Latest Artwork, Speed drawing and Tutorial

Emerald Eyes in Scratch Art
5x7 inches
Scratch Art, ink, inktense pencils and coloured pencil on
 Ampersand Scratchbord

This latest artwork and tutorial was created in response to a client who asked to see a speed drawing and tutorial on scratch art. This artwork is available as a speed drawing on YouTube and as a 24 page step by step tutorial on my website at either my website or my Etsy Store. The reference photo for this gorgeous kitty was provided with kind permission by Whiskymac on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiskymac/104255109/in/set-793880

Signed Hard Cover Copies of Let's Count Kisses now available

Hachette are no longer going to be doing reprints of Let's Count Kisses in the Hard Cover version, only as a soft cover, so I have stocked up and bought the last 100 copies still available. You can get your very own signed and personalised copy of Let's Count Kisses on Ebay This 32 page flap book is geared for the 0-2 year age group and is perfect for bed time reading. It would make a fabulous gift for a child or grandchild and is a celebration of native Australian animals and butterflies.

Let's Count Kisses even has its own dedicated website with more information about the book and the species names of all butterflies illustrated within the book.

Latest Drawing Tutorial - Nature's Gifts

Here is my latest step by step drawing tutorial and for those of you who also like to see the process of creating an artwork, you can also view the Speed Drawing of this at http://youtu.be/SokrF9IQAFk. I hope to have a speed drawing to accompany most of the tutorials I create from this point forward. This tutorial is available from either my Website or in USD as an instant download from my Etsy Store.

You might also notice that I have now added a Subscribe button to the side bar for anyone who would like to receive my monthly newsletter which is full of drawing hints and tips and often has discount codes as well.

More fun with Speed Drawings

Nature's Gifts
9x12 inches
Coloured pencils, Pitt pens and a touch of white ink on
Canson Pastel Grey Mat Board

What a heavenly feeling to back doing art again and isn't it wonderful to have a job where you are dying to get back into it. This is my latest piece and after lots of fun and games, I finally managed to get a speed drawing video rendered and you can view it on YouTube at http://youtu.be/SokrF9IQAFk. 

In previous posts, I talked about my set up for creating the speed drawing and mentioned that I had purchased the iphone app LapseIt. This little app enables you to take time lapse photography and then to render all the individual frames into a video. This worked reasonably well for my first speed drawing of the eye, although I did notice there was a little jumping around in the rendered video compared to the individual frames. This time, I had over 10,000 frames. In each of these individual frames, you can see the entire area I am working on, but for some reason, every time I tried to render the video, the app was cropping down certain frames so that my hand and what I was actually drawing was out of the field of vision. I tried rendering numerous times, using several different formats and each time the same problem. After an exasperating weekend, of trying all sorts of solutions including trying to use Windows Movie Maker, unsuccessfully, to render the video, I eventually bought another little app called OSnap. I then had to save all 10,000 frames to my Camera Roll and then import them to this app and finally was able to render a video, that might not be of the highest quality, but is still watchable, and at least you can see my hand and what the pencil is doing at all times. I would highly recommend the OSnap over the LapseIt, although it also has some limitations itself in that it saves the video in .mov format, where most applications prefer MP4. I also had problems sharing my video to YouTube from within the app, but tried instead saving the video to my camera roll and sharing it to YouTube from there. That only took 5 minutes. All this sounds really complicated and difficult, but I guess you can't expect too much from a $3 app. I have now deleted LapseIt, because I simply can't afford to run into these issues again and will use OSnap for the next speed drawing to see how it goes from start to finish.

Big ups and Little downs

I started the year with such good intentions for my blog and have already fallen behind after our computer died four weeks ago and then our new computer died a week ago, followed by a dead one brought home from the shops and finally, we are onto our third new computer in three weeks. On top of that, my Gall Bladder needed to come out last week and so needless to say, this has all left very little time for doing any art, let alone blogging. 

The upside is that I have a feature article, including the cover, in the February issue of the Colored Pencil Magazine http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/696871 and 'Refuge' was honoured with a CPSA (Coloured Pencil Society of America) District Chapters Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Latest Explore This 10! online exhibitionhttp://www.cpsa.org/view-explore-this-10/explore-this-10-award-winners This exhibition is all about showcasing the use of coloured pencil in conjunction with other media and a huge congrats to all of the artists selected for this exhibition. It is a feast for the eyes.

I am hoping that a few little hiccups are now all behind and there will be lots of productive months ahead :)

Creating my first Speed Drawing

Window to my Soul
5x7 inches
Coloured pencil & Markers on Watercolour Canvas

My set up for the speed drawing

I had several goals for 2014 - one was to be a more diligent blogger and the other was to create my first speed drawing and hopefully a course of them over the next year - here we are one week into the year, and we have a promising start. I posted my first speed drawing to YouTube this morning and what a wonderful feeling it was (you can view it here http://youtu.be/8zDfl8XIbbI). It isn't the best quality speed drawing but it was a wonderful learning experience.

For those of you who, like me, are keen to try your hand at speed drawing and time lapse photography, but who don't want to spend a fortune on expensive equipment or buy confusing video editing software, I thought I would share my setup and experiences. I first downloaded an app called Lapseit from iTunes for my iPhone - this app is also available for Android phones. You can get the free version, or for $1.99, buy the premium version, which has a few more features and this was the version I purchased. This wonderful little app is very simple to use and I thought did quite a good job at capturing the time lapse video. It also renders the video for you, once you have completed your drawing, without the need for complex editing. I did discover that it renders MUCH more quickly if you render your video without the added option of applying music. I also found that unless you add your own music, it is easier to allow for monetization (making money from adds on your video) if you don't have music added.

It wasn't all smooth sailing though. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, the app cut out a couple of times during filming, leaving me with some gaps in the footage. I'm not sure if this was the app or my iPhone playing up. I then temporarily changed the settings on the iPhone and put automatic lock to 'never' and 'automatic brightness' off and am hoping in the future that this helps to stop the app shutting down.

I initially set the time interval for each image at one image per 10 seconds and later discovered that this really is too long, making for a video that was much quicker than I really wanted, but I wanted to first see how much data creating the video would use up. I needn't have worried. I worked on the image for about 5 hours yesterday, and after all that time had only 50 seconds of footage with a file size of about 50Mb. About three quarters of the way through the artwork, I changed the interval to one image every 5 seconds which gave a much better result. They say the average attention span of a YouTube viewer is about 2-3 minutes which is what I will be aiming for in the future. The video was rendered at 25 frames per second.

Apart from purchasing the app for the iPhone, I needed to find a way of getting the iPhone in the correct position, so that it has a good view of the artwork, without being obtrusive as I worked (you can see it in the image above). I picked up this flexible mobile phone stand on Ebay for about $25, and it is perfect for the job.

I may look at some of the other time lapse apps available on iTunes, but overall, I would highly recommend this app and setup for anyone just starting out in timelapse photography who isn't needing an Academy Award winning video :)

Last artwork for 2013 and Season's Greetings

Bunny Banquet
12x17 inches
Coloured pencil and ink on Fabriano Artistico Paper

This will be my last artwork for 2013 as I pack up my 'studio' in readiness for Christmas and the arrival of lot's of interstate family. Sadly, my poor blog has been neglected this year as many other commitments have kept me away from blogging. My goal for 2014 is to post more blog posts, more WIP's and hopefully some Speed Drawing videos (once I spend the holidays working out how to do it). I wish you all a very safe and Happy Christmas and holiday season and look forward to sharing more art and news in 2014 :)