Folksy Friday - April Showers

As March is nearly at an end I thought I would pick a selection of my favourite Folksy offerings in tribute to the coming month. April showers seemed like an appropriate theme given the weather, Although April 'snow showers' would probably have been more fitting
judging by the forecast and the arctic blast we're experiencing.

Anyone have any nice plans for the Easter weekend? Think i'll be battening down the hatches and trying to stay warm. Still that is at least a good excuse to give the house a much needed 'so-called spring' clean.

Heres what I found:

Have a lovely Easter weekend and enjoy the extra days off if you're lucky enough to get them :)

Quick draw results

Its the moment you've all been waiting for...or possibly not, but hey its time to show off today's quick drawings. I'm chuffed as i've had several people enter today so lets begin.
The word today picked by Mr Random Word Generator was tennis which gave a fair bit of scope for interpretation so the entries are all quite varied.
As per usual i'll kick off with mine:

It needs work, but a definite step up from my effort last week I think you'll agree. 
Now here are the other fab submissions -

- You can tell its a man whose drawn this last one :)

Hahaha its been fun. Many thanks (in order as per above) to @JLWillustration, @Yaz__Raja, @RedtheCardinal, @Raincutter and @Paulxthompson for your weird and wonderful entries this week.
Byeeeee!!

Today's quick draw challenge

As you may or may not know every Tuesday I hold a little drawing challenge on here from 10am (or thereabouts) for myself and any other lovely art folks who would like to take part. It works thus:
A thing/object/item is selected at random by a 'random word generator' for me/us to draw and there are 3 rules which must be taken into account before drawing can start:
1. You must draw without any external visual reference, so from mental reference only.
2. You must draw it in a time limit of five minutes.
3. You must draw it in pen straight off. So no drawing in pencil and then tracing over the line.

I will then draw that thing/object/item and if any of you would like to enter you can send me a photo or scan of your drawing as a JPEG image either by email to lucyfarfort@yahoo.com or comment on the post with a link to your drawing that I can download from the internet. Or if you wish you can tweet me a link to the pic on Twitter.
I'll then post all the submissions at the end of the day for the world to see, normally around 5-6pm (UK time).  No prizes, its just for fun.

Today's word is
TENNIS - shame its not quite the weather for it yet...well not in England anyway.

Hope a few of you will be able to take part, look forward to seeing some entries.

Greetings

Really felt like I needed a breather from working on the children's book illustrations and in particular from slaving away on the computer for a while, so as a distraction I decided to create some greeting card designs. These are a bit experimental in that I plan on producing these completely free of digital input which I use a lot for the colouring process in my work. Partly because i wanted a break from the screen but also to try out working in a different way, with a view to creating more work sans computer in the future. So the finished results should be interesting, but for now here are a few of the draft pencil outlines. I'll be doing around 5 designs in total:

Hoping to have them finished relatively quickly unlike my digitally completed work which seems to take forever these days. When they're done i'll put them up on here for you to see.

Quick Draw Results

Uh oh :/
Time to unveil the results of the challenge today....and i say 'uh oh' because my entry today is shocking, probably my poorest effort so far. I seem to have confused a strange shark-headed cherub faced man with a Pope so please forgive me, and God if you're reading this please don't strike me down  - i tried honestly.

On a more positive note though i've had a couple of awesome entries from some other lovely people.

Okay so here are the popes and first off is my hilariously bad attempt:

Don't say i didn't warn you. Feel free to laugh at mine...I did - a LOT!

Now for the good ones:

Many thanks to @Paulxthompson and @Aqua_Jellybean (on Twitter) for your ace entries today.
Wish me luck for next week 'cause judging by today's effort i'm going to need it!

Quick Draw Challenge

Hello folks hope you've got your pens at the ready as its time to announce today's quick draw object of choice.
First a quick recap - every Tuesday I hold a little challenge on here from 10am (or roundabouts) for myself and any other lovely art folks who would like to take part, whereby a thing/object/item is selected at random by a 'random word generator' for me/us to draw.
To take part there are 3 rules:
1. You must draw without any external visual reference, so from mental reference only.
2. You must draw it in a time limit of five minutes.
3. You must draw it in pen straight off. So no drawing in pencil and then tracing over the line.

I will then draw that thing/object/item and if any of you would like to enter you can send me a pic of your drawing as a JPEG image either by email to lucyfarfort@yahoo.com or comment on the post with a link to your drawing that I can download from the internet.
I'll then post all the submissionsat the end of the day for the world to see, normally around 5-6pm (UK time).  No prizes, its just for fun.

So the word today is (and oddly enough quite topical):

'POPE'

Yep thats the word randomly picked...strange but true! So get drawing  - remember you can only draw from memory, so hopefully given theres been lots of stuff on the news recently re the new one it shouldn't be too difficult.

Another one for the book

Right i've got a new illustration to share with you today for the collaborative children's book i've been working on. This latest one is of the character 'Victor Torian', which as you may be able to guess from his name is a little bit of a killjoy. I did some character sketches for this chap a couple of weeks ago which you can see in this past post here.
Heres the new pic:

I  also thought you might like to have a look at some of the silly made up book titles I have added to his book shelf. Creating these was without a doubt the best bit about working on this image. Below I have put a little close up so you can see them - they should be a bit of a giveaway as to what this character is all about.

