Chequer Barb and Dwarf Otocinclus

A friendly Chequer Barb and a tentative Dwarf Otocinclus, drawn with Indian ink and coloured with gouache. Drawn from images in the Aquarium keepers handbook.

I like the beauty of simple fish. Their eyes are more expressive than many of the fancy tropical ones. They can seem trivial and without emotion.

Mushrooms repeat pattern

This is my first felt tip repeat pattern, and its a first draft. It's not perfect, but I'm getting there. I used my retro mushroom picture and cut it up in Photoshop to make it repeat. Its missing the circles in the original which seems to remove some of the vibrancy and movement. The red of the large mushroom creates stripes across the repeat too which needs an adjustment.

1960's flower pattern sketch

A page from my sketchbook exploring 1960's styled retro flower patterns in hot pink and black. Hopefully, I'll develop this in to a digital pattern and have fabric printed from this for my next major quilting project. I've just got to sort out my illustrator skills before then!

I've got some really satisfying felt tips on the go, from Pentel. They leave just the right amount of felt-tip striping to keep large blocky areas interesting - like the black areas on some of the flowers.

A fashionable sock monkey

This sock monkey likes reading up about all the latest trends in the world of fashion. He likes nothing better than spending a Saturday morning reading Vogue with a cup of black coffee and electro pop playing on his stereo.

Surprisingly this felt tip drawing was done by observation, of the real guy doing some fashion research.

From an old 2008 sketchbook.

Retro mushrooms & toadstools

I really want to create a repeating pattern based on this felt tip sketch I did in the summer. I've not been having much luck getting Adobe Illustrator to cooperate with me on the pattern making thing though. It seems ridiculously complex, and like there should be an easy way to do this sort of thing.

Making patterns is so much harder than I EVER imagined! I have so much more respect for fabric designers having tried to do this myself. I'm still looking for advice and tutorials on pattern making, so if anyone can point me in the direction of any good resources, that would be great. I'll post any patterns I do make that don't totally suck if and when they happen ;-)

Newt

A sketch of a newt from a 2008 sketchbook. Drawn before we got our fire bellied newts, with a black felt tip.

For anyone unfamiliar with newts, they are the most amazing creatures, a bit like tiny crocodiles. We have three: Rambo, Terminator and RoboCop (aka 'Skinny'). Unfortunately, the fourth, Die Hard died.

As FAST as lightning!

Inspired by this week's Illustration Friday theme of 'FAST'. Nothing gets much faster than lightning, and this little cloud chap has lightning down to a 'T'.

I'd like to explore typography more. There are so many beautiful fonts out there, I want to know how to use them not abuse them. I'm really liking American Typewriter right now - such a timeless font.