Solo Exhibition!

This summer I am very excited to be having a solo exhibition of my work!!!

2 July - 16 August 2014 ( the add says till 10th but it's been extended ).

The Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

I'm always intrigued by artists/illustrators/makers methods, could watch Bob Ross all day.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!

1. Sketch out in pencil ( Istarted with Phileas Fogg as that was the main focus of the illustration ).
2. Work over in various thickness pens ( Inked Fogg first so I didn't rub away the pencil
with my hand while working on the left side of the pad ).
3. Sketch out background in pencil then ink.
4. Scan and then paint in Photoshop.

Another option for illustration preparation

Oh so THERES my blog! I had wondered where it had got to. Was starting to worry but I knew it was capable of looking after itself.

I wiped my Dell Studio laptop recently. Mainly due to the usual overloaded with crud resulting in snail pace performance issues. In a double whammy of "deleteage" I had also previously re-constructed my website, forgetting to reattach the blog. So having scanned in my newly completed inked illustration of 'Old MacDonalds Farm' ready for colouring in Photoshop (also newly re-installed) I was thwarted by the disappearance of my good old friend 'White Out'! (detailed in previous blog post).

I set about finding the action immediately but for various annoying reasons it took an age to locate and when I finally found it, it refused to install. So, I'd say "to cut a long story short" but its too late for that, I found another method of removing the white from a scanned line drawn illustration-

Before you do the actions below, I always start by duplicating the layer then painting the underneath layer pure white. Its something I used to do when I used the 'White Out' action as sometimes other colours from other layers would interfere with the action resulting in poor/messy outcome. I feel a white layer underneath gives the layer above a cleaner page to work on top of.

Hold down CTRL and L to open the levels box and the change the levels to get rid of the grey tones in the scan, just leaving clear white and black.

Hold down CTRL and ALT and hit ¬ (the key just the the west of the number one on your keyboard).

Delete the newly highlighted selection.

Lock the layer in your layers panel.

Hold D and ALT and hit BACKSPACE.

TADA! Job done. Spangly isn't it.

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

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"