FREE cross stitch chart- Monster bookmark

                                       Copyright Amanda and Rebecca Gregory 2015

Chart for your own personal use and not to be produced commercially

FREE Adult Colouring Page, flowers

I've noticed recently the popularity of adult colouring books, so I thought, why not draw my own page for people to colour in? Hopefully, if this works you'll be able to print off this sheet to colour.... I drew it A5 size (but it works as A4 too) so maybe it'll be a nice one to do on the bus ride to work. Actually maybe not, I don't want to be responsible for the consequences.... Anyways, I hope you enjoy it!

                                            

                                                    Copyright Rebecca Gregory 2015

    

Inspiration (fell on my head)

     

                             

This is a painting that I did quite a while back which has been on my bedroom wall. It's a detail of a sculpture made from waste electrical products called WEEE man, (waste electrical and electronic equipment) which was outside the Lloyds building in Bristol for a while. It's painted on an old piece of cardboard, which it turns out is too heavy for the blu-tak to hold, and which fell on me as I was sleeping and woke me up. It did give me an idea though. I decided to redo it, as it looks quite crude and has faded. Here is the new version:

       

This is the work in progress. I used a white background as some magic marker from the previous page has bled through. The 'Indian ink' refers to a drawing of New York which I didn't like and painted over, but I might keep the writing. 

I've used biro for this drawing. I did want to use marker pen, but for some reason they aren't able to write over the paint, so it was good old Bic pen to the rescue. I think I prefer it actually. With lots of colouring the biro ink goes shiny over the paint, so it looks similar to the marker pen, but with a finer line.

This is the next stage of the drawing:

      

I think the WEEE Man drawing is finished, but I am going to add some more 'clouds' to the drawing on the right. I'm thinking of painting each ring of clouds in very watery pastel watercolour and then letting it drip down the page. We'll see....

                                        All images Copyright Rebecca Gregory 2014

Introducing book 2

Ok, I should have done this earlier. I've finished quite a few pages now, and I've only shown you one; so here are some more:

Firstly the cover. I've 'stickered-up' the cover now, so this means the book is officially under way.

                                     

I've used some of the stickers from my collection. Most of them are from my Stickerbomb books, but I've also got some Jon Burgerman characters on there that came free with some of his books that I bought. (Www.jonburgeman.com and www.biro-web.com) The Lego angel is from Redbubble.com and the 'fragile' sticker is from the local post office here in Cheese Town. I put it upside down as I didn't want it to look too much like a title of a magazine cover.

Here are some of the first pages of the neeeeew book....

        

        

 

        

        

The page above has been on-going for a while. I painted the pink and yellow background before I really knew what I was going to draw on it, then I decided it would be ideal for my new skateboard. I left it blank for a long time, then came back to it after I'd completed a few more pages. I originally drew the whole skateboard, but I didn't like the composition and it was too similar to the longboard I drew on the first page, so I thought I'd focus in in more detail. The drawing ended up quite a bit bigger than I intended, as they often do, so I just drew over the writing on the previous page. I like how this joins the two drawings together. 

           

Something funny went on with the scanner here....

          

...then the scanner broke completely and I had to use a camera for this one, hence the blury-ness....

Colouring the sky on this drawing was very therapeutic and I was almost sorry when I'd completed it. I'm going to finish this one off later. I think the man in the foreground needs a face.

When I photographed this page I noticed that there was something missing (not just the man's face) and so I've coloured in the stage in marker to make it stand out from the rest of the drawing. I think I worked on this one for too long, and sometimes when I do that I can't see whether it's finished or not, so photographing it helps me to step back, almost as if someone else drew it.

                                     All images Copyright Rebecca Gregory 2014

   

 

     

      

Beautiful Days music festival

Last weekend I went to the Beautiful days music festival in Devon, and I managed to do a little bit of drawing while I was there. Here is what I did:

                              

I drew this from the window of the campervan while having some rest time. I wanted to draw something I could spend a while studying, and I also didn't want to miss any of the festival, so that's why I decided to draw the campervan field. I knew it would all be the same when I got back! (Perhaps with the addition of a new flag or two) I added the colour when I got home as I only took a basic pencil case with me, and I finished off the campers on the left from a photo. (Cheating.) I cheated with the sky too and made it blue to make the weather look nicer than it actually was. It was actually a mostly white sky with occasional grey bits, (Clouds) but that's boring.

