My First Feature: The City Fox e-zine

The teasing is nearly over. I mentioned in previous posts about me illustrating for an online magazine and I can reveal it is The City Fox e-zine, they have made me their featured artist! They also asked me for a short interview so that’s on there too, along with more drawings. It’s an eye opener for me to see over a short amount of time how my drawing style has changed, so I encourage you to have a nose!

The City Fox is a literary based e-zine who specialise in dark flora and fauna inspired by poetry, prose and artwork, I am hugely flattered that they have asked me to illustrate the covers of their 2nd issue, ‘Ashes’, I shall keep you posted on the developments!

Illustration Friday: Onomatopoeia

What a mouthful! So this weeks Illustration Friday was Onomatopoeia (on-na-mat-oh-pee-ah), I immediately thought bumblebee. So I hit Flickr in search of inspiration and I found it in the form of Staffan Hamnäs and his stunning photo of the beastie. I used watercolour, ink, coffee, pigment and pastel to blast this fuzzy bumble with colour.

I think I fussed with detail too much, and prefer the white free version. If you look closely you can just about make out the little white ‘Buzz’ words. I used drawing gum which is a new material I’m getting to grips with, it’s excellent though, you can keep your whites white forever with that stuff. It allows me to be less concerned about my clumsiness and opens the flood gates for my Oddkness — it’s a good feeling!

Illustration Friday: Together

After missing I don’t know how many weeks of Illustration Friday, cutting it a little fine as always — I managed it, just before the topic changed!

For the theme of ‘Together’ I thought about a bustling bunch of Magellanic penguins and for even more closeness I attached the penguins with an unbroken continuous line, how cosy! Then fought with a little bit of patterning, which I then finished with coffee, ink, watercolour and pigment.

I was panicking a little as penguins look quite uniform with not a lot to distinguish one from another, I think I met the challenge reasonably well and managed to injected a little bit of individuality into each little penguin'ite, room for improvement though, definitely.

The Wolf and the Crane

The Wolf and the Crane involves a delicate procedure where a crane attempts to remove a bone from a wolf’s throat. Using coffee, watercolour and a touch of white pigment I came up with two slightly different compositions. I have used the common crane in the first illustration and the sandhill crane for the second due to the geographical compatibility, which I shouldn’t probably take any notice of since this is an Aesop’s fable, never mind!

My second attempt is probably the one I prefer, I enjoy the subtle detail of animals faces, plus I bought some different pens which are waterproof so I don’t have to wait a few hours for the ink to dry, resulting in less Skyrim time in between drying…

“A Wolf once got a bone stuck in his throat. So he went to a Crane and begged her to put her long bill down his throat and pull it out. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he added. The Crane did as she was asked, and got the bone out quite easily. The Wolf thanked her warmly, and was just turning away, when she cried, “What about that fee of mine?” “Well, what about it?” snapped the Wolf, baring his teeth as he spoke; “you can go about boasting that you once put your head into a Wolf’s mouth and didn’t get it bitten off. What more do you want?”

Cosmic Terrapin

It’s been a long couple of weeks of tortoises, and this is the end, I’ve reached the breaking point! No more turtle-y related things now, I promise. I found a really lovely image of a terrapin by Bernadette Chiaramonte on Flickr whilst I was losing my mind trying to illustrate the Tortoise and the Eagle and I wanted to inject my oddkness into it.

Using coffee, inks, watercolour and that white pen which finishes off the image quite nicely, I was able to depict this terrapin, accompanied by a few fishy friends swimming through space. I did mean it to look like water but it looks more like space… but that’s okay!

The Tortoise and the Eagle

After much agonising on how to portray my third Aesop Fable I think it was time to put this story to bed for now. Over many sketches and compositions I evolved the story into an admittedly busy idea. In the image below I have incorporated a story within the body of the eagle, the left wing joint depicts a soaring eagle, below you can make out the tortoise making his descent into the rocks depicted in yellow below him.

I went with this idea as I think it was a springboard for different media. I have used coffee (which smells real good), inks, pastel pigments and this white outline which I’m really liking! Although I feel this image could leave you confused it allowed me to experiment and go a little nutty.

