Illustration Friday: Onomatopoeia

bee-1.jpg

What a mouthful! So this weeks Illustration Friday was Onomatopoeia (on-na-mat-oh-pee-ah), I immediately thought bumblebee. So I hit Flickr in search of inspiration and I found it in the form of Staffan Hamnäs and his stunning photo of the beastie. I used watercolour, ink, coffee, pigment and pastel to blast this fuzzy bumble with colour.

I think I fussed with detail too much, and prefer the white free version. If you look closely you can just about make out the little white ‘Buzz’ words. I used drawing gum which is a new material I’m getting to grips with, it’s excellent though, you can keep your whites white forever with that stuff. It allows me to be less concerned about my clumsiness and opens the flood gates for my Oddkness — it’s a good feeling!

Illustration Friday: Together

After missing I don’t know how many weeks of Illustration Friday, cutting it a little fine as always — I managed it, just before the topic changed!

For the theme of ‘Together’ I thought about a bustling bunch of Magellanic penguins and for even more closeness I attached the penguins with an unbroken continuous line, how cosy! Then fought with a little bit of patterning, which I then finished with coffee, ink, watercolour and pigment.

I was panicking a little as penguins look quite uniform with not a lot to distinguish one from another, I think I met the challenge reasonably well and managed to injected a little bit of individuality into each little penguin'ite, room for improvement though, definitely.

What Could Be Sweeter?

I made these couple of drawings for Illustration Friday’s topic, Sweet. And honestly you cannot help be in awe of baby rhinos, they are so delectably squishable!

In 2013, the BBC broadcast their wildlife documentary series, Africa, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. In the memorable and heart felt closing scene we saw Sir David cooing with a blind baby rhino, and it was the most tear jerking sight.

More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qmbqn Sir David Attenborough in conversation with... a blind baby rhino.