locks and pens

This isn't exactly a page-a-day thing, but I have been a little caught up, and I would like to make time in my day to sketch regularly. I'll be posting my doodles here. My friend Jamie gave me a great Moleskine squared notebook, and it takes to dip pens very well (although, as always, I have to watch out for smears!)

Tried using a copperplate nib I picked up for 80p at the London Graphic Centre to draw a door lock from the Duomo in Florence. It's stiffer than the nibs that the oblique holder uses, so you really need to use pressure to get any variation. And because of the funny shape, my feel for the nib was off and one side of the lock ended up stretched out--a totally unforeseen effect!

Writing blog!

I started a writing blog!

http://perechan.blogspot.com/

And here is the illustration I used for it, adapted from some work I did for HitREC:

oh look, another mermaid

Are you sick of fish ladies yet?

Actually you might know this one: I drew it ages and ages ago and have only just come back to colour it.

In the meantime this physical artwork (and the sketchbook it's in) has been in three different continents since I created it. It's the John Watson of watercolour art. Think of that as you look at it. You're welcome.

Inkscape inkspace

I don't think Inkscape is something I 'taught myself' so much as I just fell into it with a burning resentment because my computer can't handle Illustrator right now.

But I'm starting to feel my way around it a bit better, and there is nothing on earth anymore that YouTube won't show you how to do.

So a relative asked me to do some work for the banner header of their personal blog and they wanted an arrow with a pen nib point. 

Some sketches I did:

The designer came up with some pegs for me, to streamline the process. A dip pen point instead of the fountain pen, a burnished antique look.

This is the first thing I did off of one of the pegs from the designer: a Roman pen. She wanted it for the arrow shaft.

This is the final illustration:

Fashion Sketches: Superdry Girls

It is literally unbelievably hot here in London (I'm not joking; people are going round saying they actually don't understand how this can be the same place as last year), and that means mini dresses. I keep looking at the adorable dresses on the Superdry website, even though I know I'm not going to buy them. And then this happened:

I actually did have a pet rabbit who looked like that, I don't know why I am so mean. Poor Sei-chan, at least you're alive and well and happily adopted.

(The stains are because I was painting in the garden, and then I took my teabag to put it in the compost and splash. I tried to make some drips so it would look deliberate, but that only made it worse.)

I thought 'well the higher classes seem well represented, what about merchants and workers'? I like the fishers and their nautical stripes. The textile merchant...everything looks fine except that wimple. You can't even tell that's what it is, her head just seems like a separate entity. Maybe it's her la-la-land expression.

So this exercise was more satisfying than actually shopping for Superdry, but not as satisfying as I thought it would be. Oh well.

New banner header!

I was a little tired of doors (shocker!), and I thought the blog header looked untidy, so I made some banners from my dirigibles art.

I used a neat little free font called Stamping Nico that I got from dafont.com. Picked the third banner because it had a little more colour & variety. Hope you like it!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

It's my mother's birthday today, so I did her a watercolour! Unfortunately I have no scanner at the moment, so here is a photo instead.

Cotman pan colours on Daler Rowney watercolour paper, with Sakura Koi and Blue Heron waterbrushes.

(Edited 7/15/13 to replace the blurry photo with a clearer one.)

spring cleaning

Working on something that's pretty old, but could do with a bit of cleaning up. I'd like to shop it around, if anyone would be interested in a rather depressing little book...

Now that I think of it, this is where I really started to explore working with dip pens. Now they're my favourite drawing tool.

Sketches app

There is a new free drawing app for the iPad called Sketches. I downloaded it and it's great!

It has brush pen, felt tip marker and paintbrush as discrete tools. There's only one brush size for each unless you buy the Pro version (£1.49!), but the brush pen and technical pen make up for each other. It's quite sensitive, and you need to pick the option to undo via button because the 'backwards swipe' undo just makes a mark on your drawing. But I like it much more than Paper!

mysterious beasts

Look, I aten't dead!

Phoenix and unicorn, dip pen and Noodler's ink.

Sorry for the radio silence, been moving around a lot lately. Hope to post more stuff soon...