Summer food and drink

Hello,

It's been a few weeks since I last was here.  I thought I'd do a quick post with some of the work I've created during that time, (I've got a bit of scanning to do!)  I've been drawing food and drink mostly.  I think both of these illustrations were created on lovely sunny days.
The first is a tomato plant.  I do enjoy playing with ways to depict leaves and combining different mediums, (I have a lot of random drawn leaves littered around my desk!)  For this I used quite a bit of ink.  I use different brands but I particularly like Dr Ph Martin's as they have some fantastic rich colours.
I always think I should attempt to grow tomatoes but I'm not very green fingered.....maybe this is something to attempt in future!

Next a refreshing glass of orange juice.  There's been a lot of orange use just lately in my work, although today has been a pink day as I've been drawing flamingos.  I'll be back with that soon.  

Whatever you're up to this weekend have a good one! :)

Buildings and gardens

Hello!

I thought I'd share something I finished working on this week.  I been wanting to challenge myself to draw more buildings.  I often draw specific buildings for maps and so on, but they're always small in scale, so I've been wanting to make some work that was just a building at a larger scale for a while now.  I've also been keen to draw the Liberty building for ages.  I think it's beautiful, and I also pass it a lot.  Twice a week I go to a gym close by in the early morning, and I've been doing this for quite a long time now.  The Liberty building is the first thing I notice as I come out from the tube station and I've seen it in the dark, in the light, sunshine, rain, fog pretty much any weather!  It's just a lovely thing to see especially at a quieter time of the day.

Today I visited the Geffrye Museum somewhere I've wanted to go for a while.  It's a small museum of the home and has recreations of room and garden layouts from the last 400 years, set in old almshouse buildings.  I've been living in London for many years now and I still find places I've never been this was one of those.  Pictures below.

That's it for now, back to work drawing green veggies, yum!  Have a great weekend :)

A day at the beach

Hello,

A few weeks back I took a little trip back to Norfolk and visited what is possibly my favourite beach there.  As a child I used to go regularly to Wells-next-the-sea so I have a lot of happy memories from that time.  It's great to go when the it's a lovely hot day and you can paddle.  The tide goes out a long way but leaves little pools behind so you have warmish water to swim and paddle in, I love it!  The beach is huge so even if it's busy you can walk and walk and get away from it all.  There's a pine forest behind the beach huts which you can also wander through.  I've been when it's hot, when it's cold and windy too, it's just a lovely place to go to whatever the weather.
So after that little visit I made a piece of work based on it.  I spent ages working on the colours for the huts.  In reality they're all a variety of colours but I wanted them all to relate to each other and share the colouring.
Here's the finished piece

Here's some of the work in progress colour sketches.  I tend to make a lot so I can really sort colours and have all sorts of scraps with marks and textures which I then keep as they are so helpful for future work.  Then I piece it all together before working on the final.

Here's some photos of the beach, ahh it's a lovely hot day today and it would be great to be there!

I hope you're having a lovely weekend, I'm gazing out at a lovely blue sky and looking forward to another sunny day tomorrow :)

Editorial Illustrations

Hello,

I thought I'd share with you some recent work I completed for Cox and Kings Compass Magazine.  These illustrations were for their spring/summer issue which will be out soon.  Both of them were lovely briefs.  One was for the letters paged inspired by Greece, and the other was based around an article about literature and the Thames.  I had a great time drawing these.  Thinking of Greece really took me back to holidays there (I must go back soon!) It also meant I got to draw a goat which can only be a good thing!  I loved working through ideas for the for the Thames piece, it was a beautiful article.  I always enjoy drawing London landmarks and I'm really happy with the colours I choose for this one and how it turned out.

It's a bank holiday weekend in the UK this weekend and for once I am actually escaping the capital and going to spend a few days away in the countryside, I can't wait!  I realised I haven't left London since Christmas! so it really is about time.  

I hope you have a lovely weekend whatever you do x

Crystals

Hello,

I writing this from a very rainy London, but thankfully I'm home and in the warm :).  I actually do like the rain, when I'm not in it!
I thought I'd update with some Illustrations I did for the latest edition Women's Health magazine.  This was a lovely commission all about crystals and their healing potential.  I had a lot of fun combining varying media to create the textures.  After reading the article I'm thinking it would be pretty beneficial to have them around.

I'm really happy with how they turned out and I think they make a nice set.  I hope you're having a good week and I'll be back soon.  Now time for a cuppa I think :) x

Exhibitions and birds

Hello again,

It's been a lovely weekend and tomorrow is bank holiday, hooray!  I'm looking forward to a day full of drawing and painting which makes me very happy indeed.
Just lately I've been continuing drawing birds, particularly the ones I see regularly where I live, so lots of Crows and Magpies.  I've been pulling out all my supplies (I end up working on a tiny area of my desk surrounded by lots of art materials!) and mixing up all the media which I love doing.  I've also brought out pastels which I haven't used for a long time, it's been great fun working with them (and making a lot of mess of course).  I'm working on another one now but below are a couple I completed.

I've also been to some wonderful exhibitions.  Two of the highlights were Lisa Brice's wonderful blue gouache paintings at the Stephen Friedman Gallery which has now closed, and today I went to see Josef Frank at the Fashion and Textile Museum.  I'd been wanting to see this for ages and it was a wonderful colourful treat, it closes next weekend I think so I'd recommend visiting if you can.  Here's some of my favourites from both exhibitions.

Lisa Brice

Josef Frank

How gorgeous are they?  Just lovely.  I hope you have a great week, I'm off to continue painting into the night yay!

Hello there,

The weather here this weekend has been absolutely gorgeous and I have taken some time to walk about a bit, it feels so good to feel the sunshine!  I've also been working on a personal piece that I started a while back inspired by things I see everyday.  I'm very lucky in that where I live I overlook the lovely garden which I share with the other flats.  Pretty much anytime I look out of the window I see crows going about their business and they fascinate me, so I really wanted to draw some.  I also haven't made any larger scale work for some time now and I've been itching to do something.  This isn't that large really, between A1 and A0, but it's bigger than I've done for a while.  So, I've been getting stuck into making large marks with lovely big brushes and scraping around with my palette knives, lovely!  It's also a great excuse to spread out all over the floor and make a mess, (I am incapable of being neat and tidy as I work, today I ended up with paint on my leg.....I still don't know how that happened!)
Below is how it looks now, I want it to feel very rhythmic and I'm working with a reduced palette.  I'll post the finished piece when I'm done.

I've also recently completed some editorial commissions which I'll post once they've been published.  They've been lovely jobs :).
I'll be back soon.  I hope the weather is as lovely where you are, I really love this time of year.
Here's some sunbathing daisies from the weekend.  Now I'm off to have a cuppa and do some scanning :).  Have a great week!