Watercolour Sketches

My back's still out, but it is getting better. I haven't been able to do much and it's driving me stir crazy, so now and then I do a bit of sketching and what not, until it gets too uncomfortable. These paintings are the most recent of these art therapies.

I haven't touched watercolour in a good while and I was going to say something more here, but I have to recoup from being hunched over blogging on my laptop. Cheerio!

Bear necessities and IKEA

We went to the Irish opening of IKEA yesterday and met the fanfare outside. I would have been happy to have waited 'til the next day, but we needed our desks ASAP. We got there an hour before the opening and had to endure the entertainment, the worst of it was probably the 98fm trucks blasting out Bewitched. When we got inside the staff were lined up on either side waving flags, I thought this must be what royalty feel like . . . awkward!

We scooted quickly through the store and got lots of help from the staff who were just lovely. But, unfortunately they only had one pair of legs for the desks, so I'm doing without for the moment, Stephen's need is currently more urgent. I did get my chair though, the Kläppe, yep, I got the Kläppe. I gave it some consideration, but decided against getting the Kolon (floor protector) for it.

We also got some Billy shelves and when I pealed opened its cardboard box two of the shelves popped out and fell on my foot. Oh man, that hurt! Anyways, I gotta go back tomorrow to get the legs for my desk and maybe pick up some egg cups.

Maned Wolf

I did this in my new moleskine A4 watercolour sketchbook. There's A3 sketchbooks as well, but at that size they're better for working in at a desk.

We've got a great view from the kitchen window of our apartment, we're on the top floor and there was a short thunderstorm a few hours ago, which we could see approaching from a distance. I glanced up just in time to see a bolt of lightning.

Pan's Labyrinth stage 3

I did some more work on Pan's painting, it's still not finished yet. Click here for the previous stages. I closed the sketchbook too soon and the pages got a little stuck together, most notably on the chin.

There's been building works going on next door for the past two days. The house was vibrating with noise, but that's nothing compared with the alarm that went off a few doors up at 4.20 on Saturday morning and lasted until 9ish. After an hour went off again, it was impossible to work or even think (never mind sleep) so we left for town. It's lovely and quiet at the moment, just some birds chirping outside, bliss.

G nib etc.

Well, I'm busy at the moment with illustration work and I've been painting solidly for the last 3 days. There's paintings covering every available surface, including taped over my computer (I have my reasons). But in the mean time, here's something unrelated I did a while ago.

This is a sketch I did with a G nib, I'm pretty enamoured with these nibs at the moment. It was done in a Moleskine which always acts funny with wet media and the ink bled a bit on it.

Here's the little blighter, this particular one is made by Deleter and as you can see was purchased in Forbid, not one of the usual places I get my art supplies. You get 3 in a pack, which I reckon is to shift more stock. I found an old one I had ages ago (made by I don't know who), it looked broken with the two bits twisted open, but they just popped back into place, neat!

Here's a bunch of my nibs. The one at the top is a Brause 361 and is an old favourite, I'm using it at the moment on my illustrations with acrylic ink and it's working very well on the rough support.

Sketches in colour no less.

The big guy here has been painted with watercolour. It goes onto Moleskine sketch book paper kinda weird, it beads a bit when you first paint on it and it never really takes the watercolour properly, it can smear after it's dried and then rewetted, as I discovered today.

The lady was inked with a brush pen.

Sketches

Some more sketches from my Moleskine. My personal favorite is in the bottom right hand corner.

More Sketchy-Wetchys

Life Drawing

It's been 8 years since I last did life drawing. I wish I hadn't left it so long, not because I'm unhappy with the results, but it was so enjoyable to do, I've been missing out all this time.

More sketches

I have some life drawing to post and I will when they're scanned. But these puppies were ready to go:

More from the Moleskine

I've been super busy the last month and I was ill too, but finally I have a little free time to blog and stuff.

Here are some Cthulhu-esq sketches I drew on my birthday with my new 0.7 mechanical pencil. It's a pentel graphgear and it's really snazzy. I love drawing with 0.7's, you can get a lot of line variation out of them.

Sketches in me Moleskine

Here are some sketches I did last night while watching Shaun of the Dead. As you can see they are totally inspired by the movie. I don't know why there's a turquoise tinge over the whole thing, if anything it should be yellowish.

Pan's Labyrinth

Here is a work in progress, which I started ages ago in my Moleskine. One day it may get finished, I don't know. But I'm pretty happy with the interim stages so far.