“A Tortoise, discontented with his lowly life, and envious of the birds he saw disporting themselves in the air, begged an Eagle to teach him to fly. The Eagle protested that it was idle for him to try, as nature had not provided him with wings; but the Tortoise pressed him with entreaties and promises of treasure, insisting that it could only be a question of learning the craft of the air. So at length the Eagle consented to do the best he could for him, and picked him up in his talons. Soaring with him to a great height in the sky he then let him go, and the wretched Tortoise fell headlong and was dashed to pieces on a rock.”

Blind and the Continuous Line

I’ve been practising some blind drawing of… can you guess? Blind drawing is when you only look at the subject and daren’t look down at the paper which results in some quite interesting outcomes.

These nightmarish images you see below are tortoises of course! The middle image is the results of some continuous line drawing where you cannot lift the pen off the paper, I added some water for a leaky effect if you wondered why some appear to be dribbling.

Toadally Teasing

Daw, those naughty toads are teasing you! They might be giving you a taster of what I've been sneakily working on these past couple of weeks… How cryptic!

Squirrely Sketching

I’ve had a super busy week making drawings for an e-zine who may publish my work in their next issue, so I’m being super secretive with the outcomes! I’ve been practising drawing silly squirrels in my down time, and here’s a couple of pages worth of drawings to satisfy your insatiable thirst for more oddkness in the meantime.

The Gnat and the Bull

My second Aesop’s Fable, and I thought I’d show the ‘making of’ the illustration.

I start off by trawling the web for the one photo that captures my imagination. I then blunt all my pencils by drawing the subject matter, over and over.

And when I get that perfect composition, I rush to draw it out on watercolour paper, and ink over the design before my spark of creativity fades. After the ink is dry, I apply watercolour and, when that has dried I add the finishing touches with white acrylic and more ink to pattern.

“A Gnat alighted on one of the horns of a Bull, and remained sitting there for a considerable time. When it had rested sufficiently and was about to fly away, it said to the Bull, “Do you mind if I go now?” The Bull merely raised his eyes and remarked, without interest, “It’s all one to me; I didn’t notice when you came, and I shan’t know when you go away.

We may often be of more consequence in our own eyes than in the eyes of our neighbours.”

A3+ and A4 Prints for Sale!

Yay! I’ve successfully had one of my drypoint horse prints Dutchess I, reproduced. As you may know, I made these back in college for an exam piece and they are my favourite body of work I’ve produced.

To ensure you’re getting a lot of pretty horse face for the money, the actual dimensions of the print is a little larger than A3 and the paper is 477 × 351mm. I also have A4 prints for sale for the more space poor amongst you.

If they sell I will consider replicating more of my printmaking work, and maybe even my watercolour work, and hopefully wean off my checkout blood money from the supermarket I work for.

More British Beasties with Sketches

I have worked hard this week to really make some art I can stand back from and feel that I didn't waste paper. It’s a good feeling! I’m making a portfolio of work at the moment to submit to an online magazine, the theme being dark fauna and flora.

And my favourite image has to be this little fawn, I added the ink trails to add an element of darkness, and I do think the black ink adds a bit of a creepiness to an otherwise innocent creature.

By making sketches beforehand — something I considered time wasting before — I can really develop the final image. I guess practising the form in a sketchbook really helps give me the confidence to push those watercolours to their limit! I feel I’m really getting a hold on my technique and I have been considering maybe a fancy Illustrator or Photoshop package to enhance my hand illustrations further, a pipe dream for the moment, maybe in the future…

Fauna and Flora Beasties

I’ve been interested in combining flora and fauna together as one being. Here is one of my first attempts. Though I am really critical of this drawing I hope to get a little more creative with the flora composition on the beasties to depict a wildly whimsical beast worthy of some more eye time.

I’ve also been experimenting with mark making, so I’ve produced these couple or drawings in the past week, distributing the right amount of dots and triangles as you can see, practice makes perfect!

