watercolour + ink

I have never been a big bike rider, in fact the last time I owned a bicycle it was pink and white, covered in musical notes and called Symphony, I was 9 years old. Mr Crumpet loves to cycle, I imagine us riding through town to pick up fresh baked bread on a Sunday morning after a trip to the local florists. In reality I would be a wobbly, panicking mess, flinching every time a car drove my way.

I decided to face my fear when a friend asked if I could try sketching a bicycle. Trust me, they are really not easy to draw! The simpler the better and I definitely still need a lot of practice.  Illustrator Clare Owen makes delightfully easy work of painting vintage bicycles which you can see in the book ‘Heels On Wheels – A Lady’s Guide to Riding and Owning a Bike’, a must read for all lady cyclists.

I better start researching adult stabilisers.

- Miss C x

watercolour + ink

Mountain Gorilla illustration

The Mountain Gorilla is critically endangered. So what? What does that really mean? Critically Endangered is the highest risk category assigned by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List for wild species. Critically Endangered means that a species’ numbers have decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within three generations.

As I stated in my earlier post. A cocktail of problems has led to the mountain gorilla’s terrible situation. The main ingredient being habitat loss. This has been caused by the unchecked spread of farming and logging into the gorilla’s natural forest habitat. In fact in the 60s the Virunga Conservation Area (VCA) of Rwanda’s National Park was reduced to half its original size for the production of Pyrethrum (insecticides). As a direct result the gorilla population had plummeted by the mid 70s.

The second ingredient in this cocktail is poaching. Mountain gorillas have historically had their hands, feet and heads prized as ornaments. Young gorillas are in demand as pets.

Lastly, the final ingredient in this nasty cocktail is that mountain gorillas live in areas that are very political unstable; Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have all been affected by war and civil unrest for decades.

The garnish on top of this vile cocktail is that the gorillas have become tourist attractions. This, perhaps, is no bad thing, bringing attention to the gorilla’s plight. However, the problem is that tourists have been passing on their colds and sniffles, which the gorillas haven’t the immune system to battle.

See the illustration in progress below. You can see the start of this illustration in my earlier post here.

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Habitat loss, the encroachment of settlements into areas where the mountain gorilla lives. Agriculture, pastoral expansion and logging have all impacted upon the gorilla population.

This situation is bad enough but it has been further impacted by the fact that Mountain Gorillas live in political unstable places, Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) All these areas have had War and civil unrest.

Tourists have had the unfortunate effect of allowing transmission of diseases from humans to the gorillas. Poaching is also a problem. Abduction of infants for illegal selling to zoos and as pets. This often results in other adult gorillas being killed in the process.

What a mess. If you were a mountain gorilla I’m sure you’d be at a loss for words by the seemingly systematic destruction of your people. Mountain Gorillas, no surprise are listed as critically endangered by the ICUN.

This illustration in progress is of the mountain Gorilla with his natural environment inside him.

Image © Daniel Mackie
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The halls are decked, tinsel tamed, bells jingled, mince pies baked and I have Santa’s mail-order number on speed dial.  I’ve refrained from scowling when every store assaults my ears with Christmas muzac playing on an endless loop.  Three cards have been received already – two from the Chinese takeaway.

The only problem is that red fluffy bits of marabou feather trim have migrated to every item of clothing and room in the house – I’m literally spitting feathers!

Wishing you all a happy, sparkly and peaceful Christmas.  See you next year.

I think I got a bit hung up on the painting by Henri Rousseau and the fact I wanted it to echo the suggestion in William Blake’s poem that deadly things are beautiful. I wanted to make the illustration more “jewel” like. I didn’t realise I just needed it to be more “tiger”!

I abandoned this one as it just wasn't working!

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night….

You probably recognise it. You can read the whole thing here
It reminds me of this painting by Henri Rousseau.

In a nut shell, it questions how the hand of god can create something as gentle and mild as the lamb, but also something as terrifying and deadly as the tiger. How and why does God do this? Also while he is at it, Blake begs the question, why are things that are so deadly so beautiful?

Well I don’t know! But Tigers are really quite something. William Blake’s poem leaves us with the impression of a tiger that can roam at will in its own habitat.

Well sadly the tiger is one of the most threatened species on the planet. Two subspecies are already extinct, the Bali tiger and the Javan tiger.

The six remaining subspecies are all classified as endangered by IUCN, and the Sumatran Tiger, which is found only on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is critically endangered, with only 500-600 individuals in the wild.

So why are tigers in this mess? Habitat degradation, deforestation and poaching. Tigers are naturally solitary and each one requires his/her own manor, so to speak. Each animal has its own territory and they get very upset if another tiger walks into its backyard. There is some toleration and indeed some territories of tigers overlap, but as you can appreciate, tigers need space and plenty of it. However, that need for space does not fit well with the sprawl of humankind across the planet.

Illustration in progress. Tiger in its natural habitat.

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Facebook is the United States of social media. As Stuart Moore explains in his article it is already on the decline, the rot has set in. It is not curtains for Facebook yet, but Like the British Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire, it will fall.

