An extremely useful tool for those who do what I do

I'm all for sharing useful tips.

With my work, I hand draw the illustration in pencil first then work over it in various thickness's of pens and markers. The work is then scanned and worked over in Photoshop, touching up smudges etc. After this I colour and embellish it with textures using the layer system. One major problem I had prior to successfully colouring my black & white images was erasing all the white so I could use the black line art as the top layer and place everything else underneath it to keep the line work crisp and bold.

I tried magic wanding areas and erasing them, I tried to do it all by hand, it would take hours to erase the white from one illustration. That was until I found this-

Hallelujah! Just load the action and play it on the scanned image layer to be left with a transparent layer containing just your lovely line art. After using this action I tend to defringe then reduce the brightness of the layer to be left with bold lines. Happy days! Try it -> PC White Out by PowerChild

Yey for more holidays!

This time, Yorkshire! What a wonderful existence these lucky Yorkshire folk have. Although not as luscious in its beauty, it's like my beloved Borrowdale but closer to home. First stop- Malham.

Malham Cove is a huge curving amphitheatre shaped cliff formation of limestone rock. The vertical face of the cliff is about 260 feet high. The top of the cove is a large area of limestone pavement. The Harry Potter team used this area for a scene in the last film. Of course we had to walk up over 300 steps to see it as it was in the film.

 

The livestock were very friendly too =)

The three amoogos

Chickens hankering for a lift

Next stop- Hawes

 

It's amazing where you can get to in an hour from your front door. People should throw their televisions out the window and jump in the car or on a train. Quit wasting precious time and go feed your soul in the greenery!

Holidays ^.^

Who needs to go abroad when we have Bolton Abbey?
http://www.boltonabbey.com/

Two weeks off work and what a fantastic place to unwind. The weather was kind, the birds were busy and in song, the company was great and the food was excellent! (my tuna butty packed lunch).

 

 

Ok so you asked for colour?

How could I say no to such a sweet face?!

Updated website

I have always been much more fascinated with black and white illustration. I find the rawness of it very intriguing and quite powerful. But, I don't draw just for me, I draw for you. And you were right.

This month I was mostly...

Waterfall hunting!

Catrigg Force, Stainforth, Settle

This was a right beauty. It had two levels to it which my camera didn't do justice to. The upper level was shrouded in its own mist (the white glow at the top) which added to the mystical atmosphere of this wonderful secret and secluded little corner of the world.

After further investigation we discovered another waterfall in the Settle area. This one much larger and generally more impressive apart from the lethally slippy rocks surrounding it. We visited this one after heavy rainfall and it was roaring!

Scaleber Force, Settle

If I was a zombie....

There's a really banal but addictive computer game I've been hooked on for a couple of weeks called Plants Versus Zombies. Its very simple, you have zombies attacking your back yard which are killed by planting various plants which can shoot peas etc to defend the house or they'll come in and eat your brains. Lovely. Found a zombie creator though so I made a self portrait!

Whilst I was there I had to make one of the other half-

"Wish she'd get off that stupid game"