Have a good weekend all. I need a much needed break so I may have a weekend off from illustration, if I can prise myself away from the drawing board or computer.

Quick draw results

Grrr...my computer is being incredibly slow for some reason (probably too much stuff open as normal), so i've been trying to post this since about 20 mins ago. Meh! Still it finally got there so I can bring you today's doodles.
The word of the day was jacket and i'm pleased to say I have got another entry to show to you other than mine, so without further ado -
Here's mine:

...and big thanks to the very keen @RedtheCardinal on Twitter who sent in an entry before going off to school, now thats dedication:

Byeeeeeeeeee!!

Tuesday means - Quick Draw

Yay its my favourite blog time of the week - QDC day! If you don't know what that is by now then you've been missing out. Every Tuesday i have a quick draw challenge on my blog. At 10am (or roundabouts) I announce a thing/object/item to draw, which has been selected at random by a 'random word generator' - so even I won't know the subject matter until a few minutes before.
I will then draw that thing/object/item and if any of you lovely folks wish to take part, you can also draw it and send it to me as a JPEG image either by email to lucyfarfort@yahoo.com or comment on the post with a link to your drawing that I can download from the internet.
I'll then post all the submissions at the end of the day for the world to see, normally around 5-6pm (UK time).  No prizes, its just for fun.

If you want to take part there are 3 rules:
1. You must draw without any external visual reference, so from mental reference only.
2. You must draw it in a time limit of five minutes.
3. You must draw it in pen straight off. So no drawing in pencil and then tracing over the line.
Before we kick off today's challenge, if you're new to this you might want to take a look at some of the last few here, here and here ^__^I'm hoping that like last week i'll get in a few entries so i can post them up along with mine and I won't be all on my lonesome.
So the word of the day as picked by Mr Random Word Maker is:

JACKET
See you later with the results.

Folksy Friday - A gift for mum

With Mother's day just round the corner it seems fitting to theme today's FF post on this.
Most of you reading this will be well aware from my blog post here, that I lost my mum fairly recently. I knew that there would be particular days/events like mother's day and my mum's birthday, Christmas (in particular Boxing Day, now for me the anniversary of her death), when the loss would be harder to bear for obvious reasons. So I thought rather than lamenting this occasion I would instead pick 8 gifts/cards which I know mum would have loved to have received as today's Folksy showcase, and here they are:

That just leaves me to say Happy Mother's day for Sunday to all the mums past and present and all the mums to be!
x

A lovely late entry

Just a quick post as I really wanted to draw attention to a late entry (due to a time difference) to this week's Quick Draw Challenge which included another lovely blog post on the feature.  So heres the fab submission by @emmimarjukka (on Twitter) -



 ...and if you want to see the colour-ed up version she's done and the blog post you can take a look here: http://lines-i-drew.blogspot.be/2013/03/quick-draw-tuesday-and-how-i-missed-it.html
Back tomorrow for another Folksy Friday!

Quick draw challenge results

Its that time again, to show off the quick draw results and i'm pleased to say its not just me today who took part...whoop! Today's randomly generated word of choice was STEREO and heres what we have:

First off this one's my stereo interpretation -

And heres a couple of submissions from some other lovely art bods:

A big thanks to @pressfordesign and @CatPalStone on Twitter for your entries. Plus an extra thank you to @pressfordesign  for your  blog post about it - http://erasercarver.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/quick-draw-tuesday/
Till next time!

Quick Draw Tuesday (sorry its late)

Oh dear i completely forgot about the quick draw challenge today. Sorry folks!
Never mind there is still time so lets get to it.
Once again if you don't know already then heres what its all about:
Every Tuesday at 10am (unless like today, when i forget) i'll announce a thing/object/item to draw, which has been selected at random by a 'random word generator' - so even I won't know the subject matter until a few minutes before.
I will then draw that thing/object/item and if any of you lovely folks wish to take part, you can also draw it and send it to me as a JPEG image either by email to lucyfarfort@yahoo.com or comment on the post with a link to your drawing that I can download from the internet.
I'll then post all the submissions at the end of the day for the world to see, normally around 5pm (UK time).  No prizes, its just for kicks.

If you want to take part there are 3 rules:
1. You must draw without any external visual reference, so from mental reference only.
2. You must draw it in a time limit of five minutes.
3. You must draw it in pen straight off. So no drawing in pencil and then tracing over the line.

So today's randomly picked object thingy is:

STEREO

Back later with the result(s) ^__^

Character sketches

Been working on some sketches for one of the story's main characters Mr Torian, thought you might like to see a few:

This character is the priminister in the story so i've tried to make him look like a conservative MP. Actually I modeled his hair and shad shape on a very well known current political figure. Wonder if you can guess who ;-)

Latest children's book illustration

Happy Friday All!
Today I want to share with you my latest illustration for the children's book which my friend and I are collaborating on - him as the writer me as the illustrator (obviously).
I've been working on this one for a while as i've had a lot of distractions recently, such as producing the invitation for our wedding and other stuff which has meant like the previous image (blogged about here) its taken me a long time to complete.
Anyway i'm pleased its finally done and I can move onto the next piece, so here it is:

Thats all from me today, short and sweet.