Monday, June 4, 2012

A few things....

I seem to have a few ideas running around in my head just now, or should I just say happily sitting in the sun and having a think :). I got pretty excited by the thought of creating my own pop-up book last week thanks to the vintagepopupbooks.com website, in particular I really liked this ship http://www.vintagepopupbooks.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=K-8. So I am hoping some kind person will buy me a "how to make a pop-up" book for  my birthday ;).


I have also been looking at a book I bought last year titled Arthur Rackham: A Life With Illustration by James Hamilton. It is such a beautiful book. I have been inspired by his pen and ink and watercolour work. Rackham somehow managed to combine the thinness and thickness of lines with subtle colour perfectly. I have been looking at animals also this week, so I think the below work of his ties in quite nicely.


So, inspired by Rackham, I thought I would start trying my hand at pen and ink and water colour this week. Ha, now I appreciate Rackham even more! I am getting a better hang of varying the thickness of my lines and have started putting a bit of water colour in, but I need to be more patient than I usually am. I think I also have to leave the ink longer to dry as well, overnight didn't seem to be long enough. I also played around a bit with some of the filters on Adobe Photoshop this afternoon, so this is what I have so far.

Yass: horses

Yass: horses (conte crayon filter)

I am still thinking about Australia and trying to figure out the best way to go about what to do. I am thinking about intimate scenes (family, pets, backyard etc) but am still exploring the images I have. I am exceedingly happy though, because in huge part thanks to my sister and brother-in-law, I now have a new Sony digital camera, with 18.2 mega pixels and a 20 x optical zoom! It can also take panoramic shots and is quite a bit more shake proof. Before I forget, I also went to the 3 Harbours Arts Festival on the weekend. I went to both the Cockenzie Power Station and Cockenzie House, both of which were good. Cockenzie House also had a good cafe where I managed to score a massive piece of home-made coffee cake!! Mmmm. The festival runs from 2-10 June and the website is http://www.3harbours.co.uk/

4 comments:

Mark Rosenquist said...

Nice looking horses. I was just thinking: I wonder how long it would take to paint all of the cattle in Nebraska. And then I got tired just thinking about that!

Kirralee Fisher said...

Mmm, 6 million cattle wasn't it?! No wonder you get tired just thinking about it ;)

Horse Feathers Saddlery said...

Thanks for making two parts of my anatomy soooo big! Can I have a bigger photo of my lovely Mr Maloney?

Kirralee Fisher said...

What, you mean the sunglasses?! ;o) To be honest, I cheated a bit because I was trying out different compositions so in actual fact your anatomy is traced directly off a photo, so no amplification on my part was undertaken! Assume you want the original photo of Mr Maloney - will email you.