The pinks and browns of such a tiny little bird — I just had to paint him! Interestingly the colour of the finch is the result of the type of berries and fruit he eats, meaning you can get a huge variation of colours between individual birds.
This week I also added a few new prints to my shop, they look pretty nice!
After the success of the Ashes issue of the City Fox magazine in which I featured, a client approached me to commission her a black wolf. I made this image with ink and watercolour with a few touches of white pen here and there.
© Sophie Godding
Amongst the rich aromas of coffee beans and sumptuous looking heart-attack cakes you’ll find some familiar looking faces, I am now exhibiting in the Coffee in the Wood. I have been so touched by the public’s response and I’m so excited at the level of interest my work has attracted.
Why not grab a soya latte and feast your eyes on something indulgent, though perhaps a trifle odd?
I've run out of hares, so I had to make some more. These paintings were made primarily from ink with touches of watercolour here and there along with some white pen. I've started to invert the colours on images that I use as references which is helping me create some interesting results.
As a result of my first little pop-up gallery, I received a commission to paint a chameleon for a child’s bedroom. Four paintings, a lot of frustration and one week later, here he is! I tried a few species of chameleon to draw but I thought this veiled chameleon looked especially pretty.
I used Indian ink first, then I let it dry overnight. In the morning I painted the chameleon with ink and watercolour, then finally added the background and white pen.
When you spend your days immersed in creation, splashing paints and playing with putty rubber, it can be easy to miss just how far along you’ve come.
So, with just a bit of hesitation I took along some of my favourite pieces from the last year to my first event, the Colliers Wood Pop-up Gallery. And it couldn’t have gone much better. The organisers generously gave me a stall to set-up my prints, greetings cards, and original watercolours. It helps to look back, to look back and say “I made that!”
I met lots of other talented artists and bumped into my amazing college art teacher too.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by my stall, asked questions, said kind words and gave a new home to one of my pictures. It was a huge amount of support, all of which I am very grateful for.
I am especially pleased that the Pied Kingfisher and Scribbly Hares found new owners.
It's April, so obligatory hares this week! I work in a giant supermarket, a hub of inspiration with all those scan-able rabbit novelty things this spring … So here we have it, graphite and pen continuous-line drawings of hares on sugar paper and card. Remember to click or tap on the hare-y face you want for the un-cropped version, enjoy!
Ditching the watercolour painting this week in favour of a more relaxed sugar paper session. Still continuing on with my continuous-line drawing I was able to produce a cockatiel, budgie and poicephalus parrot using black and white pen.
What annoys me about watercolour painting is that is loses my lines. I have really got stuck into the continuous-line drawing, when I finish the drawing on the watercolour paper thinking it would make a nice painting — it doesn’t. It masks the drawing underneath and it is so frustrating.
So I tried something a little simpler, using sugar paper, graphite and pen I was able to showcase my lines and reveal my peacock — and I'm happy with it!
Here is a quick twenty-minute 4B pencil study of a kangaroo by photographer Jaclyn Kavanagh. I believe this drawing may make a fantastic drypoint print.
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
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!
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!
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!
I love chickens, they are too adorably spunky. So I set about Flickr to find a suitable picture to work from after being inspired by the work of Jean Haines. I found a picture of a chicken destined, unfortunately for the dinner table and used watercolour, ink and white pen to celebrate the endearment I felt for her this week.
Forgiveness! I was experiencing a creative block so I hadn't updated my website for a week, but I have unclogged my brain and got down to some serious painterly scribbling, and really enjoying it too.
I’ve used my ink and watercolour as normal but I have introduced pastel in the background which I thought looks better than my normal confused approach.
I never thought of using pastel to cover large areas but looking at James Bartholomew’s work recently awakened me to the brilliant creative work produced in pastel.
After wasting a considerable amount of paper and time on producing work inspired by many different artists and expecting to make work similar to them, I got into quite a state and was stressing about where my own talents lie.
I had to push all influence out to be able to start making work I enjoy again, influence is good, obsessing is really bad.
I discovered some old drawings and was quite taken back on how crude they were! I revisited the subject matter of each drawing and I thought I’d turn my hand to them once again and do some compare and contrasting.
The 2010 drawings I prepared for an interview portfolio at my first art college at the age of 19. I’m so grateful they decided to take me under their wing, especially with how bad these drawings are, even more embarrassingly, these took about two hours to finish each one.
These 2010 drawings are a nice reminder of how far I’ve come as a budding artist, imagine what I could do in the next four years!
Another creation made from turtle-murdering carrier bags and luminous-green masking tape. I think carrier bags look a lot nicer hidden underneath rolled up masking tape than being caught up in trees or floating in the River Thames. I used three carrier bags and half a roll of masking tape to make my squirrel. I enjoy making masking tape things, it keeps my hands busy in my down time and also keeps those surplus carrier bags out of mischief.
I took to the watercolour paper again, but instead of applying the coffee layers first and allowing them to dry which I practiced in my squirrel painting, I went in with the watercolours and laced the image with coffee afterwards which resulted in coffee detail being lost.
I used drawing gum to keep the bright white chest and muzzle of the fox though I should have waited until the end of the painting before removing it as my impatience lead to his white fur getting a little mucky. I made this image with watercolour, ink, drawing gum, pigment, coffee and pastel.
Modelled very nicely by knitted Laura, and yes that is my horrible wallpaper.
I decided to do a run of prints of my watercolour of the squirrel. I had to draw my squirrel in reverse so it would appear facing the desired direction when I turned out the print. Also you have to have a good technique in mind for transferring the image onto the lino if you don’t want to draw it freehand. I wasted a good few hours getting into a mess over this, but decided that covering the back of the drawing with pencil and then applying pressure to the other side worked, sort of.
Disappointingly due to my rookie cutting technique, the continuous line detailing has completely vanished. I pressed on with my metal desert spoon and got quite a few varied results, but nothing consistent. I probably should get a hand barren for the next printing venture. I cut most of the lino away as I kept getting ink on the unwanted bits, you can see some of the better results in this slideshow.
For the next run of prints, thinner paper. You can never tell how much more you need to press to transfer the image with the thicker stuff, resulting in either blobby runny messes or patchy, faint messes.
