We Roam Your Streets at Night

You may have guessed that I love animals, and that I live in London. There aren't that many wild animals living in London, but I still love the sight of every single one of them. A lot of people consider them vermin, but rats, mice, foxes, pigeons, crows, are all magic for my eyeballs. 

There are quite a lot of foxes around Peckham, where I live, and I always thrill at a late night sighting when the streets are dark and quiet. That's what inspired me to make this print - called 'We Roam Your Streets at Night'. 

We Roam Your Streets at Night, A3 giclée print on Hahnemuhle german etching

Foxy

Victorian terrace

Wet tarmac typography

And now for the technical bit..
I created the whole print in Photoshop, working over a sketchbook page that I had scanned in. I like working with layers and playing on the interaction between them, so I decided to limit the colour palette by working on 3 layers: one cyan, one magenta and one yellow. I set the layer blending modes to 'multiply' so that the colours would mix where they are overlaid.

I drew into the layers using my trusty Wacom tablet. Here's a step-by-step GIF...

We Roam Your Streets at Night - Step by step GIF

So the colours I had to work with are cyan, magenta and yellow. Along with... 

Cyan and magenta making dark blue;

Magenta and yellow making orange;

Yellow and cyan making green;
No colours means you see the white page;

And if all three colours are present they make a dark colour, almost black.

I have separated each layer out to try and demonstrate, below...

The cyan layer

The magenta layer

The yellow layer

These prints are being printed by The Print Space right now, and I will post again when they arrive and I have listed them in my Etsy shop. 

18/03/2014 UPDATE

I have listed these prints on Etsy now! Check it out here: www.etsy.com/uk/listing/182980029/a3-print-we-roam-your-streets-at-night

Many thanks!

Watercolour Flamingo

I was recently commissioned to paint a flamingo on the same large scale as this African Grey parrot that I painted 2 years back. 

The first thing I did was grab the opportunity to go to London Zoo and see some flamingos in flesh and feather. They are seriously weird creatures - all pink and showy with spindly toothpick legs, unfeasible necks and big banana beaks. It was really helpful to spend an afternoon watching them walk about, feed, preen. They have a very surreal grace and beauty, and are such a joy to draw!

This piece is in fact 1.5 x 2 metres, watercolour on paper. Trying to manoeuvre a sheet that large is a heck of a challenge especially when it's just come off the roll. I used Dr Ph Martin's liquid watercolours, which are really concentrated pigments. They are light-fast and because they're liquid it's easy to mix large enough quantities to cover this size. The paper is Saunders Waterford watercolour paper from St Cuthberts Mill in 300gsm rough.

For a bit of size-scale-comparison-context, here I am sitting next to the beast.

And finally, after flying all the way from London to Cape Town, here he is framed and in his new home!

10 days til Christmas!

We don't have a tree, but I wanted some festive decoration in our home for Christmas.  So I decided to decorate our living room window myself and have two trees!  I took a whole day to do plus some preparation and editing but was worth it.

I used Posca markers to draw on the glass because they're opaque and they will scrub off no trouble.

The music is from Sufjan Stevens' new Christmas album called Silver and Gold.  It's very festive and a bit weird, but brilliant. (And would make a great gift for a Sufjan fan!)

I have made a few attempts to produce a video, but this time I swore I would post it no matter how it turned out.  So here goes...

And Merry Christmas!




PS. I don't usually move around like a fully caffeinated ant.

Happy Birthday Kurt Cobain

Today, the 20th February 2012, is Kurt Cobain's Birthday.  Were he still alive he would have turned 45 today.  It's difficult to imagine.  To the world Kurt Cobain will always be young and beautiful, dissatisfied and awkward in his own skin.

I honour I have drawn this tribute of the whole band.  I must admit I don't listen to Nirvana a lot these days, but I have had their whole discography on repeat for the past week.  It seems like I forgot what good music it is.  

Nirvana x 4

I made a gif of the drawing in progress.
Expect everything to be animated from here on in!

I also made the image into wallpapers for you to adorn you computer or cellular telephone with!  Enjoy...

Desktop Wallpaper 
click on the image above and save it

Phone Wallpaper
click on the image above and save that sucka

A to B: African Grey

Yesterday I finished my largest painting thus far.  As we all know I love drawing birds; so I was very lucky to be commissioned to paint this beautiful African Grey parrot.  I had such fun and it's a completely different experience using a step ladder to paint a picture!

I thought I'd go through a step-by-step of the process in case anyone is curious.

Quality reading material and scented candles being used as paperweights

First thing (after tracking down the largest paper possible) was to flatten the paper off the roll.  It's a total bitch to handle until it's been flattened out.  This is 300gsm Saunders Waterford Rough Watercolour paper bought from John Purcell Paper in Brixton.  (Amazing place for those of you requiring paper; you can get big quantities of the best without crippling your finances and they have the best sketchbooks I've ever touched.)

I taped up on to a wall and gridded the paper, along with a sketch I had done so I could scale the picture up correctly.

I painted with Dr Ph Marten's Hydrus liquid watercolours and work from light to dark, building from practically water to black.  I mixed every shade of grey myself from colours and never touched the 'carbon black'.  

First wash

Second wash outside the outline

Second wash on the parrot

A touch of red and the begining of the third wash

Third wash done and some added depth to the red on the tail

Black done and red reddened

Et voila!  I have ordered a mammoth poster tube and this painting will shortly be winging its way to its new owner.  Happy days.