sketchblog
Finally my first (finished) illustration for the Illustration Friday challenge (this weeks topic was ‘Zodiac’). Trying out a mix of traditional and digital drawing for the first time! Hope you are having a lovely easter 🙂
emma
Here is another piece that I just finished yesterday- an illustration of a Puriri (Vitex lucens ) branchlet, completed in coloured pencil. Would have liked to do one more pass over the leaves (might still do that) but a bit rushed for time on this one!
Something I learnt doing this illustration- when illustrating flowers ALWAYS finish the flowers before the leaves+stalk! Otherwise they will go all wilty and you will have to go and find more specimens to get the colours and shading right.
I used Strathmore wind-powered bristol board (smooth) for this piece, and was really impressed! It stood up really well to scratching back the pencil with an exacto for fine details. My new favourite CP paper!
A bit off topic, but here is a fun video via School Journal Library about the author/illustrator Peter Browns’ process in creating his latest picture book ‘Mr Tiger goes wild’. Something fun to watch, lots of references to mid-century Disney artists such as Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle.
Author and Illustrator Peter Brown On His Process from School Library Journal on Vimeo.
Hope you are having a great week- and have a happy easter!
emma
Recently I started working on my project for Learn the Ins and Outs of Illustrator– a Skillshare class run by Brad Woodard. As I was researching for vintage graphic posters/advertisements that I could use for the project, I came across these beautifully designed vintage (1930’s-50’s) illustrated posters that were commissioned by Tourism New Zealand. Some of these posters are available through the online collection of the National Library Alexander Turnbull collection. There is also a beautiful book that has been recently published about the posters that were created for NZ Tourism, in the days before large scale photography and printing arrived- called ‘Selling the Dream- the art of early New Zealand tourism‘. It is full of big colour reproductions of many of the posters that were published- as well as essays. It is definitely worth a read if you are interested in learning more about early graphic design in NZ!
Here are a few of my favourite posters for you to look at:
Reference Number: Eph-E-TOURISM-1960s-01
Shows a colourful depiction of an elongated Mitre Peak, and a boat in the water in the foreground. The sky and hills have many colours.
Reference Number: Eph-D-TOURISM-1930s-King-02
Shows drover on horseback at right foreground, with sheepdog in left foreground and sheep in middle distance. In distance is a high country valley, pylons and snowy peaks.
Reference Number: Eph-E-TOURISM-1930s-05
Shows three white daisy flowers and several leaves, against a background of mountains.
I am going to be attempting to recreate this illustration as practice for the class:
![Natives of the New Zealand forests - Karaka berry, tui [1930s?] Reference Number: Eph-E-BIRD-1930s-01 Poster showing a tui perched on a branch of a karaka tree. There are yellow karaka berries at the left.](https://drawingescape.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/eph-e-bird-1930s-01.jpg?w=703&h=1024)
Natives of the New Zealand forests – Karaka berry, tui [1930s?]
Reference Number: Eph-E-BIRD-1930s-01
Poster showing a tui perched on a branch of a karaka tree. There are yellow karaka berries at the left.
And here are the first stages of work on it…
I have also started a new pin board to collect vintage graphic illustrations– check it out here.
If you are interested in taking the class (or any other skillshare class) as well, click through this link to get $10 off!
All images reproduced from the National Libraries Alexander Turnbull collection, with permission. Click on the images to be taken to the original catalogued image.Â
Another new technique to try out- this time a carbon dust rendering of a NZ native wood pigeon skull. Interestingly this technique (unlike other art techniques) was developed relatively recently, by Max Brodel a medical illustrator at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who also was instrumental in developing the first medical illustration school (The Department of Art as Applied to Medicine) at the same university in 1911.
I had an assignment using carbon dust technique for my scientific illustration class. Definitely a learning curve in handling this medium, but fun! Its possible to get very gradual and light soft shades much more easily than with graphite pencil, and the carbon is very easy to remove from the mylar (drafting film) surface, using a kneaded eraser.
Here is my first illustration:
For more information on carbon dust, check out these links:
Carbon Dust Drawing- Historic technique informs the future– article on University of Toronto site.
Michael Savas demonstrates the carbon dust technique (Youtube)
Tutorial on Carbon Dust Technique.
and a very interesting study done about Max Brodel and his work in medical illustration:Â MAX BRODEL (1870-1941): HIS ARTISTIC INFLUENCE ON SURGICAL LEARNING
AT JOHN HOPKINS MEDICAL SCHOOL
Have a great week!
Emma
A couple of weekends ago, I went to the local second-hand book sale, which is run regularly to raise money for a voluntary organisation. I thought I would post some of the awesome art and natural history books I managed to find!
2001 reprint of Miroslav Saseks ‘This is San Franscisco‘. Inspiring retro illustrations from the author-illustrator who is well known for this series of ‘This is…’ books.
Elaine Power’s Bush and High Country Birds of New Zealand. Elaine Power is one of New Zealand’s leading natural history artists. This book is beautifully illustrated with sketches of the birds in various poses, as well as a full colour illustration of the birds in their habitat. I really love the pencil sketches that are interspersed among the full colour illustrations. I’m going to try and collect all of her books now- she has a variety on seabirds and lake, river and wetland birds!
and below an image from the digital collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library collection (which you can view by clicking the image!)