When History looks back at the reasons for the decline in Facebook’s popularity it will probably cite a combination of its lack of respect for the privacy of its users and the fact that, as it got bigger and bigger, it became uncooler and uncooler.

Who knows what will happen, but there are other social media sites after its mantle…

The idea was to have a fallen statue of Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of face book and it’s founder. This idea very much echoing the statue and the column that is in Thomas Coles 4th and 5th paintings of his series “The Course of Empire”. I kept the distictive hill/cliff shape with the boulder on top on the right to reference Coles paintings.

The Text box was going to be used as the plinth!

Images © Daniel Mackie
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The seed of this illustration takes a cue from Thomas Cole’s “voyage of life”, an allegory of the four stages of human life. I like The youth part, it is full of hope of the future. In my illustration there is only a hint of trouble ahead in the waves on the skate board and the jealous look the woman on the left leg gives the woman on the right. But now is the time of hope and dreams!
Check out Ammo Magazine which I was invited to be in. Great magazine and a pleasure to be part of it.
You can see the painting evolving here , but sadly I forgot to take photo’s of it after I’d finished the hands!

Here is the drawing finished, as always I like to leave it overnight before starting painting as you can see it with fresh eyes and any mistakes or problems leap out at you!

As i’ve said before on this blog I tend to paint in layers especially with flesh tones. I always start with cerulean blue as a base , then and a mixture of cadmium red and yellow to get a Reddy orange, apply lightly then burnt sienna and burnt umbra, but you have to be careful with those dark colours, usually a bit of messing about with cerulean blue and the cadmium red/yellow at the end.

All apologies for not taking any other photos of progress of the painting; but I finished the figure and then did the sky and clouds last. Some people do the background first. I always start with the figure. When the figure is finished I start the background, and as with when I finish the drawing part I leave it over night and come back to it in the morning with fresh eyes. If mistakes happen it’s almost always because I’m in a rush or become impatient!
Image © Daniel Mackie
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Doctor Weaving comes to his usual conclusion that things are working, but as always there is a constant balancing act between what is provided for the community and what could be.

Doctor Weaving was invited to attend a local community meeting, in amongst the chat about overgrown gardens, broken windows and dog mess its clear that the members of this particular community are reasonably happy with their health service but as always there is always room for improvement. For doctor weaving it is delicate balancing art of costs, care and commissioning. Looks like he’s got his feet on the ground anyway!

Check out Daniel’s illustration portfolio

Check out Daniel’s illustration Portfolio

Doctor weaving believes the biggest challenge for the commissioners in the NHS is to balance the the type of care that people need. On one side of the bridge so to speak is the specialist care for the like’s of cancer and renal Failure. This is where Medical and technical expertise is issued to either cure or make a patient comfortable. On the other side of the bridge is the more mundane but still crucial, home care. Helping some one who has cancer up the stairs to bed.

This illustration for triathletes world was for a piece about one ladies fear of the deep water. Once she was out of her depth in the swim part of the triathlon race panic stared to set in. The very idea of meters and meters of dark cold water between her and the murky bottom of the lake were enough to trigger panic. What was lurking down there, what just brushed past your leg? The trigger in this case was as the water got colder, she new it got deeper.

Her story was about how the panic of the deep water then spilt (pardon the pun!) over into every day life.
The conquering of her fear of the deep was a long journey and it actually something i’ve touched upon in this blog before here
Click on the images to see the finished watercolour painting.

Drawing him was a bit of a trick beautiful people are always tricky, below is the work in progress through to the finished portrait.
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Lincoln’s election signaled to an already divided country that slavery was an anachronism in a supposedly enlightened age. This aggravated the southern states who’s economy was based largely on slaves and cotton. Lincoln’s stance was that national sovereignty and majority rule were the heart of democracy and that secession by the southern states was a road to anarchy.

In his address he tried to distill fear and difference. He ended his speech with these words.

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

They didn’t do any good. Lincoln spoke those words on 4th march 1861. On 12th April the south started war.

More portraits of famous folk in my portfolio.

This little watercolour painting was my attempt at humour.  It was a birthday gift for my youngest step-daughter who runs her own personal training business.

After the picture was left to dry on a table in another room  I forgot all about it until I overheard two teenage friends of my son talking and realised they were discussing it.  One lad obviously didn’t get the joke as the other said “That’s a trainer, see?  And it’s making personal remarks to the weights – the trainer is telling the weights that they’re dumb”.  He still didn’t really understand it.

So I thought it would be prudent to include his explanation just in case my sense of humour is less quirky than I’d imagined and is far more strange than is conventional.

Her portfolio divides into Watercolour/Cut Paper/Edgy/Photo Incorporated and Acrylic&Ink subcategories. Here is a taste from her inspirational portfolio, visit her website to see the full thing.

Photo by: Fabiola Zamora

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English fashion illustrator David Downton makes it look easy.

A nifty collection from Art Department
Full portfolio at David Downton.com