In my sketchbook

Hey its Friday and I'm stretching canvas in my studio, getting a bit distracted...

Lately I've been sketching all sorts of things in my sketchbook, so I'd thought I'd share some of them here.

I'm still fascinated by trees and their bare branches... here is one sketch i did recently. Instead of solid colour I used crosshatching lines to fill it in. I did this randomly but I think next time I will try to follow the texture of the tree.

I've seen a lot of bird illustrations around, I think they're really cute so I had to have a go at one myself. It took me a number of versions to get to this simplified form of an Australian Blue bird (that's me missing the constant chirp of birds and parrots that is prominent all over Australia.) After a few sketches I created a final colour version with my shellac based inks and brush on paper (this time just plain white drawing paper).

I'm also working on creating some Christmas illustrations. Instead of buying cards I thought I'd make them myself this year for family and friends, and that way I will build up a portfolio of images for this season, to submit to greeting card publishers for next year. This one is inspired by my boyfriend Marc-Andre who is an elf this Christmas!

Gotta go and get back into it now - enjoy!

Two new illustrations

I think I'm getting better! This blog is really starting to pay off. Here are two new illustrations that I recently created.






















The first illustration Beaded is of one of my favourite bracelets, a colourful creation that I bought in the balmy seaside town of Montezuma, on my recent trip to Costa Rica. I took a photo of myself wearing the bracelet in my favourite purple dress.

The second illustration, titled Sandals is a reflection of all the gladiator sandals I'm seeing on the streets of Vancouver this summer. I have fallen victim to fashion too and bought myself a funky black pair similar to the style featured on the left.

In both of these styles I have tried to move away from using black as outline - I think it has a more natural and realistic feel this way. I'm using Derwent watercolour pencils.