‘Is that all it does?’ asked Barbara. It takes a lot to impress some people, doesn’t it?!
I’m re-learning hand-drawn animation using the timeline in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro, drawn with a second generation Apple Pencil.
I got the chance yesterday to run through a LinkedIn course created by animator Dermot O’ Connor. He kept things really simple using Photoshop – simple if you’re already familiar with Photoshop that is. My problem is that I don’t find it easy to draw using a graphics pad and so far the timeline isn’t available on the iPad version of Photoshop.
More March birthdays. This first one is totally unfair to Uncle Bill and to the innovative ‘funky grooves, 80s synth and jazzy piano a go-go’ sounds of Tom’s brother’s indie rock band but the ‘Scotsman playing Baker Street on the trombone’, was an actual incident at a wedding in Edinburgh, which I remember it well: very difficult to forget, actually!
The big birthday recently has been my brother-in-law John. For the past year because of restrictions, he’s been grounded in South Ossett, so Illingworth Park has been his regular exercise walk. Three times around the park is one mile, so during that time we calculate that he’s walked about 300 miles around the park and another 300 getting to and from it, so the full distance of the Pennine Way and back again, with just about enough mileage left over to complete The Dales Way too.
My first version of John’s card included the regular dog walkers and the occasional mums and children who we see in the park, but I thought the numbers would make more of an impact if the park was empty. I added ink washes to establish the tones but this dulled the watercolour wash that I put over it, so I drew the card again.
Ali is brilliant at sewing and was able to run up some stylish face masks in the early days of lockdown when they were in short supply.
It’s been a busy month for birthday cards, this one inspired by my niece, Sarah, who in real life really appreciates the bad boids visiting her feeders.
Catching up with birthdays today and this character has a walk-on part on one of my homemade cards. Not surprisingly he’s soon asked to walk-off again.
Yes, I think we all know the feeling. Although this homemade card has a post-Christmas theme, it’s actually for my niece Hannah’s birthday, earlier this week. Based on a real life incident, when Hannah and Sam’s blow-up Santa in the front garden got switched off when an electrician was working on their kitchen. The penguin was unaffected.
By then these Christmas characters had become a feature of life on the avenue and a little boy was quite alarmed to see Santa lying there, but his mother was suitably reassuring.
Oh dear, it looks as if the game is up for our plucky little tenon saw. If there’s a moral to this folksy fable from Yes it is, it’s never put your trust in an even-toed ungulate.
We all know that moths are the unsung nightshift of ecosystem services, busy pollinating and recycling while we sleep, so these days it’s not often that one of them, in this case the humble clothes moth, gets to play the pantomime villain.
Another illustration for the PG-rated children’s storybook Yes it is, or OH NO IT ISN’T! in this case. Manic Moth: “Oh! Yes it IS!!!!“
I thought that I’d nailed it and created a moth that looked as scary as Nosferatu the Vampire but coming back to it he’s more closely related to Peter Firmin’s Nogbad the Bad. I think it’s to do with the way he walks, which would work well as a cut-out animation.
These two could have auditioned for the latest series of All Creatures Great and Small but they’re appearing in one of the folksy fables in Yes it is. I like the pig – just need him to tilt his head on one side as he listens to the tale – but for the farmer I need his expression to be flummoxed rather than irate.
Although Yes it is has a retro children’s story setting, it deals with themes that are all too contemporary, like the loneliness and isolation – in this case the loneliness of this green ball. The fact that the author has specified the colour makes me tempted to go for a spot colour, perhaps backed up with blocks of neutral grey, to hint at the style of children’s book illustration in the 1950s and early 60s; I’m thinking of Dr Suess and Gene Zion’sHarry the Dirty Dog, illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham.
Margaret Bloy Graham uses a textured line which reminds me of conte crayon with a soft watercolour or gouache wash. With this in mind, I tried bamboo pen, to try and deliberately simplify the line (left) and dip pen (above) but inevitably, as I use it every day, I’m more relaxed drawing with a fountain pen, as in the farmer and his pig drawing, which was drawn in De Atramentis Document Ink with my Lamy Vista with an EF nib. That gives me more of the energy that I’m after, but without getting the particular vintage graphic look that I had in mind.
