Drawing Things

Hello welcome to my blog. It's mostly about Illustration but I do post about other stuff occasionally to add a bit of Variety. I like it when people talk to me so if you have any questions or comments feel free to message me.

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As we are having a week of catching up in which I update you on the stuff I should have done in the last couple of months here were my Christmas card designs for this year. I do have some left so they will be available again to purchase next Christmas. 

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“Autumn” in Mixed Media

Recently I’ve been experimenting with using traditional media so that I have more medium options when producing illustrations. As I was new to pretty much everything pen and marker my first couple of months of work was a complete disaster but I kept going with it (I might show you some of it for entertainment purposes in a later post) and I think this was one of the first successes.  

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Sorry It's been so long! This is called only the owls understand me. It's done with ink and watercolour pens but I added the background in photoshop

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Follow me on Twitter @fivetownsart to see current works in progress as they progress. Also some more exciting ways in which to see projects progressing coming soon but don't ask me what they are it's supposed to be a surprise!

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Apart from drawing hinkipunks my other compulsion at the moment is drawing  narcissistic unicorns. 

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A Hinkipunk is another name for a Will o' the Wisp I'm obsessed with drawing them at the moment.

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Fashion Illustration time!. These four images are based on the suits of playing cards. I used the shape of each suit as inspiration for the silhouette for each figure and the decoration on the court cards for patterns on the clothes.

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Another picture of Behemoth from The Master and Margarita this time he is playing chess and drawn in moody black white and grey. 

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The Hot Spring

As I said before I've been working on some black and white illustrations and this is one of my better experiments. I used to work in black and white all the time when I first started drawing but I got out of the habit of it when I learnt to use colour. To be honest that was a little short sighted of me; working in monochrome is challenging and forces you have to think much more about the composition and representation of tone in your image and thus is a great practice exercise. Also black and white illustrations are naturally very dramatic, are easier to reproduce and are every bit as beautiful as their colour counterparts which makes me very sad that they aren't used as often as they used to be. 

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“Back to Nature”

I actually got round to doing Illustration Friday this week and for once I managed to finish before Thursday woohoo! The theme this week (in case you are wondering) is “Outside”. This picture is supposed to be tongue in cheek but I’m not sure that comes across oh well.    

Anywho I've been experimenting with new colour schemes for my illustrations this week in particular not using black lines which are usually one of my staples. Instead I used brown lines and I actually think they work well for this image; they add warmth and make everything that little bit more sophisticated. I’ll definitely work with different coloured lines again but not for a while; I’ve got some black and white and block colour illustrations coming very soon!     

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"In Dreams" 

This is an editorial style piece inspired by some scientific research I read about dream content getting weirder and more abstract the longer you are asleep. I'll post a link to the research at some point soon if your interested 

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I finally finished it yay! Its the latest fairy tale deleted scenes picture.  Snow White Coughs up a bit of Apple" is based on the original and traumatising ending to the fairy tale; Rather than actually kissing Snow White to wake her up the creepy prince asks the dwarves to let him take her unconscious/nearly dead body back to his castle and clearly no-one knew what date rape was back then because because the dwarves agree. On the way back one of the servants carrying her coffin stumbles and the jolt dislodges the piece of poison apple from Snow White's throat and she magically comes back to life and marries the prince. Much more disturbing than true loves kiss, oh and as you can see from the image snow white skin is not a particularly healthy look.           

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I've actually got the hang of other forms of social media!  From now on I'll be posting teeny tiny twitter doodles on twitter and Instagram. You can follow me on twitter; @fivetownsart or as mitsyfrogmyre on instagram to see them. 

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Quick sketch called "Away with the Fairies". Fairies aren't actually that nice apparently

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This is the second fairy tale deleted scene image its called "Preggers Rapunzel" originally I was going to go for a more poetic title but I decided this one was funnier. Anyway the reason it is called this is because in the original brothers Grimms version of Rapunzel the prince, after falling in love with Rapunzel, visits her every day while Mother Gothel is out. Rapunzel is supposed to keep this a secret but accidentally gives the game away because her dress gets too tight around the waist due to her being pregnant. I'd like to point out that at this time she is not married to the prince which just goes to show dating and romance really hasn't changed as much as we are lead to believe.         

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This is the first image from a series I'm doing called "Fairytale Deleted Scenes" in which I depict parts of famous fairy tales that are largely forgotten about in most modern retellings; usually because they are quite grizzly or because the story doesn't end happily.  This image is of the Hans Christian Andersen ending to the Little Mermaid which is completely different to the Disney version. In the original the prince marries another woman and on his wedding night the little mermaid is given the choice of either dying as mermaids do by becoming sea foam or killing the prince to return to her father and sisters as if she had never left the sea. She chooses to die rather than kill the prince and in reward for her noble act is turned into an air maiden - a spirit that can enter heaven after 300 years of service to god. 

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Frost