This Week I...

...was asked to give the Learning Powers Family a super hero make-over for use at school next week.

The costumes are our school colours, and I quite like them because they're also Sunnydale High colours! 

Deciding what kind of super hero clothes the grandparents would wear was challenging, especially the Grandma. I think what I came up with says 'sweet Grandma but could do some serious damage if need be.'  

Even the dog got in on the action!

What did you get up to this week?

Colour In Dresses

When I was taking the photos of my latest up-cycled dress it was really sunny. This isn't something I'd usually complain about but it made some of the photos really bright, so much so that the dress I was trying to show was completely washed out.

Which gave me an idea.

I printed out four of the brightest photos where the dress was almost completely white and coloured them in. 

 I was able to re-design the dress.
Straps? Why not.

Pink with matching shoes? Go for it.

 

 I think this one's my favourite. I like the neckline and the green to blue gradient.

So that was fun. It's like a fashion doll meets a colouring page.

Illustration inspiration

I recently found this image online. After a bit of digging I found it's by illustrator and graphic journalist Wendy Macnaughton.

I really liked the style and to try my own version I decided to use images of my friends.

(I've blurred out some of the words just because I don't know how much personal information my friends would want on the internet)

I traced the images from photos using my light box. Yes, I traced them. I wanted to get straight to the colouring and not spend ages trying to get the faces looking right. So I used tracing as a shortcut.

I coloured them in using coloured pencils.

I've never really done realistic colouring with pencils before, but i think I'm getting the hang of it.

Though apologies to my friends if you think I made your face look wonky or discoloured!

Coming out from the faces I wrote my friends' full names, their birthdays and things I associate with each of them.

Next I want to try something with more words so they're blocks of text coming out from the image, so many something with song lyrics. 

My space

When looking for blank pages in the back of sketchbooks I came across this project I thought I'd share.

It was the summer project I was assigned before going to uni in 2009, entitled 'myspace'.

I decided to create a bunch of arty pages around my home town, and here's a few of them

I started with a photo of a young me outside my garage, and then drew the rest of the house around it.

The bus stop where I used to catch the bus to school was right next to a field that had ponies in it.

Nice, right? Not when it's 8 in the morning a pony is weeing right next to you.

This is a view of our watermill painted in watercolours.

A pencil drawing of one of the churches.

A page about the playgroup I went to.

That's a chalk pastel drawing on the right, drawn on my town's section of the local paper. Clever.

Mostly I just liked including photos of me when I was younger.

Too many of my school uniforms involved wearing a tie though...

I think this is probably the closest I've got to 'art journalling' and it's a nice little record to have of my home town and the parts that mean something to me.

Doodle book

This book used to be my favourite when I was younger.

Because it was my doodle book!

My Dad got this book from his work and it's full of blank pages ready to be drawn on.

Half of it is shiny paper perfect for felt tip pens and biros and the other half is matt paper for pencils.

I drew all kinds of stuff in here;

Dolphin eating chocolate and drinking 'Cola'? Check.

A chef with checked trousers serving lobster? Check.

3-headed guy with a funky sweater? Yep, there's one of those too.

Being a girl there's a lot of drawings of ladies in big dresses.

This is one of the stranger ones.

Why are her hands poking out from those mad hips?

This lady who looks like her dog also belongs on the crazy train.

As a kid I liked drawing conveyor belts and machines (I could watch this clip over and over), so here's one I drew of my version of the production of cola.

(Sorry it's a bit faint, I tried to up the contrast)

There's a few of these in my doodle book.

I think I saw the idea somewhere. There's a good chance it was Art Attack.

I drew these mazes everywhere.

And things are getting serious when I start colouring them in.

And I'll end on this little guy.

I'm glad I still have my doodle book. It's fun too look through.

And there are still a few blank pages, so maybe I should go back and fill them.

Free Crappy Housemate Portrait

Have you guys seen this website?

Free Crappy Portraits
It causes many giggles.

Since me and my housemates have started a collection of drawings of the four of us I thought I'd submit a photo to the site to get one more.

This is the photo I gave them.

And this is the drawing they sent me.

(It's not on the website yet but I couldn't wait to show you!)

They drew me as an owl because I was wearing my owl hat, which makes sense right.

But a bird, a beaver and a....dinosaur with an afro??

Hilarity!!!



House portraits

Remember this drawing of my housemates?

Well we thought it would be fun if we each did a drawing of us all, and here they are.

This is Lucy's. She's a fine artist like me.

This is Luke's. He's a graphic designer.

And this is Ryan's. He's the one with the beard and he's studying Games Art.

The idea behind his drawing is that I'm doing one of my signature poses while the others are looking annoyed. Ha!

Getting my draw on

I've been inspired by all the cute drawings/illustrations I've been seeing around the blogs.

Like this one of Kaelah by Saturated Canary.

And even these little drawings that Elsie just posted.

I wanted to have a go myself, but if you've seen my paintings then you'll know I'm realism gal.

So I decided to pick a very simple style and do very minimalist faces. Any more detail and I'd try and make it realistic, which isn't what I was going for.

I drew my housemates. That's me in the pink.

I decided to colour in the drawings with water colour paints which was definitely a good idea.

Remember the time I dressed up as a clown? I drew that too.

And this is what I looked like when I was doing the drawings. Yep, that's a cookie monster shirt.