Autumnal Animations

falling leaves

My latest Domestika course is illustrator Martín Tognola’s Animated Illustration in Procreate: Tell a Story with Movement.

falling apple

Our first practice exercise is to ‘start testing and see how the animation tool works, discovering what each thing is for,’ so I’ve gone for some simple seasonal subjects.

fungus

‘I invite you to do your own experiments,’ he suggests, ‘Start by drawing simple objects and see how magical it is to animate them. This is the ideal place to make mistakes, learn and clear up doubts.’

bird

He starts us off by explaining how to animate this looping bird, this is my version, closely following his example.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Rowan

rowan leaf

Rowan leaf from the tree in our front garden.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Fur and Feather

fur and feather textures

Fur and feather textures drawn for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate
Domestika course by Román García Mora, using some of the virtual brushes he created.

St Pancras

St Pancras

It’s so long since I drew in London so I took the opportunity as we waited for a train to draw St Pancras from a bench in the welcome shade of the Francis Crick Institute.

Towpath

Along the towpath: buff-tip caterpillar; the brandy-bottle seed-pod (botanically it’s a berry) of yellow water-lily; an orb-web spider getting lucky and water fern turning red amongst the duckweed and floating pennywort.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Homemade Card

ipad gallery

This handsome guy drawn by Florence kicks off my ‘Homemade Card’ gallery. Happy birthday to Florence and Ruby.

See new item on the main menu above 🙂

Red Ink

In the late ’60s or early ’70s, when handwritten balance sheets were becoming a thing of the past, my dad brought home this surplus-to-requirements 20-ounce (more than half a litre!) bottle of Parker Super Quink permanent red ink, ‘the only ink containing SOLVE-X for better pen protection’.

Ever since, I’ve been wondering how I might use it. Could a palette of black and red evoke the calm sophistication of Chinese calligraphy? No, it reminds me of the artwork for Roger the Dodger in The Beano, printed in two-colours on newsprint in the 1960s.

Acrylics

acrylics

After drawing all those bottles of ink I thought that it was time for a change. But it’s drawn and coloured in inks.