Jessie Lilac Blog

The weather's been so hot I haven't felt able to paint lately. I have however played with a watercolour painting on Photoshop that I made recently. Sitting in the coolest room in the house with my laptop seems easier somehow! I'd quite like to be one of those girls by the beach with an enormous ice-cream cone wouldn't you? :) These are the beach huts on a beach in Devon called Broadsands. I love how each one is a different colour and when I see one of the doors open, I try to sneak a look inside to see how people decorate the interior. Sometimes they're like little houses in their own right! The word for Illustration Friday this week is 'Jungle' so you'll have to forgive me for posting this one I'd already made as a commission. It's as hot as a Jungle today, easily!

I've finished my painting of a magic garden. This week's theme for Illustration Friday is 'Midsummer Night' so I thought I'd put it together with a night background to produce a midsummer night! Shall I show you the original painting I made? It has a very different feel to it and I've used gold and silver pens on the watercolour - great fun to do! I'm thinking of offering it for sale on Ebay. I'll let you know when I do. :)

You can tell it's spring because the sunlight shows up all the dust. Don't worry, I'm not going to show you a close up picture of my dust. It just occured to me that most of the things in this corner of the house are things I've been painting or making. The pile of fabric is the beginnings of a patchwork quilt, the white table, chair and ottoman I renovated last summer. (They were all destined for the tip the way they looked!)The seedlings I planted a couple of days ago and did you recognise my new stained glass panel that I'd made hanging in the window? The first daffodils are flowering and peeping up through the ground appears the first aubretia flower. Things are starting! Now for some arty talk... Here's the last page of my sketchbook. I'm about to start a new one which always scares me for a some reason. Scared of a sketchbook? I'm sure there's a few artists out there who know what I mean! The cleaned-up-in-Photoshop version Oh, that makes it...

Warning: gale force wind.

Here is the finished illustration for the magazine. It's drawn in ink with a watercolour wash. I did a spot of tweaking in Photoshop. Poor fish, I'm beginning to feel sorry for them. They don't look too happy do they?! Click to enlarge.

This week the word is 'phenomenon' .

He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet. - Joseph Joubert

Here's that tree I painted in my sketchbook yesterday and here by the magic of Photoshop are some birds to go in it! I'm liking using acrylic again, I might even do some more.

A page of my sketchbook before and then after spring cleaning. Which do you prefer? The big painting I was working on is now finished and ready to be delivered to its new home. I was going to leave the background plain white but got a bit carried away!

It's been a while since I've done any painting with acrylic. I'm working on a very large painting on canvas at the moment and I wanted to show you but the light's been so atrocious here today and yesterday that I haven't been able to take any photos. Here instead are a couple of pages from my sketchbook where I've been playing with some luscious pinks and a collaged seahorse! This one's background had a tiny help with cleaning up in Photoshop. Did you really think I was that neat and tidy at painting? ;)

We went to visit my brother at the weekend and on our evening walk saw a hare, a deer, foxes and the best treat of all, a barn owl! Our walk took us to a place called Barbury Castle . Each year around the time of the solstice we meet up and walk around the perimeter of the iron age hill fort watching the sun go down. When I got back I couldn't resist playing with this photo, fiddling with the colours. The copse of trees looked so magical in real life, the photo I took looked too ordinary so I decided to 'magic' them up again!

A morning of life drawing resulting in some sketches. Some quickies.... some longies.... and morphing the 2 together to get this! Curtesy of The magic of Photoshop . Happy weekends to you!

Sometimes I like to make little paint sketches using whatever mediums I'm in the mood for. Sometimes watercolour, and a little bit of coloured pencil, This one is a base of pink acrylic paint, then drawn on top with a gel pen, then I used my Inktense pencils to colour in the hair and flowers. I've also had a play in Photoshop combining 2 pictures together to make my new header. I used this one, and this one, this one above shows what it was like before and this one is after. Much better I think! (Or should I make that moon lighter...hmmmmm.......)

This week's word is Fearless . I thought I'd try to do a collage in Photoshop again. Lots of trials and errors later, here we are!

Yes another post on the same day! I was determined to do Illustration Friday this week by hook (hooks on the brain, sorry!) or by crook. I had a photoshop class this morning and while it was fresh in my brain, I thought I'd do a quick sketch and then manipulate the image in Photoshop. The star background I already had from playing around with watercolour ages ago. The pen sketch took a minute to do. Put the two together and voila! I'm making it sound as though it was a walk in the park but I had a lot of false starts before it got to this stage. I'm learning, slowly but surely.

This picture above started out as a doodle in my sketchbook, the page was covered with little dabs of paint where I was trying out the colours. Thanks to the magic wand in photoshop, hey presto they're gone! now all I have to do is remember what on earth I did for next time! I painted the girl without any black pen lines, it gives a different feel to it doesn't it? Life drawing this morning and I wanted to get the model's face right, so had another go above the original drawing. I mananged to get her ear and hair done in more detail but the one below actually looks more like her! Oh! An email just popped up from Illustration Friday so I'll be off now to see what we have in store this week!

Here's a photo I took of my table where I do most of my drawing. I love to see lots of pots with pens and pencils and brushes and even if I don't use all of them every day, it's nice to have them there ready for action! This was a sketch I did this morning, the background was another painting that had been painted with blue acrylic. I scanned both of them into the computer, with the intention of collaging the sketch onto the blue background in Photoshop. You see I know it can be done, but evidently not by me. Not yet anyway! :/

While I was doing this drawing for Illustration Friday , my daughter Carenza did this one...... This reminds me of when my younger brother used to sneakily untie my shoe laces when I was watching TV, or if I was really engrossed in a programme, he'd tie them together!