Damn You Murphy!

I seem to be living in Murphys Law, you know the everything that can go wrong will go wrong moment.
I have busted my foot which has left me unable to walk on it for too long today which in turn stops me from completing my original plan.

I'm not sulking *deep breath* I'm really not sulking.

Okay so I'm a bit sulky but that's probably more down to the fact that my heel and ankle are currently throbbing.
It's not exactly stopping me from doing artwork but in true fashion, it's postponed getting supplies... again.
Tomorrow, I will get these supplies! 4 weeks later than originally planned!

I'm just left bemused at how many times things have gotten in the way of something so small and simple which leads to a big pause. It's a learning curve and I'm laughing at it but I really can't wait to get back in control of what goes down!

But on the bright side, waiting for supplies has left me with time to do more digital designs. Which I seem to be going mad with lately!
My RedBubble portfolio has grown a third lately which I'm extremely pleased about so go check it out here!

I've been playing a lot which Photoshop which has been lots of fun as it's so easy to rearrange sizes and poses without the fun of erasers or having to repaint in arms and legs. It's a life saver at times!
One design I've had fun with lately is this guy...

A slow loris, one of the most adorable animals and the only venomous primate. Cute but deadly right?

I had fun drawing him as he's nothing like anything I've worked on before, his head and face are a completely different shape to that of the other animals I've drawn etc.

It's also fun for something so cute to also behave less cute, they are quite vicious when they hunt!

I guess I should now be working on more designs... and not glaring at my foot!

Raptor Design!

It's now available to buy from my RedBubble shop!!

Go HERE to sink your claws in to this design!

I had so much fun with this illustration and I've fallen in love with it so badly!

So if you wanna get your raptor on or have your own velociraptor army go take a look!!

I've also rediscovered my love of making gifs... :P

Sorry for double post today! Had no idea I'd finish today and just had to post them :)

Mondays...

Today has not been the most productive, nor the most creative or exciting... I'm blaming this on a busy weekend which has left me feeling extremely knackered!
I'm not complaining, it was an awesome weekend, I'm just using it as a bad excuse for my sorry lack of work.

I have however played around with this sleeping beauty and he's now uploaded to my redbubble shop!

You may recognise him from last year when I entered him in to the Ohh Deer cushion competition. He needed a small bit o tweaking and I made him a more foxy red than he was before and am now much happier with him. He's currently available on everything.

I've spent so much of today starting sketches before tearing the pages out of my sketchbooks in pure frustration. I get an idea, try and go with it and then don't even get past the ugly sketchy stage, my heart really isn't in it today. I've been more in to working on previous works and getting them right.

It's really frustrating when you just can't muster the motivation to get ideas on to paper, they're not give up days they're just... blank days. 

They're annoying but they don't last forever and with all the work I've been churning out lately I have nothing to feel bad about. I just need to take things slow and actually enjoy a day where I'm not run off my feet... or more to the point there isn't steam coming out of my fingers! :P

Looking back over the past month I've realised that I'm slowly developing a style that's very focussed on nature and colour. It's the first time a theme has really begun to show itself and the whole traditional lineart followed by digital colouring makes life so much easier and is actually lots of fun.

I'm hoping to focus more on birds over the next few weeks, I'd taken a break from them and I'm really starting to miss the feathers! So I'm hoping to update this kinda thing...

A made this a while back for the background for this blog, gosh that was a while ago now! I'm really happy with the designs but I'd prefer the sketchy pencil outlines I'm doing now rather than the clean digital inking I've used here. I'm also loving doing repeat patterns so these will be another thing to focus on!

And then the reappearance of this baby...

I also made this a while ago, back when I was better at backgrounds that foregrounds. I absolutely love this piece, it's probably one of my favourites from the past few years but and there is a but, I'm not completely happy with the buzzards so I'm hoping to go back and recreate these beauties and actually make them more interesting. If this goes to plan I will be offering prints! 

Gosh I've rambled so much today! That just shows how with it I am not!

Hopefully my mind will be back to it's normal motivated, butt kicking self soon and I can churn out even more work!

Have a great week!

Just a quick post!

The "Sunnies" designs are now complete and ready to buy if you're interested!

Just go

HERE!

I will also be offering A5 and A4 prints of these guys during May with a few limited edition prints being made that may or may not include sparkles... ;)

Stay cool and have a smashing weekend!

I'm going to go and spend it doing no work at all! :P

You didn't save!?

I love using Photoshop for my work, working in both traditional and digital media together has become one of my favourite styles to work in and adds an awesome variety to my working day, I can spend the morning sketching in a pad and the afternoon sat at my laptop, pen and tablet in hand.

That's always nice and freeing. It's always wonderful when you also have many projects on the go as you can just swap files and play around, mistakes are easily fixed with the press of ctrl + z (undo) and layers can be deleted if they're just that little bit too much.

But... and this is a big but... when your laptop decides to mess about and incorrectly save the piece you were working on, losing most of your hard work... you then want to ditch digital and go back to good old fashioned pen and paper!

I had been working on a raptor design for myself (and the OH, he jumped in too) and had put so many hours in... we're talking over 24 hours of work! So you can understand the sheer horror I experienced this morning as I started up Photoshop and tried to open the file that should have been saved as a .psd file... Instead I'm facing a .2 file that will do nothing.

I'm sure my laptop is sniggering to itself right now as I flap about in frustration knowing there's nothing I can actually do to get the file back.

Instead... It's time to start over.

Sure that sounds simple... except I'm currently staying with the OH and left my tablet at home... I'd have to do the painful mouse painting which is possible, after all I learnt to paint in photoshop with a mouse in the first place and am quite confident with the technique but it takes a lot longer to work on, at times doubling work time if not more.

So I need to decide what I'm going to do here, I must stop myself from glaring and growling at the laptop... it was having a fit when I was trying to save the file so I should've known really... not to mention I should have been saving a lot more frequently than I was!

There's a lesson to anybody who wants to get in to digital art! SAVE!! just repeatedly save until you're saving more than working! 

Well not that dramatic but you get what I mean.

Never underestimate the power of that save button. It's a very nice button. It keeps your sanity.

In more cheerful news I've been inspired by looking at bird paintings... Sounds strange but that's me. It's got me craving more traditional work (not brought on by the PS incident...) I haven't done an acrylic painting for quite some time.

The majority of my recent work is graphite on bristol board before being scanned and put in to Photoshop where it goes more digital. As I mentioned earlier this is something I enjoy but I do miss the mess and freedom you can have with good old traditional mediums.

The last real fun I had where I could just be free and do anything was the corvid speed paint challenge I gave myself last year (pictured above).

This challenge was done by giving myself 30 minutes and a very restricted paint palette. For most of these birds I have white and black with a small amount of blue apart from the chough which obviously had red and the jay which had an extra colour of brown.

It was lots of fun and I got messy which is always a good thing!

So seeing this new art work online and then going back over these guys has inspired me to give painting another go. I have colourful and wacky ideas filling my mind and I'm left with this strong urge to splat paint all over the place!

So lots of frustration mixed with fun plotting going on here! 

Really can't complain ;)

It's also my big fluffy dudes 6th Birthday today!!

He's changed in looks so much over the years but oh he's still the puppy he came home as... just a little less psychotic! 

My amazing boy who made me realise I'm a dog person and changed my life in so many ways. I got him for my 20th birthday (Not on a whim! took over a year of prep and thinking before we got him) and we're growing together... I'm 26 in exactly two weeks time! Oh golly gosh...

Time to get working!

Smile and be amazing :)