November 16-30, 2016

Hello again and "Happy end of November" to you (is that a thing? it should totally be a thing!)! How's it going? Are you knee-deep in Christmas/holiday preparations or have you been done for ages? Me, I haven't even started yet. Honestly everything's been in such a whirlwind of activities that I've had trouble finding time to breathe, let alone plan my holidays! But I finally have a break for a few days and my plans include catching up on some familial responsibilities (I have to help Santa for my girls after all).

The past two weeks have been a little nuts, the store I'm working at did a week long sale for Black Friday so I worked more shifts than normal (yay extra money, boo less time), which means I didn't make much progress on the art front. Here's what I managed:

NHIllustration Course:

For the course I'm taking we were assigned to draw a flower/plant detailing the plant anatomy by showing the geometric shape and arrangement of the petals in the flowers, arrangement and orientation of the leaves and the basic plant anatomy. My biggest criticism for my final illustration is that there needed to be more information written, things like height, depth, maybe some colour swatches, that sort of thing. Otherwise I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out.

My NHI plant assignment: Snowdrops

A Christmas Project:

For Christmas this year I thought it would be nice to stretch my illustrative skills a little and make something personal for the members of my family. For the girls, I want to make pillow dolls (hopefully that will make more sense in the next post) with illustrated images of them printed onto the fabric. I started by sketching out some ideas for their faces.

Illustrations of my girls' faces for their Christmas present.

For my husband I have something special planned. A few years ago I got him some t-shirts with "Trust me I'm a Doctor", "Trust me I'm a Scientist" and "Trust me I'm a Paleolimnologist" written on them. He loved them and has worn them so much that they are pretty much done, so this year I thought I'd make him up a set of shirts with illustrated logos on them, so a step up from the last ones. One of his favourite games to play is Fallout so I thought that I'd draw my husband's face in a manner similar to the character in the game and arrange a few other illustrations that are specific to his field, then have the lettering surrounding it. Here's where I'm at with that:

My husband as the main character for his t-shirt design.

I'm going to print it onto an iron-on and put that on the shirt. If it turns out, I might redo it next time with a more permanent transfer/inking method.

Plans for December:

I'm a little behind in my NHI course, this week we are supposed to submit a drawing of a bird - nothing too complex - and I hope to finish that today. Next week is the final assignment for the course and I believe we'll be drawing a furry creature for that. For this week I hope to get pretty far in my Christmas projects, practically to the printed stage if at all possible, plus I have a lot of shopping to do still. My girls are very excited about the upcoming holidays and are pushing to have the tree up this weekend.

And that's it for this post my friend. I hope your first weeks of December are smooth, and if not relaxing then at least not too anxiety-ridden. Don't forget to add a little creativity to your days this month!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

November 01-15, 2016: Natural History Illustration

Hello my friend, and how did your first half of November go? Did Hallowe'en treat you well, or was it a non-issue for you? Ours went well. As many other parents I spoke with also said, we didn't get as many trick-or-treaters as we expected, but that didn't stop my girls from collecting a great haul!

You might have noticed that there was no post last week, this was intentional. With my new job and other priorities, by the end of the week I found that there really wasn't much to report in my creative endeavours so I've decided to move to a bi-monthly schedule instead of a weekly one. In doing this my hope is that I will keep slightly more time on my side to keep the momentum going without burning out, and you will keep getting updates on my progress!

So...the last two weeks have been just crazy! Someone in one of my Facebook groups drew attention to a new online course for natural history illustration, being offered by a University in Australia. If you know nothing else about me, you should know that I've always wanted to learn more about drawing nature in a realistic manner. In many ways I've managed to learn how to do this, but it's all been informal, whatever I can get my hands on. This would be a chance to learn from actual Illustrators and get some tips and tricks that might make what I do faster and/or easier. And as a bonus, I could audit the course for free!! I'm sure you can guess what I decided to do.

The course is titled "Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration"(click on the title to go to the webpage) and is being offered by the University of Newcastle Australia. I am currently working in week 3 I believe (or it could be week 4 since week 1 was fairly low-key) and I've done a few drawings for the homework assignments.

The first assignment was to do some practicing with tone by using 4 or 5 different pencils. I chose to attempt this piece of bark that my girls collected from one of their nature walks recently.

For week 2, we were taught how to measure and better understand what's involved in nature illustration. This shell is leading up to a larger project. Notes are very important for natural illustrations.

My first attempt at drawing a sand dollar from my own collection helped me to see what troubles I might encounter for the larger assignment.

My desk and setup prior to beginning my 5 object illustration assignment.

The finished assignment. 

For Remembrance Day this year I was inspired to make a little something. I'm almost always late for things like this but since week 3 of my course didn't have homework per se, I decided to do a little painting and lettering to honour our vets and those that continue to serve. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice!

Remembrance Day

And that's about it for this post. As I mentioned there was no homework in the course this week so I've been spending the time trying to catch up on my other priorities and improve my stamina so I can continue working this week.

Sleep and energy are on my wish list this week so today I'd like to wish that you have as much of both as you need!

Until next time,

Mandy

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

If you're interested in commissioning me, click here to be taken to my Contact page to send me an email or message me from my social media links above, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)
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