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...

A Spring Sunshine walk...

It was warm in the spring sun today, and having only been able to look at it through windows all week I was so pleased it stayed bright for my day off! We wandered off for a walk down along the old Railway line that is now an excellent cycle track. There's miles and miles of it slowly being reclaimed by nature - so well in fact the council are talking about making it into a nature reserve or conservation area for wildlife.


There's a certain fascination looking at these tracks that were last used in the 1970's as far as I know, now thick with saplings winding into undergrowth... much like the Old Ironworks I posted about recently, how quickly industry can be undone by nature when we think of it as quite the other way around usually.


The old tracks are great fun for the kids... (yes, I include my husband in that statement!)


There's a few Trolls hiding in these woods though, watch out!
I had fun snapping away randomly with my camera, but these below are a couple I was quite chuffed with... pure luck rather than skill!


We stayed out in the garden for the rest of the day trying to tame our own little wilderness while the girls made mud soup in their little red wheel barrow, mmm lovely!
Even our silly small grey lion was enjoying the sun, and found a plantpot that fitted his shape perfectly!
Hope you enjoyed some nice Spring sunshine today where ever you all may be...

Sketchbook mission #2... who is this bone-cracking, crow-cackling Raven-Kin?

Well, the sketching everyday mission already failed yesterday having fallen asleep on the sofa instead! So tonight I tried to draw, but the old mind being a bit of a blank I decided to play around a bit more with the Raven-Kin... I wondered what might his nest be like? How would he move? What would his habits be between the dank marshland and the heavy skies? Would he nest in the sky-ravaged Mountains or the mist-choked Fens? What harsh unnerving songs would he croon to the dark in his ragged raven croak?


I could probebly fill pages exploring the nature of this creature and his habitats, but only if he gets insistant! I think this nest is too tidy, it needs more bones... and outlandish charms hanging from tendrils, and maybe some strange runic sigils scratched crudely by a claw into the rock... and cave paintings?


The drawings are ropey but at least I got a sketch or two out today, and hopefully the more I draw the more it might unseize my tired brain until it flows better!
But don't worry, I won't post sketchbooks everyday though, that would probebly get a bit repetetive no doubt! Just enough to get the ball rolling and keep me going...
I think this fellow needs a name now... perhaps once his name is spoken his story might begin to unfold itself ...

Sketchbook mission #1 The Raven-Kin...

Yet again I realised I've gone a week without once picking up a pencil, so I thought it was about time I did something about it... So I've decided I must draw something, anything every day in my sketchbook just to try and keep my hand in and to break the artistic paralysis I so often suffer!
So I took up my trusty 2B determined to draw the first thing that came to mind, and unbidden came the strange, otherworldly wizened creature I had once drawn over ten years ago. I tried thinking of something else but no, he was still there, cackling in his harsh raven-croak unsettling way insisting he be drawn...
So here he is, the Raven-kin, Dream Thief, Fisher of Souls...
I don't think he's evil, but not a creature you'd want to meet in the misty marshes all the same...


He first created himself ten years or so back as an illustration to a song called Dream Thief for an album cover of one of my husband's early bands... I don't know where he came from then or why he wanted to come back again but I kind of like him in his darksome, uneasy way... Though he certainly can't go under the children's illustration part of my work!
Perhaps I'll paint him again one day just to keep him appeased...

Album cover from around 2001

This week's life drawings...

Here's this weeks life drawings...
I was late so missed all the short poses unfortunately...
So having rushed, rushed, rushed straight from work to school, it was off to the dentist with big daughter, over to pick up littlest daughter, back to work to pick up husband, deliver some framed pictures, grab hasty supper on the run, dash into town... sneak late into the studio mid-pose, sit, sketchbook out, pencil, to paper, and draw... phew!

Not what you'd call a calm and focussed state of mind, but she was a lovely new model who just radiated serenity so I think that really helped!
She held great poses too, this first stretching, twisting one she held perfectly for 10 minutes! Not even a sway or a waiver, really impressive - shame I couldn't fit her on the page! Lacking hands and feet my drawing doesn't really illustrate just how stretched she was, the placing and weight balance of her feet would've been crucial really to show this... never mind, great pose.

10 minute pose

15 minutes

(getting to grips with my brand new charcoal pencil that's replaced the inch long remains of my favourite one...)

30 minute pose

And the final 30 minute pose (slightly levitating!)

Having arrived late I didn't get organised to try working in different mediums this week, but I am determined to break out of my comfort zone next time... I might have to leave my beloved charcoal at home to make me do it!

A young Dragon for World Book Day....

All week this week at my eldest imp's school they are doing lots of book and story related activities for World Book Day which is on the 3rd of March.
Today they all got to go to school dressed as a character from their favourite book, and Elora chose 'Tell Me a Dragon' by Jackie Morris, a book both my imps enjoy immensely... they love imagining their own wild dragonkind and pore endlessly over the endpapers which are completely filled with wonderfully coloured Dragon's eggs of all shapes and sizes, all in various stages of hatching out!


We've got lots of Jackie's books and I enjoy them as much as the children do... in fact it was discovering Jackie's books that first inspired me to find the Children's Illustration courses that have got me started in the direction I want to go.
It was also Jackie that inspired me to start this blog... I know lots of you already visit hers which is here at Drawing a Line in Time

Elora made her costume with a little help from Grandma after school yesterday, so I got a very Dragony surprise when I arrived to pick to the children up after work! As you can see she's a rather mischevious young hatchling! But luckily she hasn't got the hang of fire breathing just yet...


She's got a good roar though!!

She's requested melted gold for breakfast which is apparently what Dragons of her kind drink... Hmmm might be a bit expensive raising a young Dragon hatchling I fear!!

Tonight's Life Drawings...

30 minute pose

I made it to another evening life session at the Stony Street studios tonight, though it seems the evening sessions might not be continuing for too much longer unless more people start coming along. It would be a real shame from my point of view because the evenings are the only ones I can get to right now. So, out with the flyers and posters methinks...!
Here are some of the drawings from tonight...


I think its time to replace my two favourite life drawing pencils, they're only about an inch long now... a lovely soft black charcoal and a soft sepia charcoal/pastal pencil that I've done most of the last year's worth of life drawings with. Only trouble is I can't remember exactly what they were...


However I did enjoy using the big chunky graphite stick for the 2 minute poses - you just can't fuss with it and the weight really encourages strong bold sweeping lines, I think I like it!
I feel nice and safe with my charcoal pencils, but it's probebly about time I tried some other mediums... I might even take watercolours next week... A good excuse to go shopping for new art materials!