In my daughter’s flat waiting for someone to come and pick something up I drew the view from where I was sitting. Fine liner over pencil on cartridge paper.
Category: Drawing
A Brief Ramble about the SCBWI Conference 2016
I’ll keep it short and incoherent. For those of you who don’t know SCBWI is the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators (British Isles). Last weekend they held their annual conference in Winchester (and have lots of other exciting and interesting activities the rest of the time).
This was the 2nd time I’ve been to the conference. It’s so fabulous I just have to tell you about it. It’s also very intense, and fabulous. I’m still mentally digesting all the wonderful fabulousness and remembering odd bits of fabulous stuff at odd times, so this is a very garbled account of some of the bits I did.
The Sketch Crawl.
Drawing out and about in Winchester with a bunch of other illustrators and non illustrators. I drew skaters, buildings and other things. Then we met up to compare sketches and chat over a mulled cider. Here’s one of my sketches in progress:
Roman glass in Winchester Museum
Being inclined towards art the best thing about the conference for me is the opportunity to 
listen and talk to proper illustrators with books out in the real world…
This year Leigh Hodgkinson (she’s @hoonbutton on Twitter) was one of the keynote speakers and I also attended a break out session with her. It’s completely fabulously fabulous to find out what goes on in the head of another artist. I love all her making different things and ideas, and came away with ideas of my own about collaging things and ways of working to try.
Viviane Schwarz gave an amazing picture book workshop. Lots of fast drawing, cutting up, stealing other people’s drawings and making a group picture book. I learned a whole new way of thinking about ideas and creating characters. You can follow Viviane on Twitter.
One of the other things I did was to dare to put my portfolio out on a table where people could see it. That won’t be scary next time. It was brilliantly educational just seeing my work alongside other peoples.
And there was so, so much more. So many people, opportunites, interest, books, pictures, cake.
The weekend was a lovely bubble of talking about writing and illustration. I learnt so much and met so many lovely people. I made friends.
You can visit the website of the SCBWI here.
Thanks to Dom Conlon for letting me steal some photos.
#memorydoodle
A few days ago I was relaxing with a beer and my feet up after a hard day’s drawing, pen and sketchbook at hand and I started to doodle a little chair…halfway through I realised it was a chair that used to be in my grandparents’ house, so I drew me sitting in it reading a big book.
I posted my doodle on Twitter and Instagram. People seemed to like it and it sparked off a lovely idea in the ever fertile brain of my friend, Dom Conlon, which was to get people doodling their memories and sharing them. 🙂
So…if you have a memory to share, doodle, add a little text maybe, post it on Twitter with the hashtag #memorydoodle or address it to @headfirst_dom so that he can share it on his Inkology website.
Read all about it and take a look at what other people have drawn here. You don’t need to be an artist or even good at drawing. Here’s Dom’s effort:
(I don’t think he’s as bad at drawing as he claims though.)
A ridiculous way of drawing..
I started with his eye. He was nearly asleep. I was sitting on the conservatory sofa with pen and paper… new (secondhand) rotring pen (as I managed to bust the nib on my lovely old one yesterday) and beautifully smooth Bristol Board. I drew an eye, then the other, then an ear and it grew into a cat.
It’s a ridiculous way of drawing and completely against everything I was taught at college. Measure! Measure! Measure! I think it’s the way children draw, you just start at a point and carry on until you run out of paper. Perhaps there is still a measure of measuring in there.. when you’ve been drawing for so long it becomes second nature. I’m not always conscious I’m doing it, but yes, I do. That corner of the eye lines up with that part of the ear. The space between the paw and the eye is a little longer than that between the eye and the back of the head.
Lately I’ve been picking up a pen and drawing without a proper idea of how it’s going to turn out, without sketching or rubbing out and without worrying about ‘mistakes’. It’s a lovely, relaxed way of sketching and learning to use a new tool. And, I hope, of learning how to overcome the whole getting too uptight to draw thing. 🙂
Rotring
I’ve been busy working on a new illustration project lately (featuring Bears, unsurprisingly) or rather, busy trying to work on a new… ripping stuff up, getting cross, having no ideas and drawing in a very uptight fashion. If you are familiar with my scribblings you will know that my style is generally quite loose.. messy even. I use a dip pen and ink and water and pencils and crayons and paint and brushes and fingers… I’ve also got to the point where I think everything I draw or paint looks like crap. (Sorry, I swear and it will probably get worse than that.)
I had a bit of a moan to a very dear friend about how useless I am this morning. Sorry. You know who you are. x And decided to put the whole thing on hold for a bit and refresh my brain with completely different things, ie not art. Having a general clear up of my studio* (*corner of the conservatory) I found an old Rotring pen. 0.2 nib. I’ve had it for years, (slight guilt here) it was given to me by a good friend when her Dad died, as she thought I would use it. 0.2 nib. That’s very fine. And fiddly. I’ve used fibre tip type pens that are very fine and not liked them. I like the variety of strokes that different pressure makes with pencils and nib pens. And wash. And rubbing things with my fingers. And flicking paint and ink about. Anyhow, I thought it’s not really my sort of thing but I’ll see if it works and maybe give it to a friend…
So I drew this (work in progress). In spite of being really hung up about drawing anything it sort of worked. I think it’s to do with being relaxed because you’re not expecting anything. Whatever, the concentration kicked in. I think I’ll keep the pen. And play about with it for a bit.
Bears can wait. But I’ll be back to them soon.
If you want to look at the drawing more closely click on the photo for a larger view.