Getting Creative in Cards

I really enjoy drawing in people’s cards, the thrill of completely messing it up is enormous which is quite stressful, but this stress I interpret as a push to really create something memorable. Using ink in cards is a particular favourite, as using cotton buds you can often remove layers of ink creating tone, I emphasise this by streaking on white acrylic paint. Excuse the handwriting!

Masking Tape Bat

In lieu of my next Aesop fable illustration, I’ve made my own little long eared bat from rolled up tubes of masking tape and carrier bags. I really enjoyed making my masking tape cat when I was at Kingston University, so I thought I’d get the tape out and get busy with making another weird luminous green sticky creature.

The Fox and the Grapes

Aesop’s Fables are the most beloved fables of all time! To draw attention to the less well known ones I set about about trying to illustrate them. The fox and the grapes was the first one I was drawn to.

I designed three images to match the fable and I played with different ideas for each one, I can’t leave watercolour alone at present so two feature a watercolour element.

Illustrating these fables will allow me to build up a portfolio of work so in time I may well be able to approach authors to show examples of my work, plus I can get in lots of illustrative practice!

“A hungry Fox saw some fine bunches of Grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis, and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of reach: so he gave up trying, and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, “I thought those Grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.”

Say Happy Fathers Day, with Hippos!

My dad loves hippos! So I made him one.

Initially I was going for a full hippo sculpture, big and bulky.

I made a flimsy wire support skeleton and sculpted wads of clay very roughly over the top. I decided on just going with the top half as the sculpture would have been too heavy and too time consuming to meet the deadline of the 16th of June, Fathers Day!

I enjoy leaving my sculptures grey as I love a more natural vibe to my sculptural work, but I had to keep it exciting and vibrant as my dad unfortunately doesn’t have the longest attention span. I thought giving it a bit more of a colour boost would make my dad appreciate the gift a little bit more.

I sculpted the hippo by hand using wire throughout to keep the beast together.

When air drying clay dries it can be difficult preventing breakages, using tiny pieces of wire in the ears, jaw and teeth were vital to make sure they didn’t break off during handling. After all his bits and pieces were sculpted I then after much experimentation painted him with red acrylic which further strengthened and sealed it. As always I gave him a final layer of PVA to give my hippo a glistening finish.

This was my first attempt at my hippo which proved a chunky challenge and probably would have not suited the boisterous Bennett household.

My First Bear Maquette

I sculpted this clay maquette by hand, using a thin piece of wire, it took a day and a bit. I coated the maquette with PVA to harden and give him a sheen.

I work with air drying clay, and if you don’t skewer it with lengths of wire to act as a skeleton and seal it with something such as PVA it will crumble and crack. The safest thing to do is to make a structurally sound wire skeleton before you even think of claying. But I’m a glutton for punishment and went ahead and didn’t make a skeleton for this maquette as I am impatient and was rushing to meet a Kingston University deadline.

The proportions of the body is off, the head is too big for the body and it looks too much like a teddy bear. It’s not a bad start, I hope to get back to this project in the near future and really work hard to finish this hairy chapter.

A Grizzly Situation

At Kingston University I was messing around with the idea of making more sculpture. I thought that making a bear from each of the eight major species would be interesting, as I’ve always struggled to draw bears, let alone sculpt them.

The real challenge is differentiating each major species through subtle distinct characteristics so that the viewers can tell their sunbear from their sloth bear!

These are some examples from my sketchbook, this page showing some quick continuous line drawings and research.

This page showing some bear drawings and a few quick research notes.

They let us loose in the print room again so I thought I’d try out some printmaking techniques using bear imagery to get myself fired up for clay sculpting.

What Could Be Sweeter?

I made these couple of drawings for Illustration Friday’s topic, Sweet. And honestly you cannot help be in awe of baby rhinos, they are so delectably squishable!

In 2013, the BBC broadcast their wildlife documentary series, Africa, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. In the memorable and heart felt closing scene we saw Sir David cooing with a blind baby rhino, and it was the most tear jerking sight.

More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qmbqn Sir David Attenborough in conversation with... a blind baby rhino.