Llama or Alpaca

This is a birthday card I made for my niece.  I'm pretty sure I've drawn a llama...but then again it could be an alpaca.

This image was drawn in Procreate and finished in Photoshop.  I love using limited colour palettes.

The Darling Children

These are the Darling children from Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie.  The first chapter has a lot of nice descriptions in it that feel very visual.  I love this one of the kids going to school.  I think it's the 'in a row' part I like so much. 

 '...and soon, you might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.'

This image was made digitally in Procreate.  I like the ease of digital black and white drawing but I'm not convinced yet that it's a way for me to work permanently.  I still do love drawing in pencil.

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

The View From Here

This was my #colour_collective for this week. 

It's the view from my village woods across to the Black Isle.  I made this sketch sticking to the three colours I planned to use.  More and more I prefer to draw from life in my sketch book and only work from that image, as opposed to working from a photograph.  Sometimes I will take a photo for reference but, for me, a sketch really focuses in on what I noticed and what I liked about the scene in front of me.

When I got home I painted separations in black and coloured the image digitally.  Using a black layer for each colour means that it's hard to predict what the final image will look like.  I like the surprise of this.  I also like painting the layers because I'm not very good at it.  My brushwork isn't tidy and my hand isn't steady.  There's an element of it that I can't control and I really enjoy the results of that.

You can see below how layering them on top of one another starts to create the final image.  Colouring digitally does mean I can change things and you may notice that the big expanse of white water isn't in the separations.  That's because I painted it in the blue colour layer but removed it digitally as the image looked better without it.

I wasn't entirely happy with the result but after tweaking the colours and leaving it for a while, I much preferred it once I'd had some time away from it.  Some pictures are like that. 

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?

Drawing and Activity Sheets

Since many people are now at home I have made all of the worksheets from my books The Station Mouse, Pigeon P.I. and Life Is Magic available to download on my website.  There are drawing activities, colouring in and puzzles too.  Stay safe and wash those hands.

You can find all of the activity sheets here click here!

If you don't have a printer many of the activities can be viewed onscreen and then drawn onto paper, like the How to draw Maurice below.

Here are some examples of what you'll find...

I've also added How to make a Thaumatrope from Life Is Magic. 

 If you have a copy of the book then check under the hardback dustcover or scan the QR code in the back of the paperback to find your own instructions.

How To Draw...Houdini

If you haven't been over to the Booksniffer's site then you absolutely should.  She sniffs out the best in children's books so be sure to take a look.  You can read her review of Life Is Magic here, but be sure to take a wander because there's loads more to see.  She kindly featured a How To Draw Houdini recently and I've recreated it here.  Thanks Sniffer!