Dream Cars

One of my earliest memories of school is being in Primary 1 and drawing a car.  They told us to draw anything we wanted and I couldn't think of anything but the person next to me was drawing a car so I drew one too.  I don't think I've drawn a car since.  So this week I had a go.  

This is Jon, he wanted to be a fox, in his dream car (which is almost exactly my actual car but according to him it's not the same).

And this is me in my Nissan Figaro.  They're such cute little cars.

Both images were sketched in pencil first and then redrawn in in Procreate using my sketch as a guide. The textures and colours were finalised in Photoshop.  I'm still far more skilled and at home in photoshop but I do enjoy drawing on the Ipad.  It's great for blocking in shapes.

 

The Owl and the Pussycat

 

This is an image I created using limited colour.  There are two plus the outline.  I wanted to try and recreate the looser work I'd been making using paintbrushes but digitally.  The outline is hand drawn  but the colour is added in Procreate. 

Digital work makes it very easy to erase mistakes but they're often the lines that give images their charm.  So I did my very best not to hit the undo or delete button.  Does anyone else find it hard to just leave their artwork as it is and embrace the imperfections?

You can see more of my limited colour work on my website megmclaren.com

New cards

 I've added some new card designs into my shop this week.  You can view them here.

Here is a look at the new single card designs.

Mirror, Mirror

Season's Readings

Toot Your Horn!

These Highland Blues are based on my #illo_advent drawings 2020 and are sold as a pack of three.

Highland Blues

Feel free to have a browse around.  I also sell screen prints and risographs.

 New in my shop this week are these Wild Woods risographs.  Click here to go to the shop.

Risographs are an environmentally friendly form of printing. The image is printed using soy ink on recycled 250gsm paper.  It has a similar feeling to a screen print but the printing is done through a risograph machine and so is less labour intensive.  

Mirror, Mirror

This weeks #colour_collective fit in nicely with an illustration I did yesterday.  

Now available to buy as a greeting card.  Click here to go to the shop.

Final image.

I finally finished some pieces I'd been working on this week, had a tidy and decided to have a day drawing whatever I wanted.  And I had no idea what to do.  What do you draw when you can draw absolutely anything?  I usually revert to animals I like the look of, or things I've sketched before but never explored properly.  I find I think best when I start drawing.  I remembered a badger I'd drawn a long time ago so I drew badgers until I had an idea to make an image using only black and white animals.  

I liked that it looked like a Rorschach test.  I've been playing with Procreate lately and there's a symmetry function I hadn't used before and it's a lot of fun.  It's also so much faster to only draw half of an image.  I usually draw my outlines onto paper.  This is the first time I've really drawn everything onscreen. 

Procreate has a time lapse function so you can watch all the decisions being made in real time.  I finished the image in Photoshop so you only see up to a certain point here. 

Here's the original sketch.

What do you draw when you can choose whatever you want?  Do you have too many ideas or have to work them out on paper like I do?

This is a little hedgehog I made for #colour_collective  They post a colour every week and you make an illustration of your choice.  I don't often get the chance to join in, and I often struggle with a only colour for a prompt, but this week it was a really nice shade so I thought I'd have a go.  Why a hedgehog?  Who knows.  

I tried to stick to the more limited palettes I've been using lately.  I usually make sure I'm happy with the the drawing and then start colouring but I rushed this one and had to go about fixing it as I went.  Some people work like this all the time, adapting as they go, and I usually make small changes but for this one I was making separations.  Each colour layer was drawn in black so they shapes needed to be right to begin with and they weren't.  It's not a huge problem but it meant the process took longer than I wanted.  I should've taken my time to begin with.  

My top tip, if you work like me, is to make sure you're happy with your drawing.  It'll save time later.

 

Read together

Read Together

A GIF I made of a recent illustration.

Now available as a greeting card.  Click here to go to the shop.

 

Going underground

I've been playing around with black and white images again.  I've never really found a way of working that I'm completely happy with but I quite like this one.

Seas and leaves

I've been playing around with some limited colour palettes just for the fun of it.  It's an interesting challenge and I like the problem solving aspect of it.  My books are very much planned out, outlines are drawn in pencil, scanned and have to be tidied, and with so many colours to choose from it can take a lot of time to finish a page.  For these everything is created completely digitally.  I don't really plan out what I'm going to draw beforehand so I like that I get to make it up as I go.  It's a faster way for me to work.  I also never really play with pattern so that's fun too.

I've been playing around with different ways to colour black and white images and I've found a nice digital brush that I like.  It's a lot faster than my usual method so that's a bonus.  Here are a few of my experiments.

The bear and the star

#illo_advent 2017

This December I decided to take part in #illo_advent again, where you draw a different festive illustration everyday.  If you follow the hashtag on twitter you can see many different illustrators taking part.  It can become quite time-consuming so this year I decided to limit my colour palette in an effort to keep them simple and save time.  Here are this year's batch.

Here's a closer look

Week one

Week two

Week three

I gave up on day 21 as I'd just finished the artwork for a new book and as much as I wanted to complete my advent set I was eager to begin my holiday.  I did do one final image for the 25th though.  We have a Christmas day birthday in our household so I try make a card that covers both occasions.

Toot!

My latest screen print Toot! is now available in my shop.  Click here for details

#illo_advent

This year I've decided to fully commit to #illo_advent (which I say most years but this year I haven't failed!  Not yet anyway)  The point, for me, was to draw something everyday as somedays are spent entirely on my computer.  For this reason I wanted to draw on paper, and to post it online no matter what it was.  I'm really not keen on showing sketches so this was to spur me into showing whatever I drew, whether I liked it or not.  The bonus of paper is that I'm able to give my favourites away.

So here they all are.  Some better than others, some have already gone to good homes.  My advent only goes up to day 24 like the chocolate calendars, at least that's how they worked when I was a kid.

For all the Christmas babies, happy birthday!

I made it to the end this year!! Merry Christmas folks. See you in the future...anytime from now.