Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween :) We’ll be going to the hospital to visit my son Hank, who is doing very well by the way, is two weeks old now, and over his birth weight weighing 850grams. Then doing a little trick-or-treating with Hera later in the day. She keeps saying “Thank you for Halloween!” and carrying her little jack-o-lantern around the house. We’ll be doing a little colouring as well, have a fabulous Halloween colouring page from Crystal Driedger… check it out here!

The above Halloween illustration is available royalty-free on ImageZoo.com.

Here’s another study of an outfit for my diary of Hera’s stuff, a little blue & white swimsuit done in pencil crayon on black paper. Fun working chiaroscuro (on a dark surface, illustrating from dark to light.)

Hey! Just wanted to put up a post to say I’ll be not blogging for the foreseeable future, as I’ve just had my second baby. Hank decided to arrive 14 weeks early, weighing in 1lb 11oz, so he’s still in hospital in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He’s doing very well, is a week old now, and is “ticking all the boxes” as they say here when things are going well. We just love him to bits, yesterday was one of the best days of my life as I was able to cuddle him for the first time… he opened his eyes up right away and gave me one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen. Needless to say our lives have changed quite a bit with visiting the hospital daily, but it’s a good change as we now are a family of four. Hera loves her little brother, and asks about him and enjoys holding his kicking foot in the incubator.

There are a couple post-dated blog posts trickling in I wrote before all of this, and I may have time to post the occasional thing here and there. But I likely wont have time to respond to questions as I used to do for quite a while. All the best in your creative endeavors!

I’ve worked on this pantone paper before (in acrylic here & here), and enjoyed working on it again this time with pencil for a study of a little yellow & pink sundress for my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. I’ve left the trip across the top, I like remembering how old that paper is and glad to have rescued it from the trash while my college was renovating and clearing out unwanted junk.

Just a quick note to say Heather will be out of touch for a while. She’s in hospital getting bed rest as our baby thought it would be fun to give us a scare at 25 weeks into the pregnancy.

There are some back-dated posts that might still be appearing. Also, Heather won’t be responding to questions and queries during this time.

Thanks,

Ben

Was getting a bit bored of working with pen & digital colour, so dug through my scrap art paper and found some different shades to work on for a few more outfits for my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. Here’s a pencil study of a poncho she wore all last winter.

I’ve just finished up my Apples & Birdies sketchbook (by Ecojot,) it lasted me almost the year, am sad to put its worn pages away. From Adelaide to Ottawa to Toronto to Chicago to LAX, this sketchbook has been with me half way around the globe. My sketchbooks usually become a bit of a hodge podge as love saving ticket stubs, cut outs from magazines, old to-do lists, stamps… and what better place to stash them all than in my little sketchbook. And Hera’s got her hands on it more than once, defacing various sketches which has been a challenge! Here are a few spreads I scanned (you can click on them to see larger images), heh, looks a little crazy… better on paper than in my head I say!

Here’s a little pen & watercolour drawing I doodled out recently for my Diary of Hera’s Stuff. Was a bit of a feat finishing this illustration as Hera kept stealing the socks!

My second go using Sketchbook Pro (my first go being to digitally colour this scanned pen illustration) was fun, just did a study of my feet while watching the tv (yes, they are bare in the winter, yes I am pregnant!) This is the first time I’ve done something painterly with digital medium and was pleased with how it turned out… but was a bit more awkward this time around using my finger to draw with, especially for finer details, so am looking forward to picking up a stylus.