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.

The Sixty Ninth Doodle

If someone took me aside when I was a gap-toothed little kid and told me the following things I would not believe them-

1) That I would voluntarily dye my hair ginger. And it would rock.

2) That I'd actually look alright in specs.

3) That I would decide, off my own bat, to draw a leopard and it would be totally badass.

 4)That I would own not one, but two pairs of jeggings. For shame.

Now, I draw your attention to point 3. When I was younger I was like 'ohhh what's the point of drawing animals, just take a photo man'. What a tit I was. Animals are like, totally rad. Especially (not to sound like a twat but meh) mine. I do like to keep that true, natural essence of the animal, but to then add my own unique twist on top to create something darkly unique and vibrant. 

Yum. Love it.

The Sixty Eighth Doodle

I love commissions. They can be challenging and sometimes difficult, but they will always open your eyes. Either to new ideas, new ways of working, new subject matter, or maybe even something you vow to never go near again. You suddenly need to try and see something from the position of a stranger, and that is an intriguing thought.

As an illustrator or artist or a designer, you get so used to delving yourself into your own world of ideas and styles. Why would anyone else know any better than you ey??! But that is just the thing. Very often, someone else WILL and DOES know better. And we should figure out when to bloody listen!

My example doodle here was a special commission of a musician called Krystle Warren, a subject who was both challenging and incredibly interesting. From exploring the colour pallet to experimenting with what materials suited her best (soft B pencils- organic and natural worked so much better than hard pen) it is a constant journey of discovery and those moments where you go, 'OoooOOOhh, it's like thaaaat...'.

And I for one, think those moments are crucial to arty type folks. It keeps us in check innit.