art and hand lettering ‘The Secret Alice’ quote is from the Disney movie, but it’s not actually in the book and wasn’t written by Lewis Carroll. But, as quotes go it’s a lovely one and it meant I could write ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in gold ink within the design!
‘I want a clean cup’ is drawn to look like a teacup, using 4 shades of blue watered to a very thin consistency and then written with a calligraphy pen.
This week I want to share a little bit of photo editing with you! a while ago I decided to see if I could find anything magical to photograph and went out in the wilderness where I found a little patch of grassland fungi! These beautiful mushrooms were so tiny and their colours seemed so vivid against the green of the grass (especially in December!). And then I thought instead to just editing them, why not manipulate them in Affinity to try and create some interesting patterns.
So, enjoy some wild foraging symmetry…
Symmetry is apparent when both sides of a photo mirrors the each other, createing a feeling of harmony and making the image more pleasing to look at. Now there are some with a great enough talent to do this naturally when using a camera – I find it easier and more fun to put an image into my photo editing and manipulation software (I use Affinity Photo its like Adobe Photoshop.) and then repeat the image the desired amount of times, flipping and rotating were necessary.
Hello friends, I hope the past week has treated you well.
This week I thought I’d post a new illustration and I thought I’d share this one with you. Reaper Man is the 11th Discworld book by the comic and literary genius that was Sir Terry Pratchett, and is one of the best books out there (actually all the Discworld book are fantastic) Its main character is Death and later in the Death related books the Death of Rats arrives, the first of which is Reaper Man.
The Grim Squeaker is essentially a ‘living’ skeleton of a rat, that wears a black hood and carries a tiny scythe. If you haven’t read the books I totally recommend them! I don’t want to give away any spoilers (even though the book was released in 1991!) because they’re such wonderful books and once you’ve read one or two before you know it you’ve read them all!!!!!
ArtyMissK 
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