The Eighty Second Doodle - Ladies & Beasts

 The Ladies & The Beasts Series

The Lady & The Raven

I've had a few questions and comments about my newest series of paintings 'The Ladies & The Beasts', so I thought I'd write up here in my blog to answer a few of those questions! Also, it's a nice way of putting down in words why I paint what I paint.

My work is constantly inspired by strong women, 'cause lets face it - we're super badass. We have marvellous shapes and features and hair, all the things I love to paint. So when I first began painting these ladies with different types of animals and birds, even I wondered where exactly in my head they'd come from.

The women I paint are, firstly, not 'perfect' airbrushed model types. They have bumps. They have lumps. They have tummies. They often have fierce, not typically beautiful features. But that is perfect- because it's what we all are in reality. And we're awesome. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I reckon, and everyone is beautiful to somebody else out there. And that is totally awesome too.

The Lady & The Fox

So I suppose you could say that my ladies are Renaissance ladies - ever looked at those paintings from the 15th or 16th century by the likes of Botticelli or Titian? They are curvy, they have real shape, there is often an aspect of nature in the composition. I've simply added a few extra modern things- a slice of ruggedness, a streak of alternative attitude, a dose of colourdy hair (colourdy aint no word, but meh!) to make these ladies true, 21st century badass goddesses. They are Amazonians, they are natures' warrior ladies. They are feminine and lovely but they are tough.

The Lady & The Wolf

In regard to the other aspects of my paintings, I've had a few people ask me if the animals are meant to be 'clothing' or 'accessories'; the simple answer to that is no. The animals are in fact a part of the women- their positions are often intwining, protective. Of course, I like to leave people to decide for themselves what they see in my work, but for me the animal or bird represents the soul, the personality of the woman. Sometimes they act as guardians, such as in The Lady & The Owl (see below- I'd bloody love having a wise old owl looking out for me), sometimes they are more shielding as with The Lady & The Fox.

But when it comes down to it, you can see what you like. My paintings can mean whatever you'd like them to in your own little head- they can represent something, or they can just be an image of a lady with an animal. Simple as that. You can relate to the women I paint, you can see an attitude you recognise, you can like the colours.

At the end of the day, I hope people enjoy looking at my work and perhaps see a little thing that means something just to them. So, enjoy.

The Amazonian

The Native American 

The Lady & The Owl

The Lady & The Arctic Wolf

The Lady & The Swan

The Eighty First Doodle

Sometimes you just need to have a good ol' painting sesh. With some recent work I've been creating I've been taking photos all the way through of the various stages, which is actually really interesting. It's quite nice to look back at how you built up a painting; all the various layers and shading techniques that you use, perhaps without even noticing!

 

Here's the finished painting of my Native American inspired lady, done using watercolours and inks :) 

The Seventy Eighth Doodle

Well well, I obviously haven't been drawing much after coming out of tut hospital *sigh*. Being in pain, dull as it is, is terribly time-consuming and irksome. And exhausting. Bother.

Yet here's a longboarder doodle I've been able to do, standing in the kitchen or lying on the sofa (how rock 'n' roll) -

Normally an illustration like this would be done within a couple of hours (including tea breaks) but this took a week. LOL. Oh dear. But it's a start! Plus I bloody love a rad, badass longboarding lass, especially with pink and purple hair! 

The Seventy Sixth Doodle

We all know I love doing sports illustration, but I also love fashion illustration too. Sketching out the clothes and studying the form of the figure is something I really enjoy!

I recently created this fashion image above for a feature on Fashion Truffles- a great site run by a smashing lady called Viviana in New York. It's full of tips, trends and style - non of which I really have but oh well haha.

I created this image with pen and watercolours, using mainly greys and blacks with a strong blue as the highlight colour. I wanted the illustration to ooze style and sophistication, but to be fun and cute too - basically to reflect Viv herself!

Check out the blog post with my illustration on Viv's site here!

The Seventy First Doodle

I do love colourdy pens. Very often I find myself drawing something in pencil, sitting back and looking at it for a mo, then redrawing it with coloured pens or markers.

 Take this lady here. As a pencil sketch it was nice, but she didn't really pop till I redrew her with coloured pens. You can also use the colour to imply certain areas rather than stick to solid outlines, overlapping and mingling. Basically, you can go a bit nuts!

 

The Sixty Seventh Doodle

The tube is an amazing place. (Before we go any further, I of course mean the London Underground, not like a tube of cardboard from the middle of loo roll.) You see all walks of life down there, it is quite marvellous. Mwahahaha.

This illustration came from a girl I saw on the tube who was pretty funky. Now, she didn't actually have a weird blue aura and I am certain her real life face had an outline - I used artistic lisence 'o course. But she was a hellova lotta fun. Trying to capture that nonchalant, effortlessly cool way she hung from the pole, her funky outfit and hair, her general groovy vibe. 

I mean, I don't know, maybe she is actually a total cow in real life, and I'd find that I'd rather chew glass than draw her. But in my head, and on the tube, she seemed funky. May as well draw funky people when you see 'em ey?

The Twentieth and Twenty-First Doodle

So if you go to http://www.harrietpulford.com/ you will see a nifty little animation with these doodles of mine, which is pretty blimmin' cool. That slider, I could play with it for hours!

This was a fun commission, I loved doing the futuristic Harriet! She wanted it sort of robotic, and when I started for some reason the steampunk robotic style suited it much more than a realistic type, like the Terminator or stuff like that. It just didn't quite look right till I tried that particular style with those rusty sort of colours, it seemed to gel much better. And she was very pleased with it, which helps!

The Nineteeth Doodle

I really like the idea of doing fashion type illustrations, but with my own edge. I don't know if you've noticed (HA) but my style is rather messy, gritty and pretty grungy. But I still feel it can go with pretty much any subject matter!

This lady just sort of popped out of my head from a rough sketch, she is very bohemian! I love the layering of watercolours, they literally rock my world. Acrylic can be fun, but watercolour is my true love. Always and forever. Gosh, how emo.

The Seventh Doodle

So this lady rambled past me when I was suppin' me tea in my Camden cafe. I did a very messy pencil drawing of her, then used a bit o' tracing paper to do her again in a single line pen. Really quite like her, I have a weird attraction to not taking the pen off the paper; it's like saying 'Yeh? YEH?! Think you can do it without flinching?!'.

It's like playing chicken in art with yourself. Rock 'n roll.