The Seventy Fourth Doodle

God I LOVE extreme sports. I love illustrating sports and athletes, their movement and shape and form is just enthralling to me. Oooooooff. 

I had been in contact with the wonderful Spencer O'Brien and ended up creating this illustration of her. As always, it began as a doodle (above). I wanted to combine an image of her at her best, destroying some poor mountain on her board, but also an image of her just, well, being her. I also wanted to focus on capturing that crazy passion in the movement of snowboarders- the importance of the arms and legs, the strength of the body. Yum. Love it.

So I built upon the pen and pencil layers with watercolours, creating dramatic shading on the figure of Spencer boarding while keeping the sketch of her face quite soft in contrast. I added dynamtic pen lines and splashes of paint to emphasise that all important movement, and a touch of blue to highlight the feeling of snow and cold.

I confess, I was really chuffed with the final image. I do so love creating sports illustrations, and I believe there will be more where this came from!

Come see what people think of it on my FB page :) www.facebook.com/ruthjoyceart

The Seventy Third Doodle

It is true. I confess. I am a horribly, uselessly, completely hopeless romantic. Sort of.

 I think my idea of romance is somewhat twisted. For instance, I am not keen on traditional shows of romantic love such as gifts of roses, chocolates, fluffy teddy bears. I think they are hollow, tacky and meaningless. 

But saying that, I do love going out for nice dinners, going for strolls with my beloved. It's just that we like eating dinners in non-expensive, non-pretentious places, and we like strolling through Camden. Not your usual choice.

On Valentines Day, we went to a bar and then went to see Die Hard 5. Because we think it's funny, it's a thing we have. And that to me is real romance. I couldn't give a toss about expensive stuff or posh places or what anyone else thinks. And that is really, really nice :)

By the way, in my pen sketch above, 'Amantes Sunt Amentes' is Latin for 'lovers are lunatics'. Seems about right....