Pied Kingfisher

A continuous-line illustration inspired by a pied kingfisher photo by Thom Haslam. This illustration was made using watercolour, ink, gouache and white pen.

It has been a week of fretting, fretting that all those 10+ sheets of watercolour paper I used was for naught, struggling to make anything worthy to put up. I then came across Tara Leaver, and her post about why it is good to make ‘bad’ art,

“Yes you may have made 17 drawings that are shit, and you may need to make 39 more until your hand learns how to better express your vision. Give up too soon and you’ll never know.”

These are the words I needed to read, for me to keep persisting until I satisfy my own expectations of myself.

Ira Glass of This American Life

Owl Studies

Here are some quick studies of owls, I didn’t have a lot of time this week as I succumbed to more dreary checkout work. For the painting I used a ruler to scratch off pastel pigments which seems to give my owl a rather interesting floral halo. I used my regulars, watercolour, ink, pastel and white pen for the barn owl painting.

I used a 4B grade pencil for this owl drawing, my comfort pencil!

Hogs and Hippos

I was feeling a little sluggish this past week so I think that’s why I decided to choose subject matter which reflected my state of body and mind, no offence to these beautiful animals!

In these images I’ve depicted a red river hog and a hippopotamus. I used watercolour, inks and white pen and as you can see, I’ve gone a bit splatter crazy with white gouache. I’ll do better next week!

Grey Seals for Grey Days

It’s quite grey here in England, but I quite like the gloom. I especially like the gloom of the cold ocean and particularly the lively critters than live within it. Using watercolour, ink, white pen and pastel I tried to evoke the energy of these playful grey seals. I found some very good cold pressed watercolour paper which is a joy to use, I’ve thrown hardly any artwork away since using it!