I've never been very good at, or in fact particularly interested in, drawing or painting animals. As a little girl, I habitually drew ballet dancers (I wanted to be one for a while!!) or sailing boats - obviously the result of living by the sea. In later years, I went on to paint landscapes, people, flowers, interiors, still lifes - and, apart from once making my big brother a birthday card with an elephant wearing a mortar board, standing by a blackboard, when he had just started teaching, I seem to have largely avoided attempting to draw our four-footed friends!
Today my teaching was postponed till tomorrow so I got around to making cards from some sketches I'd been working on in the evenings whilst watching my regular ration of whodunnits - and these cards involved animals!
I'd been putting them off for a while because I couldn't decided which medium to use. I wonder whether anyone else ever comes up against the problem that whatever I plan to do, someone famous has already done something similar and I worry that I'll feel as if I'm plagiarising! Sometimes I wish I hadn't looked at so much art and illustration and could start from a completely clean slate. For instance, I wondered whether to use pen and wash for my 'animals' cards but then Quentin Blake has made a pretty good job of a pen and wash elephant on a thank you card! But if I went down the collage route for this 'range', one of Leo Lionni's first and perhaps most famous children's book illustrations involved a wonderfully simple but effective collage mouse! So thank goodness for my newly discovered 'watercolour pencil and watercolour' technique!
I like to have two of these on the go at once so that I can work on one while the other is drying. In the past, I've had a few disasters when I've tried to tidy up the outlining before the 'wash' is completely dry!
So from a couple of decidely large animals to some of the smallest -
That apart, I'm beginning to really like this way of painting and think I learnt some useful lessons from my Hot Cross Bunnies - and rather importantly, I'm hoping I won't wake up tomorrow with a painfully stiff shoulder, like I did this morning, as a result of yesterday's fiddly collage!
2 comments:
I love them, mice are my favorite and the elephants look like they really do care about each other.
I use watercolor pencils all the time and have the same problem, sometimes I end up just using a wet brush to swipe the pencil lead and it's so soft I get all the color I need.
Thank you, Carole. Your comments have encouraged me to try a few more animals - in my own style, of course!
BTW, I think your 'pocket mouse' is my all-time favourite from your portfolio!
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