Well I’ve definitely fallen off the social network bandwagon! Down the track I expect I’ll be able to start illustrating and blogging again, but for now, if you don’t see me posting… just assume I’m too busy enjoying my kids to do so ;) Here are some happy snaps of what I’ve been keeping busy with the last 12 months… and to officially introduce Ruby Rain Castles, born July 25, 2012.
Before July 25, 2012…
…and after!
Was my birthday yesterday (32!), so I treated myself with a little arty time. I had stumbled across other artists who came up with some illustrations based on children’s drawings, and had a go with my Ugly Mermaids illustration. So when my daughter Hera drew a picture of me (left), herself & Hank on my birthday last year… I had to have another go at it! Busy life as a mum has kept me from colouring in my pencil drawing till today :) Again I used Sketchbook Pro on my iPad to do the colouring, and to touch up a couple child-induced spills!
I have been doing these big colour & play drawings for my kids over the last couple years… I find attention spans of toddlers & preschoolers can dwindle pretty quickly, so I draw a big picture that we can work together on a bit each day until it’s finished. We start off with a slice of recycled paper from a big pad, butcher paper or big pieces of coloured paper. My daughter loves mixed media, so the markers, crayons & pencils all come out. When the colouring’s done the glitter or cut paper come into play. (I love the mix of kid scribble and adult colouring… I try to stick to the big boring areas like sky while Hera does the fun bits, makes the kid’s part really stand out).
The play aspect comes in with stickers and paper dolls. Kids love to decorate and stick (and peel, and stick, and peel) stickers, and this big play surface is fun for their imagination. Once they get unsticky, we glue them to stiff paper and cut them out and reuse them as paper dolls.
(This is the first one we ever did, Hera drew the first hill and the rest evolved from there!)
A few of the big colour & play drawing ideas we have done (again and again!) are :
Once all the creative play is done, the big drawings make great posters for rooms. And once they come down from the wall, they can be potato-stamped to make into home made wrapping paper.
(Lifecycle of this craft : Tree > Paper > Big Colour & Play Drawing > Poster > Wrapping Paper to ?!)
Well, I’ve been off maternity leave, freelancing part-time for the last three months, only to go back on it again… am delighted to be expecting my third baby in August. So, I will be continuing my casual approach to blogging for a while longer!
If you were thinking of contacting me for illustrations while I’m on maternity leave, I am referring my clients to Jason MacKay… he’s a talented digital illustrator with published children’s books under his belt, has a great style and work ethic… and he’s my brother, so I know him personally and recommend to anyone looking for illustrations!
This is your (belated) holiday card :) Hope you had a happy and safe holiday with your family and friends!
Was fun making Christmas Cards out of some of Hera’s old drawings, a great way to reuse them. Hera & I glued the drawings down onto cheap holiday cards from the dollar store, then once they were dry we cut them out and did potato stamps on them.
I’ve wanted to do this for years, and having a 3-year-old to do it with gave me the perfect excuse to have a go at making potato stamp holiday paper. Was an easy, quick craft… all you need is a small potato and knife to cut the pattern out of it, a little paint and a flat container to put it in, and large paper. We reused Hera’s old drawings, which added a quirky flare with creepy stick figures peeking through the trees! Hank was too busy practicing crawling up and down off the ottoman to join us ;)
Hey guys, unashamedly asking for some Likes on this photo of my humble workplace up on ImageZoo’s Facebook page! If I get the most Likes I’ll get a lovely prize for having the coolest workplace among my colleagues with illustrations available at ImageZoo.com! Just click on this specific photo, and Like it before Friday when the contest ends… thanks!!!
I was saying to my husband recently I wish I had more time to draw… and he suggested just setting up next to Hera on the kitchen table and drawing together, even if it’s only a few minutes. I’ve been really enjoying it, and Hera especially enjoyed drawing the same thing… I took one of her drawings of our car, made copies, and she and I both coloured it in. (Similar to what I did with Ugly Mermaids.) Was fun, looking forward to doing it again!
BTW, a few have asked how Hank’s doing… really great :) At nine months old, he’s just under 7kg now, a smiley happy little guy, and sitting up (with a few pillows propped up around!) He has started crying “Mmmmmuuum!!!” when he’s upset.
Lately I haven’t had much time for illustrating, as being a mum of two little kids takes up all my spare time. I’m enjoying the occasional creative outlet with drawing things for my daughter to colour… mainly her riding on dragons and dinosaurs!
I did manage to squeeze in this illustration… I was inspired a while back by Dave DeVries illustrations derived from his children’s artwork, and thought it would be fun to give it a go! A few months back Hera suddenly learned how to draw “people” and I ended up with a stack of paper full of families of people with arms and legs freely growing out of their heads… couldn’t let them go to waste! So I traced one, used the head shape, mouth & eyes, arms & legs as the basis for my pencil drawing “Ugly Mermaids.” I then gave it a little colour using my iPad with a Dagi Stylus and Sketchbook Pro. Hera’s original drawing is shown at left. Hope to do more of these, they were fun… am currently working on illustrating the drawing Hera drew of me having my birthday ;)
About a week before my son Hank decided to arrive early, I had some time on my hands to doodle some of Hera’s toddler outfits she outgrew this year… had a little time today so thought I’d share the latest for my illustrated diary of Hera’s outfits. They are all pen doodles with watercolour washes done in my sketchbook… haven’t done much watercolour on plain bond paper before, and found it made for very warped paper afterwards! Wouldn’t recommend it for a lot of layering of colours, but for a quick study it’s fun.
