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 Fifth Doodle

I recently took on a groovy commission to create an illustrated banner for a new tourism site promoting Sherwood, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. As I'm from Melton (not far from Nottingham) I jumped at the chance, I know the area really very well. 

Mr Pearson, my commissionee (?!) wanted aspects of Sherwood, such as the Great Oak and a reference to the infamous Robin Hood, but also cosmopolitan references to the city incorporating hotels, shopping and leisure. 

I began building up the different aspects of this collage type image. Mr Pearson really liked my urban illustrations (such as the one for the actress Charlotte Salt- see it on my Facebook page here) so I kept the same layout plan and focused on highlight colours, as opposed to full colour.

I began with the Great Oak as a strong central feature, and built the other images around it. The statue of Robin Hood (of course!) and Nottingham Castle were easy icons, and after a bit of research the other componants, like the tram, the church and the fairground ride, began to appear. 

I really enjoy creating these collage type illustrations, you can build in all these different images and piece them together like a jigsaw. Is it odd I find that fun?! How tragic!

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....

The Seventy Second Doodle

Goes without saying really, this is (quite clearly I hope) a wee Easter illustration. Gotta love a long eared bunny, they are just so ridiculously cute!

Now I am not a lady of religion, I couldn't give a flip about any of it. But I like the original ideas behind Easter as a joyful Spring celebration, the beginning of new life. Now if only we actually had the Spring weather to go with it. Darn.

Check out my Easter Bunny illustration along with some other fab Easter themed art work on Amelia's Magazine 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 Seventieth Doodle

Fist things first - Happy St Patrick's Day! Hopefully you will remember tomorrow how you celebrated!

So the doodle today is about something most (but not all) artists despise. Self portraits.

ARRRRGGGGGG when you have to look in the mirror and dissect what it is that makes you look like you...CHRIST, what a grim task. The more you look, the weirder you look. Your features start looking completely bizzarre, you wonder how on earth you walk down the street without babies crying and people throwing cabbages at you.

It's like when you say one word over and over and over, till it sounds so odd you're sure it's not actually a word anymore. Window. Window. Win-doww. Try it. It's weird.

But I suppose, the dreaded self portrait is good practise. The problem is, you will always find it hard to be completely objective when it's your own face. If you're too artistically mean, it won't look like you. If you're too generous, it won't look like you, and people will think you're a twat.

So how do you get around it? You don't really, but I did manage to finally produce a self portrait for my website. I'm buggered if I want an actual photo on there, so it's the lesser of two evils I suppose. I decided to keep the features very simple and focus on my hair, it's what people notice first anyway. I still look at it and think 'Is that really me?'. But essentially it doesn't matter; it's me done in my own illustration style, and that is what is important. 

Bloody self portraits. God I'm weird looking.