Jessie Lilac Blog

I've had a very busy June including visits across the country to far flung 😉 Cambridge. I've been visiting there a couple of times a year for the past 10 years and  because my visits consist of walking around all day I feel as though I know it better than places where I've actually lived! It's a lovely little city with beautiful buildings, every shop I could possibly need and the lovely river Cam that's surrounded with a lot of wildlife. I have a fond # notfond memory 😒  of sitting on the grass next to the river one evening when from behind my back I felt my hair being mistaken for grass by a cow! I bought one of my favourite sketchbooks while I was there, an A5 sized hardback made by Seawhite of Brighton . I love that make, the pages take just about any medium I throw at it and the hardback cover and size reminds me of a normal sized book. It's 10 years since I first visited there and when I was back home again, I became interested in what my sketchbook f...

This week for Illustration Friday, the word is SQUIRREL.

I almost didn't want to do this week's Illustration Friday because emojis aren't my usual style but I thought I'd have some fun with it! Have a great weekend! x

As you might have seen from my last post, I've been making paintings in my sketchbook and so I thought I'd share my method with you of my latest one. I've also decided to make it into a new design for the items in my Rebubble shop , which I'll share with you at the end of this post. So here's how I made my latest sketchbook painting..    First I painted in some random coloured areas of watercolour with a vague house shape in the middle and allowed it to dry.  I drew the windows to the house with a white Posca pen size 1M and painted them with some more watercolour, yellow ochre which is the same colour that I used for the house. I added detail to each of the areas of watercolours using a Posca colour that would look nice against each one. You can see on the blue and green areas that I used a darker colour in the same shade. When in doubt, I find that white always works well against a dark background. I continued to add details treating ea...