After a break...

I've had a bit of a break from drawing and illustration lately. I won't bore you with the details why, but I needed something to help me back into the swing of things. So I went back to where I originally rekindled my passion for drawing: fashion illustration.

I did two illustrations, based on some magazine images, first using pencil and then finishing with waterproof fineliner pens and some inks. Face proportions are really tricky (especially a 3/4 profile face). I don't think I've quite nailed it here, but at least it's got me started again!

Tropical Plant Studies

Last week I took a trip to Munich's botanical gardens for my illustration course exercise around the theme "Exotic", where I made some pencil sketches of some flowers and plants. This week I did some more work on a couple of the sketches.

For this one, I went over my pencil lines in pen for a bolder outline and provided more shading with the pen and using photographs I had taken as a reference for where the shadows fell.

For the second one, I did the same, going over the pencil lines in pen, but then I then I used gouache paint to add some colour and depth to the image. The nice thing about gouache is that you can use it in various strengths from very thick to get strong colours right through to a very watery wash, as I did with the background here.