See you all in a week!

From Castell Henllys

We're off to wonderful, wild, Wales for a week! (Blimey that was a lot of W's)
So I'll catch up with you all in a week or so. I'm taking my pencils and brushes so hopefully I'll have some sketches and paintings to show you too.
Off now to pick up two very excited children, then onto the motorway we go ! Hooray!

How about some Blues...

Well the cough and cold the children have had has finally got me, so I didn't get a lot done with my day off this week... I did however find this extraordinary video of a hero of mine the great Buddy Guy...
This is an extra long version and for good reason, just keep watching... he's a security guard's nightmare I'm sure but so big hearted...
This is one artist I've just got to get to see at some point, he's sings and plays with such joy and passion, you can see just how much he loves what he does... what a great way to be!

I just got his latest album this week too 'Living Proof' the title track is '74 years young'. Good ole Buddy, he'll always be young!

And the winner is...

I decided to roll a dice to find the winner of my Kells Bird Giveaway... We have quite a lot of multi sided dice knocking around at our house so I thought it would give this runic set a good excuse to get used again!
And so the winner is... number 4.... Christina, of Mermaid in the attic! Which means it will be going all the way to Australia... quite a flight for a small bird!
Well done Christina, and thankyou to all of you who left a comment, its always so nice to read your kind words - sorry you couldn't all get to win, but I'm sure I'll do another Giveaway at some future point... Thanks again everyone!

Last chance to enter my Giveaway! And last night's life session, more ink than I bargained for... !

30 minute pose, ink, gouache and water.

Last weeks life session was cancelled due to low numbers, so I was relieved that this weeks went ahead, actually a very full studio with several new faces which is very promising...
I enjoyed using the ink and dip pen so much last time that I thought I'd give it another go... however I got to the studio to find I'd left my ink at home. Helen, the lovely lady who runs the studios kindly lent me some chinese ink which I found behaved totally differently to the indian ink I had just gotten used to!
Anyway, although it felt more hit and miss than my last attempts I really enjoyed scratching away on my offcuts of mountboard snaffled from work, and threw in a bit of white gouache as well.
Here's the rest of what I scraped out last night...

5 minute pose

5 minute pose

This (above) was supposed to be a 7 minute pose that was going quite well, but then quite amusingly my dip pen nib fell out - PLOP into my pot of ink! I had to fish around for it getting covered in ink in the process. By the time I sorted out the mess the pose was over...

7 minute pose

And the final 30 minute pose which I quite like I think, the ink lines are reasonably clean anyway. At the moment getting used to the new medium my attention to measuring has gone a bit to the wayside... but that's ok for now, as I get more familiar with it the accuarcy will get better and at the moment I'm more interested in the energy of the drawings.
It's funny how different mediums have such wildly different effects on your drawing style... I feel with the ink I want to draw fast with deep bold energetic strokes, hence the lack of careful measuring, but I like it!
Those of you who draw, I'd be interested to hear whether your own drawing style or approach changes depending on the medium used...

And don't forget if you'd like to enter my 'Blog-Birthday-Giveaway' to win an original Kells inspired watercolour illustration, just leave a comment on my previous post here...
I will be drawing the names out of the hat as it were tomorrow evening, so get in there quick!

Windsongs and Wordhoards is one year old... time for a Giveaway!

This week happens to complete the circle of my first year of blogging (29th of March to be precise!)! It seems there is a bit of a tradition of having a giveaway on such occasions and I really rather like the gesture of that, so... I have spent this week painting a little something to give away...
It's a little original watercolour of a 'Book of Kells' inspired bird, you can see my lovely big 1970's first edition on my desk giving inspration as I painted it...
I really enjoy painting celtica, I can see what the monks got out of it I think... I just get happily lost in the hours, brush and water, seeing empty pencil lines slowly come to life with colour.

I got a bit carried away and triple mounted it too! (It's a handy thing as an artist to also run a framing business!)
So if you would like a chance to win this bright little creature, please leave me a comment on this post and I'll put you all in the hat to draw a winner next week!
Whoever wins it, its a way for me to say a huge thankyou to all of you who drop by here for a visit, encouraging me with your kind comments and showing an interest in my creative endeavours.