                              

I did these from the comfort of the campervan too. The drawing at the bottom is full of 'happy accidents.' I wanted the view from the window to be the focus of the drawing, but made a mistake in pen, so I painted over it when I got home. I painted it the colour of the tinted window (but exaggerated it) and I think it it works well as it draws the eye to the campervans outside. I think I'm going to leave the interior of the camper as it is and not colour it. I think I might spoil it if I colour it in.

Drawing in the cemetery

It's been very hot and sunny recently here in England, as I'm sure you've noticed, and I'm afraid I've neglected my blog slightly as I've been very, very busy with other important work. Outdoors lounging around and catching some rays. (sun rays, not stingrays.)

I have also been out to Arnos Vale cemetery to do some location drawing. (www.arnosvale.org.uk) It's a huge Victorian cemetery in Bristol, and it's fascinating. Its like a wilderness in the middle of the city. Huge parts of it are vastly overgrown and neglected, and many of the graves are sprouting huge trees and shrubs. It is terraced on the side of a hill, and from a distance looks like a forest. Back in its Victorian heyday there were only a few oak and yew trees, but the rest have self seeded after decades of neglect. When I first visited the cemetery some years back it was completely derelict and the two chapels were declared 'dangerous buildings.' This is the drawing I made:

                              

I also thought I'd show you another drawing from this sketchbook. The drawing below is from this book, which is an A5 Moleskine sketchbook. The houses are in Swanange, and I wanted to draw a particular house, and as I was a long way from Swanage, I cheated and used Google street view. The reason I wanted to draw this house is that I have admired it every time I have walked past it, and would really like to buy it. It's not on the market, unfortunately, so this might pose a slight problem. (And I haven't saved up enough pennies yet) So I thought I might draw it instead. The one next door is quite nice too. Hmmmm...

I drew this drawing in Biro, and used a purple fine liner around the edge. I didn't want to paint the sky, but I wanted a small amount of colour, so that's why I chose the purple fine liner. I wanted to highlight the house, but not too harshly. The purple works well as it's washable, so I smudged it with water. I also added a small amount of water to the page first, then drew over it in the purple. This gave a darker, fuzzy line, almost like drawing on blotting paper.

      

More from this book later....

Monsters in the garage

The photos in this blog show the mural that I've painted in the garage, and I thought I'd share with you how I made it. I'll start at the end with the finished mural. Here it is:

It started with a design that I drew in my sketchbook. The actual result differs quite a bit, but then whoever sticks to their plans? Sometimes designs just mutate by themselves. I started the mural off by painting a white square. Actually I didn't, I started it off by visiting B&Q and buying some paint. Without that it wouldn't have worked. I chose masonry paint, as it was to paint on bricks, but the colour choices weren't great, so I stuck to black and white. It was either that or bottle green and brown, and who wants that?!? I think black and white on brick looks really cool anyway.

Ok, the next bit was the white square. 

The square forms the basic shape of the white background. I then started painting in the monsters in black. I did the outlines using a dry brush first, so if I didn't like the result, I hadn't committed too much and could still change it. The painty way of drawing an outline in pencil I guess. 

Where the monsters go out of the square I also used a dry brush to continue the outline (you can see this with the monster on the left and the arrows) I then finished off the white inside the outline, and a monster grew out of the square. I thought this was probably the easiest way to tackle it, rather than painting a shape then colouring it in again, and again, and again. And so I repeated this with all the other shapes.

I think the most difficult part of the whole process was painting into the gaps between the bricks. The garage is shoddily constructed and it seems there is not much mortar holding it together, so the gaps were quite deep and capable of swallowing almost a whole paintbrush. Also, I had to evict a number of spiders from these gaps, but I'm hoping they like it now I've white-washed their houses for them. I was also hoping to continue some of the spaghetti shapes over floor and up the other wall, but I decided against it in the end. The floor would require too much cleaning first (otherwise I would just be basically painting on DUST ). Also, when I've painted in the garage in the past I've noticed quite a lot of leaves and more DUST blow under the door and stick to the paint and it's really annoying. I'd need to either tape myself into the garage or get some serious draft excluders, and it's just too much work for something that a car's going to parked on top of anyway.

                     

                                        All images copyright Rebecca Gregory 2014