A New Work in Progress (Penguins & Vultures)

Hey Folks! Here's the next illustration(s) in the Birds of a Feather series I've been working on. The vultures, having been sent away by the Gate-keeper of Eagle Neck House, as undesirables and uninvited guests, have crept around the boundary wall and are sitting by a broken pailing fence at the rear of the property. They are hidden from the view of the penguin caterers and waiters - always squabbling - by a low hedge. The "naughty" vultures are dreaming of all the food they are going to eat once it is laid out, in all its gastronomic splendor, on the tables of the marquees down by the lake. Hope you like what you see. (The vultures are hoping on the other hand, that they can gate-crash the party before the other birds can get their beaks into the grub.) Cheers. RWS.

Oh for an A3 Scanner

Hey Folks! Just sitting and wishing for that which I cannot afford...

I'd love an A3 scanner sitting here on my computer desk. It would be so much easier than the scan, cut and paste I am currently forced to do when trying to get high res copies of finished illustrations. No, I couldn't possibly draw and paint on a smaller scale, my eyes aren't up to that, not even when wearing my glasses. Enough of my scanner wishes and medical problems.

Today I'm posting some preliminary drawings of intended illustrations for my Birds of a Feather project. You've viewed a few of the finished colour pieces I've done so far, so I thought I'd give you a peek at some of the rougher stuff.

All of the following images are drawn on heavy tracing paper in pencil, so you'll have to contend with graininess and a little grey cast here and there. I've cleaned them up as best I could in Photoshop but the starting point for the clean up wasn't the best either...I've got a new A4 (!) scanner but it's no where near as good as my last, very old, but wonderfully versatile, Cannon 5000 F. It died a natural death - old age - a few months ago...yea Gads but I miss the thing!

Well, here follow the promised scans...forgive the quality please.

Cheers. RWS

WIP Birds on a Lake. 4th & Final Instalment

Hey Folks. Back at last. No it hasn't taken me this long to finish the picture...a bit busy.

Well here we have the final in progress pic along with the finished piece. I'm quite pleased with the end result mainly because it turned from a painting problem and into a rescue mission. While squeezing some burnt sienna onto my palette, the end of the tube burst - more like exploded! - sending pigment all over the artist, the drawing table, floor and yes, all over the half completed illustration. Needless to say there were a number of words that passed my lips and they weren't sienna, burnt or raw, in colour.

Well I managed to overcome the panic and rescue the painting...just!

See more images from this project here

So here it is Folks, in all it's rescued glory. (The grotty staining still perceptible on the illustration board, is evidence of my cover up mission.)

Cheers. RWS

WIP - Birds on the lake; installment 3

Hey folks. Two posts in two days! A record.

The images are really self explanatory...you can see in an instant the progress that I've made over a couple of days. Because of the technique I use - multiple translucent glazes - it takes roughly a day per major figure's costume...Slow? Yes. The end result however, is, I think, worth the time and labour. This illustration is also going slower than is usual and this is due to the multiple lighting sources and reflections...lots to consider when laying in colour...each figure, or group of figures, is subject to light in different ways; depending upon where in the composition they are located and whether there are objects that would cast shadows.

Hope you are enjoying the journey. I know that I am.

Cheers. RWS.

WIP Continued

As promised - fifteen days ago! - some more WIP pics; sorry, A wip pic singular, of our birds punting by lantern ligh upon a "....bird made lake...". (Haven't got around to down-loading any other images from my camera as yet. I am keeping a record though, so you can look forward to some more boring images when next you visit...not many folk visiting so far tho....??? Oh well...)

Well, you ask, what's been added? Let me see...some more reflected lights, flowers and foliage painted in, cushions and some work on the costumes of the ducks in the foreground boat....Have I missed anything? Let me know if I have...Oh, yes...medium/s...sepia under drawing and acrylic gouache on on Bainbridge, cold pressed Illustration board. (The, so called, acrylic gouache, is beautifully translucent like the watercolours I used to swear by but, unlike watercolour pigments, it is far more versatile - for me at least - and I find it holds up very well with multiple glazes enabling a depth of colour that I just couldn't achieve with the traditional alternative. Shadows too, can be rendered so that they glow as they sometimes do on a hot Australian, Summer's day.

Hope you like what you've seen....Cheers 'til next time...RWS

Blue, yellow, red and green; a WIP

Hey folks. I'm back after a short absence - my PC now has a huge memory and loads of RAM; it's been a bit poorly of late...slow and some programmes not running properly.

I have continued to work on my personal project, Birds of a Feather, while my machine has been at the computer hospital, and the images with this post are WIP snaps I've taken over the past week or so. The first image is 3H pencil on heavy tracing paper, hence the rather poor reproduction - it was the final image in my preliminary explorations of the subject. Can't find any of the preliminary pencil drawings that lead up to this one - they were done back in 1990 and are buried away in the store-room of the studio. Hope someone out there likes them.

Cheers. RWS

Progress and Finished Pic

Hi folks, I said in my first post that preliminary and progress images are as interesting to me as a finished work, here then are a couple of images for you to view along those lines. I forgot to take photos of the earlier steps, prelims etc, but I hope that for the present, these will suffice to show at least one of the steps I go through when creating an illustration.

This is for a children's picture book that I wrote back in the1990s, Birds of a Feather. I have several finished line drawings on tracing paper for this personal project and I'm intending to work them up as finished colour pieces while I have a break from commissioned work. So, you'll be seeing a few more of them in the coming weeks. (The text for this children's book is in ryhme and metre and the lines which accompany this particular image are -: ...So, as the moon rose above the great house, the guests on the lawn played, "Kitten and Mouse",....)

Hope you like them. RWS