not Zentangles, just tangles

I often need to do meditative drawing to let off stress, but I can't do Zentangles at all because it's too abstract for me. What relaxes me is drawing hair.

It started as a metaphor for mermaids without actually drawing a mermaid, inspired by art my mom used to make for me of slender ladies with lots of wild hair. 

Over time I started drawing more and more hair. It's very calming to fill a page with curves and lines, and I enjoyed drawing the figures swimming in their own hair too.

I love slowly filling up the spaces with ink, breathing out along with the long lines. I also like drawing the figures first, their expressions and poses, and working their hair around that. I can choose to show the shape of the body beneath, or not.

The latest one was more personal, battered but triumphant. Drawing these lines was cathartic and purged a lot of the horror and frustration I was feeling over recent weeks.

Moretta comic

I expanded the Moretta theme into a short comic to submit to magazines and anthologies. It's a little personal but I'm quite proud of it.

flashback: inktober 2018

Inktober 2018 was the first time I mostly posted work on Instagram instead of scanning it first. Some highlights:

No watercolour here, just ink!

Paris trip sketches, part 2

Part 1

Anting-anting at the Musée du Quai Branly:

Statues at the Louvre:

Heading home on the train:

Paris trip sketches, part 1

Visited Paris for the first time since 2006! It's just as beautiful, and it seems people are much nicer than the other two times I was there. Then again I feel like I spoke more French than last time.

I love drawing on trips but I don't usually get a chance in company. Have some drawings, mostly from the train. I did get stopped from using watercolour in the museums - pencil is okay.

Stay tuned for more soon!

tis the season...

...to wrap up warm.

Other people dress up for winter, I dress for a space flight to an ice planet. This is the regular version; the snow day version adds a coat that looks like a duvet Slanket, an interstitial fleece layer and polar boots with ice grips.

Created with layers in Photoshop and animated in Clip Studio Paint Pro.

nature sketching - spring to summer

This spring has been very productive for diary sketching! I got a little serious about hanami and kept a log of my favourite cherry blossom viewing locations.

Every year is also a search for the perfect cherry-blossom-pink ink...and I think I've finally found it! J. Herbin's Bouquet D'Antan is a pale dusty pink that is a delight to draw infinite flower petals with. Put it in a wet drawing fountain pen like a Lamy Safari and watch it go. I found I couldn't stop drawing bunches and bunches of them.

All these flowers and the twittering birds returned from the long winter made me miss our garden at home, and I drew some Philippine garden birds in a small Fabriano notebook I'm using as a colour sketch journal.

Sailor HiAce Neo pen with Kiwa-Guro ink,
Cass Art watercolours

And more recently, as the cold days clash with the hot, there have been some lightning storms that were wonderful to watch. It's hard to draw lightning at the best of times, let alone from memory, but I just had to get those images down before they faded.

Winsor and Newton watercolours
with white Kuretake graphic paint

This has been a very pink post, apropos for spring. Looking forward to summer!

Mermay!

It's Mermay! Springtime is a good time to turn over a new leaf.

This year instead of just doing mermaids, I wanted to use concepts that made me think of mermaids. Hair. Tails. Weightlessness. Allure.

I didn't go as deep as I do in Inktober, but I'm pleased with the results.

Various Platinum and Kuretake pens in expired Moleskine planner/diary.

more drive by

I've continued to do the drive by drawing off and on over the years, although I haven't been posting. I ride the bus a lot less often these days; I miss it.

Calligraphy

Doing some italic practice with dip pens and Diamine inks, using forms by Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls.

Quote from One Week One Band.

My favourite poem, known as the Maboroshi poem, by Murasaki Shikibu. Translation by Liza Dalby, from her book The Tale of Murasaki.

Some quotes from blogs and my new fandom Yuri!!! on Ice. The original was in all caps too! I find it silly but inspiring.

Speedball C-4 dip pen with Diamine Oxblood, Grey and Carnation.