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...

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

A Unicorn for my portfolio...!

Click if you want to see it larger...

Hooray! I have had permission to add my Unicorn commission to my blog portfolio, so here it is along with a few close up details... It will also be under the Watercolour heading of my portfolio pages underneath my thumbnail bar soon...





I was for a change actually quite pleased with this one, I think it turned out well enough to become a part of my Children's Illustration portfolio as well, although that's coming along very, very slowly!
I promised my youngest daughter Elswyth a unicorn some time ago, and I enjoyed this one so much I really must get on with doing hers... Here's as possible idea from last year with both daughters that so far hasn't made it out of my sketch book... I definately owe her one!

So here goes... the first post!

Although rather apprehensive about 'putting myself out there', and would hate to come across as self indulgent, I have enjoyed and been inspired by so many wonderful arty blogs, I have a hankering to join in!
I intend using this blog rather selfishly as a motivational prompt to keep nurturing that creative spark so easily overwhelmed by the stresses of everyday, and to create a space to create.

I would love to share my love of of creative writing, art, mythology and wilderness - sometimes in words of my own, and sometimes sharing wordhoards of others who have inspired me.

I have had great fun already just designing my banner, though I was surprised how hard it was to choose a title...
'Images and Words' would have said it all but rather plainly - and only fellow Dream Theatre fans would have got the reference...!
Otherwise I would have loved to call it 'Wind Age, Wolf Age,' but it is afterall describing the end of the world so probebly not very appropriate for a creative blog! But how I love this passage...

'...An Axe-age, a Sword-age
Shields clashing,
A Wind-age, a Wolf-age
Until the World's ruin,
No man shall spare another...'
From the 'Voluspa' - Poetic Edda.

Anyway, I thought I'd start off by showing you a quick page of my sketchbook rather than make this too long and rambling!
Here is a little drawing of my elder daughter in the garden intended for a painting at some point...

And here is the quick watercolour study that followed...

Well, there goes the first post, I will try to post often, sometimes artwork, sometimes writing and literature, but I hope it becomes interesting to some of you out there and would love to hear your comments...

Best wishes, Carrie...