A thousand and one leaves.

I am quite sure that I have mentioned this before, but I love trees.
Once upon a time I had hopes of making my career out of them. (I wrote all about that here) Turns out I can't escape them because nearly everything I draw or paint seems to have trees involved.

Fantasy things

Non fantasy things

Mixed media things

My 'portfolio' (such as it is) is utter arbour madness. 

Recently I got to be involved in helping a family of friends create a tree of their own, loaded with meaning and significance.

not a great photo...

So thanks Carli and Winston for letting me be part of creating something for your family.

In related news, I never want to paint another leaf again.

When I say 'lino cut' I really mean 'rubber cut'

In high school they had awesome printing presses so that I could roll through my lino cuts with nice paper and get this lovely almost embossed appearance on my prints.

Not so now.
In fact using lino is very difficult when you don't have a press and nice sharp tools.

So when I discovered rubber blocks it took me about as long as it takes to get it out of the packaging to convert me.
Rubber blocks are like lino blocks only obviously made of rubber, the thickness of them, and lack of binding fabric on one side means that both sides can be used to carve designs.
Rubber is also much easier to cut, as my son discovered when he hacked away at a print I had recently completed cutting, but not yet printed. (DISASTER) Its so easy you can cut the stuff with your fingernails.

Transferring your image to the block to be cut out is as simple as drawing it in pencil, and rubbing the paper onto the block. Its rubber so the pencil sticks to it and you can just cut out around it. This is helpful when you want to write things but don't always get the mirror image thing right. So easy!

This is the original design that I worked from today. I don't know why I thought that all that detail was going to be a good idea... 

They print easier too, kind of like giant stamps (or normal stamps if you cut them smaller)

This block is about A5 in size. Easily manageable and easily printed.

I printed this birdie, and the horse below using a stamp pad, just to make sure that everything was cut out where I wanted it be, and to the depth that it needed to be, so that the print was clean. 

And that, ladies and gents, is why I use ezy carve (its the name of the renoir brand ones that I buy) rather than lino. Maybe one day when I can get a nice printing press, I will get back to lino, but at this point, I think the rubber blocks suit me MUCH better. 

Sweet sweet fantasy .... baby

Oh come on. Music Box was the total peak of Mariah's career... or at least it was pretty much the last time I  cared to learn all the words of any of her songs.

In other news, I wanted to show you these things that I made:

I like fantasy art. I think it gets a bad rap sometimes because of stereotypes, but what's not to love about heaps of fairies and buff guys with weirdly ornate swords fighting dragons next to wizards. 

So ... hopefully I can get some more scenes together with some cool story behind them, because thats the best part of art like this. Back story. 

After reading several of Loomis's books on drawing, (the only real effort I've put into learning more about the theory of drawing) I have realised that: Lines are my friends, tones are mere aquaintances and colour is a ... moody stranger. 

Adding tone to these drawings has helped me give them more depth and dimension. I like seeing the lines become transformed with the watercolour. 

Adding full colour to somewhat complex scenes like this is something I struggle with. It always seems a little... off. (Is this the problem that I have been having with fashion all these years?) Something that drawing from life would certainly help with. As soon as there are more than just a few elements involved it all falls apart.

If you have a scene or story that you would like me to draw please leave a comment below and we'll get some voting going on facebook to see which idea is the most popular. Whoever gets the most votes will get the drawing... I'll draw it and you get to keep it. (I keep the rights to it so I can resell it, but you get the original) 

Good deal? Awesome.

This is open to anyone, anywhere in the world and is a great way for you to get your friends involved (hint hint) and help me get some more views. Drawing will be A4, in ink and watercolour like the ones shown in this blog. 

Name trees

The hard work (see: tedious) of family history has never appealed to me. Luckily my mother has not ever shared this aversion to microfiche searches, hours of hunting through records, traipsing off to cemeteries, and all the other things involved in genealogy.

I enjoy hearing stories, reading names and places and imagining what people's lives were like. Basically... I like all the fun things without the work. That's a fail for me.

Not everyone is as lame as me though, thankfully, and we can all benefit from the connection family history gives us to our ancestors.

"I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.

And their eyes were my eyes."

- Richard Llewellyn

Genealogy isn't just about what has gone before us, but about what is to come. I think it would be great to be familiar with the names at least of our great and grand fathers and mothers. So I did this.

You don't get to choose your family, or rather... you only get to choose one member of your family.
I chose Kyle. 


This is our family tree. 

I might draw leaves on it, but we'll see. I think I like it like this, all scruffy with my hand writing and Gabriel's little plum thumb print (I took it while he was sleeping and he managed to rub ink all over his face... )


Templates for this and other tree designs will be available from the Lady Proteus etsy store when it opens in October. Mine's going in a frame.