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.

Noh Mask

This is from a little while ago. Just a simple monochrome wash of a Noh mask. I went through a short lived phase of painting these.

My current illustration project is tipping along quite nicely, I'm on schedule. I have two previous projects which I'm waiting on to be printed, then I'll post some of their highlights. I met Susan, an editor at O'Brien Press, when visiting my parents, she gave me the inside scoop on what stage they're at in production with my latest book for them. Thanks Susan!

Some Good Support

My bank card got swallowed by an ATM today, fantastic!

Anyway here's a little story about paper. This is the paper I used to paint on:

Daler Rowney have fairly recently changed the smoothness of this paper (and the weight). It's now just cold pressed but it used to be so shmooth. The advantages of the old stuff were several fold: a paper capable of taking ink and watercolour; good for glazing techniques; readily available in big newsagents; affordable enough that you can just muck around on them and not feel like everything you do on it has to be a masterpiece.

Now that it's just cold pressed like every other pad of watercolour paper next to it on the shelves it's lost the first two qualities.

Here's some stuff from 2006 on the old paper:

The paintings in my first post were also painted on this stuff.

I was trying out some Arches Hot pressed and these were the results:

This paper's a lot pricier, but I got this block for free from my wonderful and kind Stephen. It is really, really nice, but it doesn't handle the dip pens as well as the old Daler Rowney Aquarelle.

DR Aquarelle:

Arches hot pressed:

These are the exact same zoom and size. But it is VERY zoomed in. It's more something you notice when your drawing.

Well, I've yet to test out every other hot pressed paper under the sun and that is fairly probable.

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.

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.

Line and Wash

Little Mermaid