Loosening up

Regular readers of my blog will know that drawing has always been a bit of a bug bear for me, the one thing that I have always been told I can do well yet it is the one thing that has always held me back as an artist. I have never kept sketchbooks of any quality, never wanted to, although I have loads of scrapbooks and texture books and lately have picked up art journaling which I love. Drawing drains and frustrates me yet if I am to produce the kind of art work and illustration that I want to I need to fix this. And soon. So I have bought a new sketchbook and pen which is just for this purpose. Good or bad I am going to add these pages to my blog and flickr and hopefully find my perfect line...

Illustrator

Last year I was given a copy of Adobe's Illustrator CS3 for my birthday and it has taken me nearly a year to find time to even look at it properly let alone how to figure out how to use it. But a couple of weeks ago I stayed up extra late after the kidlets had gone to bed to tackle it. The first attempt was the little birdy above - looks simple enough but it took the best part of two hours and I wasn't sure I knew how I did it!

Next I tried the cake. These, by the way, are card ideas I scanned straight out of my sketchbook, used the trace feature in Illustrator to redraw the lines (I love that bit) then filled with patterns I imported as jpegs. Hence the complication - too many steps to learn in one go!

The drawing for this last one was too broken and sketchy (as I found out after playing around with it for over an hour) so I redrew it by hand and tried again. I actually think I prefer the sketchier look of the first two pics but at least I am working out how the program works and what it'll do for me. The next step is to learn how to create my own patterns in Ilustrator, very exciting!

Collaboration

This super chunky little A6 book was made at the request of the fabulous Moopf. A full one and a half inches thick handstitched watercolour paper are adorned by Moopf's own printed fabric covers. I am in the process of making more, in the meantime this one is available in his etsy shop!

New books are being added to Chalk Hill and my etsy shop - go see!

Faces