A little bit of Trompe L'oeil

The Scribe
8x10 inches
ballpoint pen, Faber Castell Pitt Pens and Promarkers
on Ampersand Claybord. 

I have always had a fascination for Trompe L'Oeil artworks and thought I would revisit this genre, by redoing an older piece of mine. I am loving working on the Claybord, but unfortunately the coloured pencils do not come out with level of vibrancy that I'm after when working on this surface and so it feels a bit strange for me to be completing artworks without even reaching for a coloured pencil. The background was underpainted using the Black Promarker and I then went over this with the black ballpoint pen for a nice consistent black. The rest of the squirrel was done combining the ballpoint pen with the Faber Castell Pitt pens and also using a blade and fibre glass brush and blade to scratch into the Claybord surface for more realistic fur. 

Reference photo for the squirrel provided with kind permission by http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandj98/1924302163/in/set-72157594327779035/. The format for this artworks was inspired by the beautiful artworks of Marina Dieul:)

Latest ACEO - Bubbles & Blessings

We have a long weekend for the Queen's Birthday, here in Australia, and sadly, all the boys sport has been cancelled due to rain :) - so that just means more time for art - don't know how I'll cope!!! This is my latest ACEO - the main inspiration here was my urge to try to draw bubbles. I have attempted it a couple of times this week and all works have ended up in the bin. I worked out in the end, that it is much easier to draw bubbles on a darker background than to try to create bubbles on a white background - I guess it should have been obvious. This was my final attempt and the best of a bad lot, so I then proceeded with the rest of the painting. You can purchase this ACEO in my ebay store.