IF "poise" - ongoing pachyderms...

Still exploring treatments for the story characters. This illustration uses the elephant cut outs and charcoal line overlay (with modifications) from the earlier post. With these cut outs as a guide I used watercolour on some really nice cotton rag paper I'd forgotten that I had. Expensive paper for an off the cuff experiment but I've had the paper for ages, too scared to waste it before now (the reason I'll never feel at ease using moleskins as sketch books...). It really is an interesting paper to paint on as the coarse open grain bleeds the paint in unexpected ways while the heavy weight allows for fairly controlled washes on unstretched sheets. After compositing the various elements in photoshop I chopped up the body further to give me more points of articulation for posing in the illustration. I'm really enjoying the balance (no pun intended) of dynamism against quirkiness which this unplanned pose approach gives.

Who turned out the lights...?!

OK so I'm a little early with the post but don't forget to flick off that light switch from 8:30 tonight for an hour! Learn more at earthhour

Elephant for the story

This is very much in progress but the story idea I'm knocking about has an elephant... and what with having Eric Carle on my mind of late I'm in a collage mood, so I thought I'd try an 'assembled bits' character treatment. I quite like the 'elephant kit' of loose bits for its graphic quality. On a related note have a look at the front and back pairs of an elephants legs, don't you think of two guys in a pantomime phant suit...? Maybe it's just me.

Happy Birthday Hungry Caterpillar!

Many happy returns (just in time...) to the Hungry Caterpillar (or may I call you "The Very"...) who is forty today. I had to mark the occasion. This is a favourite of mine and one of the earliest books and pieces of illustration I can remember from my childhood (many people must also share this memory) and I'm sure it partly responsible for what I'm doing now... so thank you Mr. Carle, may your scissors never blunt, and to the VHC may you never be completely sated.

Possibly a bit tenuous a link to illustration friday's 'subtract' topic (?)... but the caterpillar did subtract a lot of little bits out of all of those foods... hope you enjoy the tribute

Apologies to anyone who has been kind enough to keep popping by the blog but found it at a standstill. I've been really busy over the last few weeks on many other things but the blog should be back on track from here on in... ta muchly for your patience :)

character possibly in a new story...

I hate it when the blog posting slips. What with being away for a few days then having to do DIY my blog has been an itch I haven't scratched! But I have been wanting to get down to a new story and have been churning ideas over for the past few days. At it's present stage there is an octopus in the story somewhere. If you've seen my website and looked back through the blog you will note I have a thing about octopeeses (along with apes, monkeys, polar bears etc etc etc...). I really want to get one into a story somehow. Every time I see my blog banner the silhouette pus stares out at me demanding to be used. That silhouette came from a digital 'loosening up' doodle which I've dug out of the archive and started to play around with... if only so I post something and start to get ideas out of my head. More as it occurs folks, thanks as always for stopping by :)