IF - Messenger

An ageing Hermes who is really unhappy about being sent with a message to Pluto, god of Hades...Pluto isn't a problem, but his three headed dog is....

IF - Sink

This may seem unduly pessimistic...I see it as the way things are trending. All we have to do to stop that sinking feeling is grow up!

Unblocking the drain of mah creativity! Well, a bit.

 I have been really, really uncreative of late, blocked even. One of the things I get up to when I can't face art is model ships. That's right, never grew out of it! I found in the dusty recesses of the storage bit of my studio a 1/700th (i.e. tiny) model kit of a Russian Battle Cruiser, the Kallinin. These ships are huge and handsomely menacing...building the ship is proving a trial to my ageing eyeballs. However,  decided I will case the model and also thought it would fun to paint a backdrop for it. So I glued a sheet of watercolour paper to the back and bottom, with the paper left in a bit of a curve at the join, gessoed it and got stuck into the painting bit with oils having first built up a bit of a sea on the base using 'Das' It's coming out nicely, the sea requires more work, and the actual ship needs lots more work but will probably have to wait till after New Year to be finished. 

Realising that the Holidayseason was nearly upon us a card needed doing, fast. This is it.

Acrylic on gessoed w/colour paper. We're pretty happy with it. And with that I wish everyone a happy and creative midwinter, however you celebrate whatever you celebrate...or something like that!

Slacking!!

Damn! I’m supposed to be posting AT LEAST once a week. Gorillas ate my artwork, OK? No? OK It’s been ferociously hot here in Portugal and there’s been a shedload of work to do…Like: Mowing, Scythe and Petrol Strimmer (ick) for the difficult bits. Loads of bramble fighting, cobblestone laying in two places and re-building steps at the side of the house…almost arty, or at least crafty.

And…firewood cutting, need about 10 cubic meters to survive the winter… Anyway here’s something I made earlier.

Sketchy

Thought I’d upload a few local sketches.
 
An amusingly shaped carrot...The soil here is, um, difficult and in Summer is like unto concrete. Deformed carrots, our speciality.

Down by the rio Mondego. 5 minutes walk downhill. Rather more on the way up...

Across the valley from the house. We have about 24 Olive trees. This one needs the suckers removing. But having spent the cooler bit of the morning out there with a scythe, topping the cow parsley, I don’t fancy the 40+ temperature out in the sun..

IF–Perennial

This weeks word is Perennial. I like the quote it came form: “A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.” ~ Frederick Seitz
Goes for artists as well. A quick doodle then.

My perennial love is the interaction between sea and sky, or any water and sky if the sea isn’t near…as it isn’t.

This one

 
should have gone in for last weeks word - gesture. Things here were hectic and I didn't get around to it. It's from the same sketchbook  which I bought while living in Prague. Totally unsized paper, almost like blotting paper. Takes a dip pen well, oddly enough. Watercolour is sucked straight in. Challenging and demands spontenaity....

Illustration Friday - Stay

The brief:

"Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them." ~ Jim Carrey

Someone, somewhere, hundreds of thousands of years ago overcame their fear of fire, and the world changed forever.

Otter…snoozing

This started of as a small doodle…Needless to say, I’m rather fond of Otters. There are Otters in the Rio Mondego, but the only one I’ve seen here so far was crossing the road on the way into town – He made it safely. Tech. note: Dip pen and watercolour.

Illustration Friday - Remedy

'Orrible childhood memories of that cure all remedy - Cod Liver Oil. I wood have agreed with the quote:"To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy" ~ Hippocrates

Illustration Friday–Misummer night.

This weeks topic comes with a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , "Why this is very midsummer madness" - William Shakespeare

Fracturing Fairy Tales

Big bad wolves, evil witches etc. etc. Bah! Little Red Riding-Hoody Wolf didn’t know that mean old Mr. Skinner had tied her Grandmum up in the woodshed and was planning a new fur trimming for his strip-o-gram costume… However Granny wolf has escaped and alerted Dad, who, even as I write is about to burst in. Probably won’t do the next scene because I’m short of red watercolour…Suffice it to say, Mr. Skinner is expected to live but won't be doing any more strip-o-grams and Granny wolf has a new, if small, trophy on the mantlepiece

Illustration Friday - Launch

Launch, Well, when the subject arrived in my inbox I was just finishing this nonsense and making it the Launch issue seemed to make as much sense as anything...

Sacred Cows and the like.

OK, it's an easy target, but it was fun to draw...

Artist block ’n stuff

There comes a point in life, certainly in mine, where inspiration fails. When i was young ideas just fell out of my head – paintings, ideas for cartoons, usually from everyday situations. Now they don’t and it’s a bit of a bugger. I always sort of believed that “I paint therefore I am….”.  So I’m now trying to relax and draw anything that comes into my head. Where we live, in a valley in the middle of Portugal, there’s no stimulus to be had from other artist’s company really. There’s no doubt that living in a big city provides much more of that! However the quality of life there, without oodles of dosh isn’t so good…. Anyway, here’s todays outbursts, one old, one hot off the desk.


How a favourite artist of mine tries to cope…

Getting this thing moving…

Well, um. It’s been a busy year, I’m uninspired, Alligators ate my paints, etc. etc. Enough with the excuses already. I joined a flickr group earlier this year – EDIM – every day in may and did a drawing every day in May, to suggested topics and it was a lot of fun. Now I just need to keep up the momentum. To start off, here’s a couple of my favourites I did for that…