Saturday 22 April 2017

A year gone by...


A year has passed since I first started this blog, 12 months, 365 days, 8760 hours, 525600 minutes or 31536000 seconds. And for the last couple of weeks I've been thinking long and hard about how I want to continue blogging.


Posting three times a week has sometimes proved difficult. I find I'm thinking about the postings and not my artistic development. It might seem more productive this year to work at my art processes and blog when I have something new. A different dynamic. At the very least I need to blog once a week and may, or may not, blog twice a week depending upon what material I have to share. Although this will result in less blogs what should become apparent is my development as an artist rather than being a blogger who 'does art'.

Roll on Year 2...



Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

Saturday 8 April 2017

Black and White 3


Re-doing a previous drawing 'Mother of Bees'. Link to a previous blogpost Artwork process: Mother of Bees


Using pencil eraser and new fineliners. Colouring in the shirt pattern was meditative.






Background comes from the zigzag movement made by bees in flight...




Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.


Friday 7 April 2017

Black and White 2


Second black and white drawing. Used same pens and pencils as the first (black and white) though I added some Payne's Grey coloured pencil to her hair.


Soft pencil sketches on A3 Bristol Board...


Favourite retractable rotring propelling pencil, pencil eraser and unipin fineliner...




Coloured background in black Sharpie as before and used a Faber-Castell PITT marker in white to create a circular pattern behind the figure and dragons.


My uniPin fineliners were on their last legs so time to break out a set of drawing pens my son had bought online. Although not being a known brand they work just fine.


Liquitex acrylic paint marker gave the skin an ivory tone.




Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

Monday 3 April 2017

Black & White


After testing out a number of white pencil and markers I decided to do a black and white drawing. Pens used included uniPin black fineliners, uniBall Signo white gel, Liquitex white paint marker, uniPosca white paint marker, black Sharpie and Pentel black brush pen. I used A3 Bristol Board.




This was very much a doodle rather than a planned drawing as I wanted to try out working with black and white mediums together. Penciled and inked it and began to fill out the black areas first. The background needed to have its own texture so I blocked it out with black Sharpie and overlaid with dots of white from the Faber-Castell PITT marker which I'd found gave a soft effect.


FInished the piece by roughly painting over the skin areas with Liquitex white which looked more ivory than white against the paper. I liked the rough technique alongside the defined black lines and feel that I'm getting closer to the kind of artworks I want to make. Something a bit more 'painterly'.






I redid the mouth as I wasn't happy even though this was a doodle and I'm not usually pernickety when it comes to doodles - they're the practise/ideas-down kind of drawings. Using the brush pen I drew lips over layers of Liquitex white which had covered the original mouth. I couldn't use a fineliner as it would have broken the surface of the paint whereas the brush pen was softer. I liked the result, and I'll use this mix of mediums again. 






Copyright © 2016 by Roisin O'Hagan/bloowabbit

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.