I love drawing commissions and this is my second vehicle (see the first one here). You see, it’s not all about houses (although they are my favourite!)
I completed this drawing a couple of months ago but couldn’t post it on here as I didn’t want to ruin the surprise (it was a present for someone who loves their camper van, Jerby!) Ideally I would scan this into the PC and colour it in but this was requested as an ink drawing with the gilhoolie patterned sky background so here it is.
Now I’m starting my own commission(s) – my plan is to draw my favourite buildings in my area. There are so many beautiful old buildings, it could take a while, but if I can complete a handful I’ll be very happy…watch this space (and let me know if you have any suggestions!)
I didn’t realise how important logos were or really think about them much; until I had a go at designing my own a few years ago. And when a couple of friends were looking for logos for their small businesses I offered to help them out – it’s lovely to have a bit of a project to work on and as I still struggle with deciding what to draw this takes away that decision.
So, first there was my logo – at the top of this page of course.
I wanted it to be clean and simple but a bit quirky and fun too. And to reflect that I draw as well as make lampshades. It was my second attempt and I still really like it. It just goes to show that you need to make sure you are really happy with a logo before you go ahead with it; even if you’re just a small business.
Below is a logo I designed for Louise from Simply Sewing. It was a while ago too but I don’t think I ever shared it on here:
Louise already used the flower shape on her website and Facebook page and just wanted to play with the font and colours as well as add one of my drawings somewhere.
I had a play with some ideas and really liked the one below but we decided as she makes amazing curtains and handmade soft furnishings it didn’t really reflect her skills!
I drew some curtains for Louise too, which are on her website front page:
It’s great to look back at this work and see how I came up with the designs, I really like them and luckily Louise did too…
Next, I worked on some drawings for the menu of the Italian cafe on Furze Platt Road in Maidenhead, Palmieri’s. They make amazing pasta dishes and bread as well as selling scrummy Italian ice-cream. Plus they do a roaring trade from the local mums meeting for coffee.
Here are a few snapshots of the menu with my drawings; the curly pasta is my favourite (and to eat!) I can’t take any credit for the design including colours and font though – that was the very talented Chris Isted at Three Sixty Design.
Last but not least, the most recent project I have worked on, maybe I should’ve shared this first really – designing a logo for a friend who has just qualified in reflexology and set up her own practice in Maidenhead. Hanne wanted the logo to incorporate one of my drawings and had some of her own ideas on how it should look. It took a bit of playing around to fit my foot drawing into the logo but I think it worked out really well in the end and the customer was very happy so that’s what counts! I painted the toes yellow towards the end of the design process and I’m really glad as it really lifts the design.
Hanne is in the process of setting up her website but you can like her Facebook page and book a reflexology treatment here.
That’s it for now… I have managed to complete another machine embroidery picture today, this time of a bird which is a first for me (no teapots in sight!) I’ll share that with you another time, enjoy the sunshine! 🙂
Last weekend I attended a screen printing course at the London Print Studio in West London. I’ve been wanting to have a go at printing some of my drawings for a while now, just to be more ‘arty’ really; rather than ‘cheating’ and printing everything through PhotoShop.
I decided to try and print my foxgloves drawing on the course to see how it would turn out. The plan was to print lots of layers to experiment with screen printing so I did 8. In hindsight this was a little optimistic but I guess I learnt a lot because I had chosen so many, and definitely had lots of screen printing practice too.
So this is how the foxgloves drawing looked in PhotoShop:
I really like it but the colours are almost too perfect if you see what I mean, so screen printing seemed like a good option to give it a similar feel but with more texture.
We started by breaking down the image into different layers and colours for printing. We did this by tracing the sections of the image onto acetate using pens and paints to get different effects.
Layers on acetate
Then these were exposed onto the screen, all 8 of them!
Layers on the screen
Next was the ink mixing to get the right colours – a really fun (and messy) bit but harder than you think as it’s kind of difficult to visualise how it’s going to look in your head, especially when time is limited. I had to mix 3 greens and 3 purples and choose a grey for the outline.
So that was the end of day one, no printing done yet, just lots of preparation work. It was incredibly tiring nonetheless and I needed a nice glass of wine when I eventually arrived home that evening.
The next day was all about printing, yippee! You could sense everyone’s anticipation as we all started off printing our layers and looked forward to seeing the finished pieces of art work at the end of the day. Here’s where I wished I hadn’t done 8 layers; I’m really not known for my patience so it was very hard for me!
These are my prints drying on the rack, some with a graduated oval background, some with just a white background (which I preferred).
Prints drying at the end of the day
And here’s a close up of one of my prints. Not perfect but not bad and I learnt so much about layering.
Ta da!
So thank you London Print Studio, I had the best time (and never realised screen printing could be so exhausting!) I’d love to come back soon to print some more gilhoolie artwork (with fewer layers this time!) Just need to find the time to fit it in…
A lot of these drawings were completed before Christmas, and were bought as presents so I couldn’t publish them on here until now. There’s a few older ones thrown in too, can you spot my house?!
Retro skygilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skygilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skyHouse drawing with gilhoolie pattern skygilhoolie house picture with purple pattern print skyDo you like the butterfly?!gilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skyGemma’s anniversary presentEmbroidered sky houseOur house with blue mosaic skygilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skygilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skygilhoolie house picture with blue pattern print skygilhoolie house picture with blue mosaic skygilhoolie house picture with green pattern print skyCourt Gardens, Marlow
I know I said I’d written my last blog post for 2011 but when you feel like being creative it can’t be helped and this is just a really quick one! Besides, all the Christmas shopping is done, presents wrapped, cards posted, just some mince pies to make (and mulled wine to drink!)
I’ve been wanting to do some drawing for a while but the Christmas orders meant I had to wait. This is just the first attempt; a pen and ink drawing of a Scandinavian style armchair and lampshade. The cushion and lampshade are machine embroidered which was a bit tricky as you can’t sew too much in case the picture falls apart! Just about did it but more practice definitely needed.
I’m going to do some more traditional ones too as I enjoyed it so much. This one will look nice in our living room, just the right colours…
