Illustration Friday: Zoom

This is an A4 watercolour and pencil illustration of Midnight Mary zooming around on her motorcycle with her cat, Blanko clinging on at the back.

From the 25th November, it will up in an exhibition at The Place Theatre in Bedford along with other work from the Circus of Illustration. It's part of The New Writes Nights, hosted by Novus Theatre who  want to zoom in on new local playwrights.

Embroidery Mistake

Usually when I do hand embroidery I draw my image onto soluble paper, which I baste onto my fabric. The paper dissolves straight away so I was really confused when this didn't happen to this piece. It turns out I have used fabric interfacing! What a dope! The plastic iron-on side was touching the fabric so I was able to fuse it, but I'm not happy with it...

 It's not perfect, you can see the texture of the interfacing as it is lighter in colour to the beige background and the creases in the face can't be ironed out or stretched. I felt so depressed about it last night, five hours of work thrown away! And it was going to be in an exhibition next month! I've learned a few lessons and everything in my craft box is going to get labeled from now on. Not sure what do with her. Have her in my house as a reminder to pay attention, perhaps.

More Crewel Embroidery

Here is my latest hand stitched crewel work with my original sketch so you can see my starting point. I basted some soluble fabric onto the material, with my sketch traced on in washable fabric marker. It took flippin' ages to finish!

More illustration with sewing

I'm still playing around with the sewing machine. It's rewarding to create illustrations that are tangible. I work digitally during the day, creating files through mouse, tablet and monitor screen... But ultimately creating an image that you can't hold. My designs go abroad to get printed into cards, so I seldom see let alone hold the finished product. Therefore it's quite therapeutic for me and arguably a natural reaction to my daily routine to make something perceptible by touch as well as by sight. Made directly with my own hands.

Walking to Walk

This ACEO was painted yesterday as I was at home all day on my own whilst jack was working. I wanted to make a painting which reflected the glooming going back to work feeling after Christmas in January. So it should be called "Walking to Work", but when I wrote the title on the back I lost my concentration and wrote "Walking to Walk". Oh well! Sometimes it's nice just to walk.

Buzz

Buzzy bees flying around a bouquet of posies. Don't fret though, they are friendly bees and they're only interested in gathering pollen to make tasty honey for honey monsters like me. They won't sting the cute little girl. Its only nasty wasps that do that. Boy, I hate wasps, they're pretty horrible.