a splash of watercolour = some funky, weird creatures

This is kindof a bit of a late WOYWW as I visited my artist friend Graham on Wednesday, and took my watercolours with me.  He's done some more work on his studio since I last visited...

It's such a warm and welcoming place...

... full of inspiring art...

I, meanwhile, just splashed some watercolour around on a couple of pages in my sketchbook.

Then hunted for some 'beings' amongst the paint splashes aka Carla Sonheim (Drawing Lab).

My favourite is the little 'thing' leaning up against the central spine of the book.

It was this large bunny I found first though.  I just LoVe this technique, there's no way I'd be able to invent these imaginative characters any other way!

AEDM days 20 and 21 - in the 'Drawing Lab'

Honestly, I can't recommend Carla Sonheim's 'Drawing Lab' highly enough!  It's just brilliant for getting you painting or drawing without that highly invasive 'inner critic' sitting on your shoulder whispering into your ear!  It's also full of short arty exercises for when time is limited, perfect for me at the minute.

Yesterday was mostly spent doing school prep so just before going to bed I did some one-liners, drawing animals using one continuous line.  Carla has a short video here on the Sketchbook Challenge blog if you'd like more info.

I started with pigs, then a couple of flowers followed by an owl who looks like a penguin!

I've been avoiding drawing cats as I'm not that keen on them picture wise, but finally gave in and love these manic kitties!

Then I gave some birds  a bit of a go.  For the last one I wondered what it would look like with 'walking legs'.  Normally my brain wouldn't even let me have a go at drawing something like that as 'I can't do it', but with one liners they're not going to look like the animal anyway!

It was my first day back teaching today after having bronchitis.  I was still feeling a bit wiped out so after a day with three different infant classes in a special school I came home and fell asleep!  Woke up feeling the need to do something relaxing so flicked through 'Drawing Lab' and..

...decided to finally give Lab 8: Imaginary Creatures a go....and created a moustached penguin lying back in shock at..what?!!  Hmm, that's in your imagination ;)  I love how fun he is, yet I never would have drawn a moustached penguin lol!

It started off with layers of random marks made with watercolour paints.  These yummy koh-i-noor ones were supposed to go in my eldest son's Christmas stocking - oops!  They are such handy, stackable palettes and rather nice paints too.  I bought mine whilst out in Wales somewhere, although checking online they're cheap enough to get George another set!  

catching up with AEDM day 10 and Sketchbook Challenge

It's a very special Remembrance Day today as here in the UK we remember those in our armed forces who give or have given their lives in the line of duty at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011.

Yesterday and today finds me poorly at home with some kind of nasty cold that has settled on my chest.  Yesterday was ok, doing a bit of blog hopping in the morning, but then the internet went down and didn't come back on 'til about half an hour ago today when I finally phoned our provider (turns out we have a broken modem) and he sorted it out for me.

So without the internet I sat in bed doing some blind contour drawings.  For these you draw around the image without looking at the paper, only looking at the image, and use a single line.  I couldn't use a real life picture of a seahorse to draw from (how much do we rely on google images!!!) so used this one, which I just LoVe:

Unfortunately I'd printed it out for my ideas journal and not noted properly where I found it!  Sorry!

This idea is from Carla Sonheim's fantastic book 'Drawing Lab' which I find I go back to so much for ideas to get me drawing.  Part-way through drawing some smaller versions of the seahorse I realised I could google an image on my phone!!!  I also noticed how like dragons seahorses are, certainly around the head area anyway.  No wonder I like them, I love dragons!!!

I then chose an image I liked, copied it and started some mad doodling.  I'll add some colour at another time. All this was so taxing I then slept for 6 hours!!!  I'm desperate to have a go at free-machine embroidering a seahorse but need some painkillers first :(  I'll share day 11's AED a bit later!

ps Isn't YouTube fab sometimes?  I have absolutely no need for daytime tv when I'm poorly...

AEDM day 6 - an autumnal walk in the countryside

I am very lucky to live really close to the Cheshire countryside so this afternoon saw us taking a walk in Tatton Park.  As it's 'Art Every Day Month' I dutifully took my sketchbook and drew some of the things I saw and liked,  as directed by Carla Sonheim in her book 'Drawing Lab'.

It still needs the colour adding to it, but I'm happy to have done some drawing!

I chickened out of drawing the deer though and just took photographs instead ;)

hippos, seahorses and giraffes

Just look at all these yummy goodies Julie sent me (and there are more lurking underneath these).  This was the second parcel I received on Thursday.  I visited Julie in the US in 1991, attending her fantastic retreat 'The Art Stamp Cafe', and we also managed to squeeze in a day trip to Chicago where I bought this cuddly hippo

who, 9 years later, still sleeps on my bed!  So imagine how I felt when I turned up these two stamps in the parcel!

I was so touched, and a bit teary!

It's been a bit of a weekend for animals.  I've been eyeing up Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab on Amazon for ages, waiting for it to be released, and it finally arrived on Saturday morning. 

I've been wanting to get back to drawing for ages but the voice in my head has been super, super critical of any attempts.  What Carla does brilliantly in this book is give 52 exercises that, certainly so far, silence that voice completely.  I think this is because you complete the exercises in a way that mean the image couldn't be perfect.  For example, the first one is to draw an animal, from imagination, whilst leaning on a mattress.  You do this 30times and if you find you are getting too concious of what you're doing, you switch to your left hand...

...hence the two seahorses on the far right who look like they've been electricuted LOL

The next task is to draw a giraffe using one continuous line, looking at the giraffe image 100% of the time and not looking at the paper.

I'm really, really enjoying this book.  If you have it, or end up buying it, I'd love to see what you come up with , and how you feel about it :)