I've been tagged!

I've been tagged by Ladysnail, and have come up with the following 6 weird things about me:

1. My ears don't match, which I only realised when I was set drawing ears for art homework at school!

2. I hate roast potatoes.

3. I like brussels sprouts.

4. I once spent a month living in the jungle in Hawaii.

5. When I was a kid - 3 or 4 years old - I used to enjoy licking the backs of the plaster flying ducks which adorned my bedroom wall!

6. I knit in the continental way, having been taught this by my mother, who in turn had been taught to knit by an American lady, while they were both on a boat trip to Denmark. I've never learnt to knit English style, and used to get into trouble for knitting (very well) continental style at primary school.

Now I'm off to tag 6 people's blogs

Housework today

Today I have mostly been catching up with housework, which is a good thing: I'd had a nasty sore throat/cough type cold since the begining of January, and not been up to doing it for a couple of weeks. I have also had a good idea for this week's Illustration Friday topic of 'super hero'. My thinking on this was a bit stuck to start with, then overhearing someone in Caffe Nero this morning saying the Joe Sample (from The Crusaders) is their hero, got me musing about my own guitar heroes. Watch this space!

Asparagus soup for portoflio

Well, so far my plan to work on mock-up pages for editorial portfolio is going well. Here is a crop from the asparagus article I've been painting illustrations for. I took liberties with the page layout in the magazine article so I could have a large space in which to put a soup bowl! 'Don't suppose the orignal illustrator had that luxury.

Today I also bought some OHP sheets so I can make separate pages with the text for my chilren's story to overlay on the watercolour spread later in the week. I enjoy learning how to do new things.

working on portfolios

I've made a plan now for illustrations for my portfolios I am going to work on each week until the end of March. This feels interesting: I have so many ideas for pictures that I tend to spend my time getting all the ideas down on paper/computer, and then run out of time to follow through to produce finished pieces! So in order to focus my mind, I have made a very simple chart showing which 2 illustrations I am to work on each week - one for general illustration portfolio, and one for children's illustration portfolio or my children's books. The point then will be to look at the chart each day to remind myself. So far, so good: yesterday I was painting some asparagus images, and drawing a spread for the children's book ready for painting. Today I had much less time available, but I did do another half hour of painting the asparagus; and a bit more writing/designing of the next book on my tube journeys.

Illustration Friday: Buzz

Here is my first (very late) contribution to Illustration Friday! Last Friday's topic was 'Buzz', and having come up with this idea, I've run out of time to work it up beyond the sketch stage at the moment. 'Will do so in due course: the plan is to import the sketch into Painter, then work on it with digital watercolour. I wanted to participate this week as a good start to the new year. As anyone who knows me will be able to confirm, I really struggle with learning how to do new technological things, and Illustration Friday has had me mystified for months. Fingers crossed this works.

Best laid plans, etc

Since my last post here, life got in the way somewhat, so in spite of my wonderful plans to fill a small sketchbook by the end of the year, did not do so. Things are looking up now, though, so here is one of the sketches I did manage to do!