I began this blog to motivate myself to keep nurturing my art in a life that's become so busy I was in danger of losing my connection to it altogether, and to keep alive my aspirations of becoming an illustrator one day.
But in this strange world of like minded strangers I found much more than I expected. Discovering and visiting all of you I am constantly inspired, reassured and feel although I haven't met any of you in person that I've made some real friends here. It is such a vibrant, creative community of minds, I feel I am not striving alone.
So thankyou, everyone and I hope you like my little bird!

Tonight's Life Drawings... without charcoal!!

What fun I had at the life session tonight!
This afternoon I went out and bought myself a dip pen with some interesting large spoon shaped nibs to try and left my nice safe charcoal at home just as I had promised myself...
And what better way to break out of the comfort zone than to use a scary new unpredictable un-rub-out-able medium! The model couldn't have been better suited to the inks... He was any illustrator or life drawer's dream model - dynamic, confident, hugely imaginative and with the strength to carry off the extremely stressful looking poses and hold them a long time too. Just so exciting to draw, a real treat!
I left the studio so exhilerated at the end of the session and grinned all the way home! I really enjoyed myself and love the dip pen.
Here's how I got on... a bit messy, a few ink blobs, but I liked it...

Warming up with a 5 minute pose to start

In this second 5 minute pose he was trying to portray falling through space, fantastic except I was so excited about getting used to the dip pen and ink all my measuring went out the window!

15 minute pose, starting to get the hang of it now...

20 minute pose, trying out a bit of brush and plain water to find the mid-tones...

Another 20 minute pose, really starting to like using the brush and water...

And the final 20 minute pose where I ran out of paper for the full stretch of it.

I'll definately carry on experimenting with ink for life drawing, I might take along some white gouache for the highlights next time and use coloured paper...

I do hope these sessions can continue, there were suppossed to be eight of us tonight but only two of us showed up. It made for a very nice relaxed atmosphere but Helen who runs the studio would not have made any where near enough to even pay for the model. Last weeks was cancelled altogether because too many people couldn't make it. Lets hope we can find some more artists to keep it going, I'd be gutted to lose it...

Sketchbook mission #3, a day of Dragons...

After many of you left me such nice comments on my sketchbook work, I thought you might like to see a bit more of my process of starting to plan out a painting.
Today I was on a Dragon mission... I've always had a massive mental block on how to tackle Dragons, especially when there are such amazingly good Dragon painters out there... my imagination just throws up the fantastic paintings of others I have seen and admired, Jackie Morris and John Howe being top of the list... and I feel rather daunted to attempt my own.

But I can't shy away from it any longer, one of my stories that needs a dummy book completing has Dragons in it, and there is a painting that needs painting for a good friend who's been having a tough time lately.
I'm doing her a portrait of her boys to cheer her up as a surprise, and the only way that felt right to paint them was with a Dragon. So it seems I have to find my own way to paint one!

Needing a starting point I went back to nature to look at lots of pictures of lizards, and there are some amazing creatures out there that certainly look more fantasy than real... I find good reference images really important when I'm researching a painting... not for copying but for informing, so I know exactly how reptillian scales should look or what a lizard's eye looks like, how the skin folds etc...

There are so many different aspects in which to portray a dragon, but today's needed to be a friendly one... the boys intended for this painting are quite young, aged 3 and 6, so I wanted it to look protective rather than ready to crunch boys bones!
Here's the first very quick, rough grasp of the idea...


Then I thought some more about the composition and how the Dragon should look...


Working up my ideas a bit more, with notes about light and dark, possible colours, different compositions and details...

I think I know where I want to go from here... I had initially just envisaged a square composition but quite like the idea of doing it on a circle... maybe somewhere between the two circular ones I have here. I'd be interested to hear which you prefer, square or round??


Next will be to finalise the composition and the details that need tweaking, before drawing it out full size onto my watercolour paper... always an anxious transition! I'll let you know how it turns out...