RIP Lonesome George...natures living 'picnic hamper'

Poor old George. Depending on which sources you read, but the last remaining living specimen of the Pinta island giant tortoise, aka Lonesome George, died on sunday last at the (again, depending on who you ask) ripe old age / or middle age of an estimated 100 years old. The rest of his species were lost when wild goats were misguidedly introduced to his Galapagos island home and ate all the food. Whether some individual examples of the Pinta island Tortoise exist on another island in the Galapagos is open to debate, but either way it's a sad day as we tick off another species that may or may not have still been around had we not buggered about with things we didn't understand. It's not only the goats either... Man more directly played his part in why it is that all examples of giant tortoise are now a protected species. Damn it nature, what were you thinking of, packaging a tasty meal and a drink in one handy living picnic hamper, as illustrated in this episode of QI. Not to get on my environmental soap box, I'm no green angel, but the sad demise of lonely G does paint a picture...

four colour tiger in the forests of the night...

I've gone plant crossed eyed! Enough. It's going to need tweaks here and there before I'd attempt to print it but I've finally finished off my tiger screen print / a little bit bunny submission which I posted roughs developments for previously. After trying out various ways of doing the tiger stripes digitally, non of which were right, I stopped resisting, printed out what I had as an underlay and went at the thing with a brush pen to see what happened. I'm not unhappy with the results, but I have a feeling I'm going to revisit the William Blake Tiger again and again. Attached to this post are the stripe ink scan, a sneak detail of the finished illustration and the four colour screens which go together to make the final image. Pop on over to ALBB if you fancy seeing the final mix. When my eyes have settled down I think I'll play around and see what other colour combos I might also try. That's part of the fun I think with having your illustration as separations like this, just fiddle with the colour sliders in photoshop and voila, a new illustration!

iPad Hulk

I haven't used my ipad as much as I'd like for just kicking back and trying loose colour sketching. You cannot always get what you're after, even when using a stylus, but this finger painted hulk was great fun to do and has a certain something I'm pleased with. Also seems somehow appropriate, painting hulk with your fingers... Hulk no like puny pencils!

tigers...

I'm actually starting early on a little bit bunny animal post for once. Next months topic is tiger and I've decided to kill two birds (should that be cats...?) with one stone and try and get a screen print design out of the ALBB topic. Frustratingly, I'm still not quite set up to get screen printing. My local area has a hose pipe ban on... still... ..., and I'm thinking it wiser to wait until I can clean up my surely very messy screens properly out of doors, instead of in the bath (I wonder, do any screen printers out there who are reading this just use the bath to clean up their equipment in...?). Until I put squeegee to screen I need to start amassing some designs to choose between and I thought I'd revisit a favourite theme of mine and try and illustrate William Blake's Tiger poem again. I'm a ways from finishing but here's some tiger explorations for the blog to be getting on with. Grrrr

Scruffy lookin' Nerf herders...

When Nerf was picked as the animal of the month over on A Little Bit Bunny blog I couldn't resist taking a stab at Han & Chewie along the way. The gag (such as it is) doesn't quite make it in the end in my humble opinion. One for the Star Wars fans I guess, referencing a quote from Empire Strikes Back... you know what they say, if you have to explain the joke... All things aside I still enjoyed myself, geeking out drawing Millennium Falcons, Wookies and Nerf poo. Pop on over to ALBB if you fancy seeing the finished illustration.

"hoppy chocolate time !"

A whole month since a post... very tardy, but many things just seem to have got in the way.  By way of celebrating the time of year (and to climb back on the blog...) here's a bunny and some eggs. Hoppy holidays folks!

Get well soon Grandad.

My grandad has been a little out of sorts, and out of breath, this past week or so but I'm glad to say he's now feeling a lot better. Here's a little something I did to cheer him up.

a local shop... for local people...

Like my llama panorama post I did these quick illustrations mainly as a landscape layout and colour exercise. I hadn't seen The League of Gentlemen since it was aired on TV so I treated myself to the boxset and have worked my way through at a rate of knots! Deliciously dark and twisted humour. Highly recommended. It never really occurred to me when I first watched it but part of the reason I think I like the show is it's locations are predominately up in The Peak District of Derbyshire, where I grew up. Now I live in the concrete jungle of Surrey I appreciate all the more the moors, and watching the show really does remind me of where I grew up (in the nicest possible way of course...). The League of Gentlemen really did make the locations as much of a character in the show as the people and thats shown nowhere better than the infamous "Local Shop" of Edward and Tubbs Tattsyrup. Given the subject matter and the fact that it was 'just' a TV comedy it's perhaps surprising just how beautiful some of the establishing shots are in the show. Brooding skies, the grand natural scenery and careful use of post production really give a great backdrop to the humour. If you have no idea what I'm on about here's a taster :-)

gorilla doodle

The estimable Don Flores has done me the great honour of inviting me to join the fun over on Cup O'Doodle blog and here is my first effort. Don posts various styles of random abstract doodles on the blog and then various folks use these as the basis for an illustration flight of fancy. Like my other group blog endeavour A Little Bit Bunny it's a grand way of generating artwork and it's really fascinating to see how different illustrators take the same starting point but end up at different destinations.

Llama panorama over on a little bit bunny...

It's Llama time over on A Little Bit Bunny (cue music ... 3 minutes 6 seconds in ;-) this month and, as always, here's a sneak peek and my sketches.

Llamas are a lot of fun to draw (who knew). Much more fun than horses with their far too bendy rear legs, thats for sure! In the end however my idea for an illustration (after the obvious "Llama in Pyjamas" or the "Dalai Llama") was a "Llama Panorma" so, as it turns out, my Llamas are almost too small to see on the final piece.

I've been meaning to practice more of late my environments / backgrounds and using colour to establish a scene so this illustration became more of an exercise than a way to play with Llamas. In case all the Inca and Aztec pattern studies don't make sense I did intend to have graphic decorated Andean mountains in the mix too but the final result worked better without any additions. Still fun to play about with patterns though.