Aren’t the animal fonts so cool!
I love book-hunting- how about you?
emma
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I used to avoid pen and ink and be really disappointed with anything I tried to do with it. Now that I’ve done more practice with it through my classes, I am growing to love it! I decided to do a pen and ink plate illustration of the Puriri Tree (Vitex lucens). It was completed on detail paper (my new favourite for pen and ink) with a hunt 102 nib and 0.5mm pigma micron.
Another really useful resource that I discovered for Pen and Ink rendering is the book ‘Rendering in Pen and Ink‘ by Arthur L Guptill- which according to Amazon.com is the most comprehensive book ever published on the subject of ink drawing. It definitely has a lot of detailed info in it- I’ve added it to my Resources page!
Hope you have a great day!
emma
p.s I am slowly moving all my finished illustrations onto my new portfolio website- http://www.emmascheltema.com . Its still a work in progress, but eventually I will link this up to the portfolio on the blog. Please follow me if you have tumblr!
If you, like me, are interested in painting wildlife, then Capturing the Essence- techniques for bird artists (<—you can see a preview on this link) by Australian artist William T. Cooper, is a beautiful book to read.
The book not only covers all the essentials on how to get started on painting and drawing birds, but also covers a few step-by-step paintings in a variety of mediums (watercolours, acrylics, and oils). While I much prefer books that go into depth on techniques rather than getting you to follow the steps in a paint by numbers approach, this book is entirely the opposite of this and definitely has some of the most informative projects I have seen in an art book. I found the step-by step stages to be very useful particularly the full page colour photographs of the paintings as they progressed from stage to stage. It is inspirational to see how such a talented artist works in depth. In addition, the projects section is less than 1/2 of the overall volume of the text, the rest is packed full of information on how to get into painting birds.
The author emphasises the importance of knowing your subject very well before attempting painting them, and provides many suggestions about how to get to know birds better.
The other thing I love about this book is the detailed illustrations, especially in the first section (Part A- the basics), which covers things like composition of paintings, bird anatomy, as well as tips on sketching from life and painting backgrounds. The illustrations to describe bird anatomy are very detailed and beautiful, with illustrations of skeletons, wings, feathers, beaks and feet, with useful technical information to back up observations. The mix of sketches and finished work is just wonderfully designed and would have to be the most beautiful book I have seen on the subject.
What more can I say? I love this book and would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves wildlife art, even if all you do is look at the beautiful paintings and don’t even pick up a paint brush (though you will definitely be inspired to after reading this!).
See more about William T. Cooper on his website. He also has a very interesting section on his site with videos of himself working!! Check them out.
William T Cooper – Andrew Isles from sarahscragg on Vimeo.
All images used with permission.Â
So- as part of the scientific illustration course I’m doing, we were assigned to do a scratchboard illustration. I’ve never really used scratchboard before- so these are my first attempts.
The first was my practice piece- Vitex lucens leaf on a small piece of Ampersand scratchboard.
This was my submitted assignment- Notomithrax peronii (Camoflage Crab) on EssDee scraperboard (the only brand I have been able to find in NZ, and not quite as easy to work with as the ampersand).
I really need to focus on more bold white scratches, rather than shading away so you can’t really see the scratches (I don’t think that’s the point of scratchboard??)!! Definitely a fun medium to work with though and I will be trying out some other things with it.
I’m also having a go at making my own scratchboard so I have more to play around with, so we’ll see how that goes and I’ll post the results on here if it works!
emma
just some inspiring words from goethe for your monday morning!
Last week I was at the art shop and managed to pick up this schminke calligraphy gouache at clearance price! its a pearly red colour- would be great for christmas cards! was fun to quickly letter up this quote (its more sparkly IRL).
The quote itself I heard on one of Will Terrell’s videos. Will Terrell is a very talented comic artist. If you haven’t seen any of his youtube videos yet- I really encourage you to. he shares a lot of amazing information about drawing as well as advice on life on general and on becoming a better artist. The video below is the one where the quote was mentioned. I also highly recommend his people sketching series!
emma
As I mentioned in my new year post– this year I am studying a graduate paper in scientific illustration through University Nebraska-Lincoln distance program. Scientific and natural history illustration is something I am really interested in, and the course has been great so far- learning lots of technical and drafting skills.
I thought I’d post some of the work I’ve done so far…
All of the specimens used for the drawings had to be collected by the student, or borrowed. I went collecting a few weeks ago at a nearby beach, and as the tide was out, walked around the rocks. Guess what I found hiding out in the deepest rock pools!
There were actually heaps of these guys- as I climbed up to photograph this one, all the others were clattering away under rocks. The only reason I managed to take this photo is this guy was stuck in a little pool on the top of a rock (don’t worry- he stayed there too! I only collected shells and a freshly dead crab for my drawings). He had beautiful purple vein patterns on his claws 🙂
Amazing what you find once you start looking!
emma
emma scheltema illustration 