Heads and cows and things

I have been rather busy drawing illustrations for the latest children's book I'm working on. In between, made time for the Instagram "100 heads" challenge. Here are #12 - 15:

And a selection of the illustrations. The mostly empty pages will be filled up a bit with text. That, at least, is the present plan. The thing has not quite come together yet; I may or may not make extensive changes:

More sketches and illustrations

A few more sketches for the Instagram "100 heads" challenge thing:

And some more illustrations for my latest children's book. Lots more still need to be done:

New experiments

I have been rather wildly experimenting with all manner of things. I am developing ideas for an illustrated children's story:

The first of the above is in acrylics on cardboard; the second in watercolor. I am more inclined toward watercolor. Other attempts with acrylics did not work out quite satisfactorily. Illustration is really a new thing for me, and it's a quite different skill set from "fine art" (i.e. stuff intended to be hung on a wall). Thus a little journey that is both fun and frustrating at the same time.

Two more in the #100heads Instagram challenge. Due to lack of time, these heads are going to have to be pretty sketchy:

Studies of cattle, as preparatory work for the illustrations - the story will feature a cow:

And in between the cattle, some studies after Hergé's Tintin books. No time studying Hergé's work is ever wasted!

My latest sideline, Chinese brush painting:

I can't get hold of real Chinese brushes around here, so I just used a pointy western one. But this is yet another steep learning curve. The style is not nearly as easy as it may look!

Some random sketches

Taking a bit of a break from all the oil painting, and focusing on another project, which may or may not come to fruition. In between, some quick sketches exploring a mostly linear approach:

That is what comes of growing up with Hergé's Tintin comics - it is an approach that has long appealed to me, and I keep on returning to it.

In the meantime I let some talk me into joining a thing on Instagram, known as 100 heads, in which you draw or paint, you guessed it, a hundred heads. I'll have to see whether I do even close to a hundred, but what the heck, here's the first one:

Time for more than such quick sketches I won't have. Who knows, maybe the project will be of some value...

Work in progress video

I put up a video of a time lapse photo series on YouTube, showing a bit of my process for painting a small oil:

Until I get a video camera, a series of still photos will have to do! Apologies for the few that turned out to be out of focus; they looked perfectly fine on the camera's view screen. I tried to sharpen them up as best I could.

Here's the piano version of the music; a simple and easy piece:

Tomato, Marmite, herbs

Oil on board, 15 x 20 cm (= about 6 x 8 inches):

Salt shaker and cherry tomatoes

Oil on board, 15 x 10 cm (= about 6 x 4 inches):

As I worked on this one, I took a series of WIP photos, which I planned on working into a YouTube video. I'll see if I get around to it. Unfortunately some of the photos came out thoroughly out of focus, so it might not be too spectacular. I can say this: there are few things that break one's concentration and "flow" quite as much as stopping all the time to take a photo!