Some extra drawings

Italy part 3

Italy part 2

Italy

Italy part 1

Inspiration

One of the things I can say that have influenced me is children's books as they always have and I bought some beautiful new ones this summer.

Mr Tweeds Good Deeds - Jim Stoten

The Dark - Lemony Snicket

Beegu - Alexis Deacon

The Red Tree - Shaun Tan

Lost Thing - Shaun Tan

The Arrival - Shaun Tan 

Have You Seen My Dragon - Steve Light

The Moomins and the Great Flood - Tove Jansson 

Athas

I'e got to say a thanks to the coffee shop where Lauren works because of them letting me sit around all day I have actually been able to do some work this summer. I found at the end of last year that while I could never get much work done at home with all the things I could procrastinate with around and I couldn't get any work done in the studio as it has always left me with an almost oppressive feeling that I have to work, I could work at athas it has the perfect balance of me being comfortable but not at home and of having people around but not being able to bother them often.  

Getting better

This summer I've started regularly checking http://www.thisiscolossal.com. I know that I have been supposed to do this for a really long time but I'm afraid that I've never been good at doing things I'm supposed to, it always seemed to take the fun out of it. As I just started looking at it for me I now appreciate why I should have been doing it long ago particularly as I hate galleries so much. I have seen lots of beautiful things there and while I can't say that any influenced what I've been doing I can say that it made me want to be creative.

The buoy at sea

This sketchbook is all about an idea for a children's book I had when I took my boy to the deep and we saw a buoy at sea, when I told him he laughed and said "A boy! living on the sea!". I really liked the idea of this and wanted to form a story around it unfortunately I'm not a writer so I just thought I'd do what I could on the research of what his fish would be and where he would live. I knew that he should live on a buoy but I wasn't sure how or if it should be the classic ball type. After some research I saw there are some much more permanent buoys of much larger size which seemed much more practical. The end of my sketchbook is just where I'd doodle and warm up to drawing before starting, among these is a little grayscale illustration I did of me being too hot in my coat. I love this as its one of the first things I managed to do about me and on top of that I did it really simply because of this I started my second sketchbook just for illustrations like this.

Blue sketchbook

This sketchbook is all about trying to do some really simple work that tells incredibly short stories about what I've been up to but aside from the one about me talking about fish I don't think I managed to get the same feeling as when I drew the one of me in my coat. I think this is because of how much I tried to force them, I think they may have to come naturally as ideas rather than remembering what I've done and trying to build a drawing around it. I also tried doing one of them with one piece of colour but I don't like it anywhere near as much, the bright yellow immediately draws attention to the shirt but in the process the rest of the drawing becomes secondary.