Drawing Challenge: Trees

I'm worried that last 'o' looks like an 'e' I'M NOT THAT BAD AT SPELLING I PROMISE.

So as you can see my challenges are just so damned complicated (they aren't) but when all you draw are silly animals, drawing pretty much anything else can a bit daunting.

I thought I'd do trees this week because they're are just great aren't they? That and the other day I was really bored so I just parked myself at my desk with a pen and paper and told myself to just draw SOMETHING... So I drew some trees. There are loads of different kinds of trees in Greenwich park and I regret not taking some pictures whilst I was there because some of them were so cool! I ended up using the ones around here in Ballyclare as a reference instead.

Poor guy!

Of course I had to incorporate a penguin in to my drawing challenge again, I just can't get enough of these guys. I'm glad I did though because I really like the drawing above.

I didn't paint or draw as much as I would have liked this weekend as it was really busy but also really fun and exhausting. After going to a friends BBQ a small group of us took a trip to the Mourne Mountains, I wish I had some photo's but rather annoyingly, I forgot my camera! But to be honest, it's probably for the best as we didn't get to the top of any of the mountains! In our defence, one of the guys was an hour late and we had to make sure we got back down in time for the bus... It was still loads of fun though and now we've reminded ourselves what it's like up there we'll be better prepared next time.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Penguins under the influence

What started out as a nice little plan to incorporate some floraly goodness in to some drawings turned into an idea involving some messed up penguins. I think it happened because I thought their bellies looked a little trippy and I kinda just ran with it...

It all started innocently enough...

Then BAM he's gone off the rails!

I think I might make this in to a little comic strip (I've been thinking... GANGSTA PENGUINS) or something, it's something I've been thinking about trying for a while since Will mentioned I should give it a go but i'm going to focus on that another time. In the mean time I've been drawing manatees:

I'm very aware that I spelt 'woah' wrong, but apart from that blunder it was fun to do some silly drawings again. I love Malcom the Moustached Manatee... I love any fat animal.

In other news, I'm actually letting myself do something this weekend! (I'm trying to be good and make sure what little bit of money I have spreads out over the month!) So I'm off to a birthday BBQ and to a trip to the Mourne mountains which I'm excited about, hopefully I'll get some good pictures!

Hope you enjoy your weekend,

A

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Drawing Challenge: Flowers

I'm not particularly into flowers, sure some of them are pretty and smell nice but a part from that I tend to not think that much of them. Ocasionally though, I find myself thinking that they'd make a nice background or could just brighten a picture up. The think is I am pretty terrible at drawing them. I can do very basic little ones  but any time I've tried to do anything more complicated, I've give up easily in frustration.

So I decided this should be my first challenge! It started out very basically with me mainly just playing with coulour, as you can see in the picture above. I then took some inspiration from the flowers pictured below that are outside my mum's front door and coupled that with this photo of mayo from mellowmayo that I found in Company magazine (check her blog out here  - try not to drool over her outfits too much!). I loved the pink and grey matched together so I thought I'd try that with my flowers.

I then went to visit my Grandma and Grandpa and took advantage of the flowers in their garden. I got a lovely picture of a rose, I loved the colour of it so I thought I'd try and keep as true to the picture as possiple but with my own spin. As you can see, drawing doesn't come as naturally to me as it would to other people but I want to use that to my advantage so I can figure out my own style.

So there you go, I've got a lot to improve on, but it's a start! I ended up trying to incorporate some floraly goodness into one of my animal drawings:

I'll be posting some more floral inspired illustrations soon!

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PANTS!

Hypno Penguin

The weather here in London is still disgustingly hot, the sort of hot that makes me want to stay inside all day.  However, weather like this does make an evening in London ridiculously pleasant. Yesterday one of my best friends was in town with her boyfriend. We strolled around Camden whilst complaining about the weather and catching up and ended the day with beers by the lock. It was lovely and it's got me really excited about living in Belfast.

So there's been a lot of strolling and window shopping in central, and the last two photo's are from said trips. The very last one was from this awesome little cafe just of Long Acre run by two Sweedish guys, it's adorable and the pastries in there look so damned delicious. I'm a little on the broke side though, so I got a raspberry fizzy drink instead and tried to draw some pants.

 Which leads me to my first and only question: Why do I find it so hard to draw pants?? They seem like such an easy thing to draw in theory but I can't quite get the hang of it. I'm going to keep at it though, as I am starting to like the way I draw granny pants.

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p.s I wanted to give Hypno Penguin a bit more recognition. I think he's great and YOU ARE UNDER HIS COMMAND! 

The end is nigh!

It's been a hectic few weeks! I finished all my exams and now uni is over for good and I have very mixed feelings about it all. It's exciting as this means I can  finally start saving for some travelling and i'll also be going back to work for my old boarding school where my official title will be "Boarders Mistress"!!  I can't help but find that a little hilarious but i'm looking forward to getting some work experience in something other than retail. That said i'm gonna miss London and the people i've met here... London's the sort of place where you can just randomly have a wonderful day out, out of know where and going to live in a boarding school in Belfast will be a big change.

But you know, life changes, things move on blah blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaah and i plan to have an awesome last few weeks here. After a busy few days of being ill and having a friend over before he frolics off to Kenya to save some orphans I finally got a around to some drawing. I'm doing a swap with a friend of a friend who is drawing a McEnroe inspired Capybara (CapEnroe!) and Bear in pants is what i'm drawing for her in return. I also started to play around with some illustration ideas, I think my little drawings would be nice for kids so I thought I'd bring the Alphabet in on some of them... I think i'll keep it up but they could use some improving.

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