The last few weeks have been full of a variety of art related activities including picking up a brand new (to me) gas lift stool for the studio. My drawing desk (which was picked up for free quite a few years ago now and is very old and weighs a ton) is very high and I was usually standing at it to work. However, my back gets very sore doing that all the time so I looked online for a stool and found this one being given away! Its perfect:
I have been working on a few of the entries for the 52 week illustration challenge too with the recent themes of:
Stripes
and Childhood
Stripes was painted on board using oils and depicts a lemur from Taronga Zoo in Sydney.
Childhood was done on A3 size stretched watercolour paper using watercolour pencils. I have a specific reason for this style and medium which I will get to soon. This painting was done slowly over a few days, here are a few progress shots:
I have been spending a bit of time thinking about and researching what would be involved in being part of the children’s book illustration industry. I have been listening to some very helpful you tube clips by an illustrator from the US called Will Terry. He gives out so much information which is practical and honest. One thing I learnt from him was:
I emailed him a question in regards to digital management of images and asked him whether traditional hand painting styles are still used. This is the clip where he answered my question:
Many children’s book images are done using watercolours or softer mediums which is another reason I have set up my drawing desk (and seating!) so I can focus on this in a separate way to my oil painting. More to come!
I have of course still been oil painting for myself. This is the one I did just yesterday:
This is about 90% finished with a few tweaks still needed.
I have a couple of other things to share but this post is already very long so I will leave it there for now. I will leave you with a couple of shots from last week’s art classes. Our adults are now using table easels made by one of the men at church. The kids had a lot of fun learning about complimentary colour combined with line and pattern.
“The road goes ever on and on”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Amanda
