Crowning Cassowaries

So after a few more test pieces, I have finally completed the watercolour painting of the Cassowaries! Watercolour is a frustrating, but very rewarding medium. The spontaneity and unpredictability of watercolour means it's practically impossible to ever make the same two marks twice, and you have to learn to take the unplanned marks in your stride. What sometimes first appear as mistakes, can actually pave the way to new options/ideas that weren't part of the original plan. The end product is always usually a complete and utter suprise! First below is a study I did of one of the Cassowaries, followed by the final painting.

Cassowary Cogitation

I've been commissioned to do a watercolour painting. The only conditions of the brief are that it needs to capture some Cassowaries, and fashioned in the same style of an Emu painting I did a couple of years back. My recent studies in animation have seen me somewhat neglect this area in my life. But today I began to dust of the paints and brushes, and put my hands to work. Below is a study of one of the Cassowaries I'll be including. I've included the original painting of the Emu to give further context. I'm happy with the colour choices I've made, however I can see I need to loosen up more, be less controlling and more willing to let the paint take itself on a journey.

Bounce off

This week I finally had the chance to draw up a gift I have long-owed to my best-friends baby Bridget. Bridget's home is in Australia, so I wanted to draw something for her that somewhat evoked her surroundings and the fun of being a kid.

Little London Girl

After flicking some more through the same book 'Wonderful London', which I mentioned in my post below, I was inspired by another little character. This time I gave her a modern twist.

Little Londoner

Inspired by some old London photographs I found in a 'Wonderful London' book, edited by St John Adcock, I drew a little London boy from the 20's going about his daily business.

Catposure

Wouldn't it be nice to be a cat? I envy their constant composure and ability to transform laziness into an artful grace. I whipped up a little watercolour drawing to capture this.

Part Two

It's a new month and a halfway marker to the remainder of 2010, so I thought I'd revisit a much-loved character that I created late last year. He only took me a couple of minutes to paint, but his charm is enduring and I like his style. I'd like to experiment a bit more with this style and possibly create a story or short animation that uses these techniques. I will commit to it as a bit of a side project in any spare time that I happen find!

Original from the unoriginal

Last Saturday's session at Tate Modern progressed from previous learnings on tone and launched further into the great world of colour. The format remained the same: traditional techniques followed by the experiential.

Mastering colour in life drawing can take a lifetime, so the objective of the experiential exercises wasn't to create photographic renditions, but rather capture a moment and feeling in colour.

Armed with a basic choice of acrylic colours and a couple of paintbrushes, we were given 45 minutes to capture the life scene in front of us. Once this image was completed and the paint had dried, we were instructed to cut up our painting and create a new artwork by bringing together the various cut pieces. We could choose to add further texture by working over the pieces with crayon, pencil, pens or more paint, or even by collaging other papers into the piece.

I was interested in the idea of starting with a standard way of describing and transforming it into something completely different, dynamic and abstract. So, by cutting and rearranging the pieces of my first painting, I managed to create an original image from pretty unoriginal beginnings!