Creativity: Week 11 2024 - Flower Drawings = Joy

Week 11: Delight - I choose to do things that make me feel happy. (SoulSistersToo - Creative)

Intention Setting: Spirit assist me in doing things that make me feel happy and to notice what things bring me joy. 

Flower Drawings = Joy

Every now and then I do some little stylised drawings of flowers, both real and imagined. Drawing simple flowers like these brings me so much joy, I begin to move into a feeling of creative flow.

I encourage you too to play with a pen or any mark making materials you have nearby and see how many different flower drawings you can create.  

Creativity: Week 10 2024 - Discovering Through Play

Week 10: Discovery - Today I will take the time to discover something new. (SoulSistersToo - Creative)

Intention Setting: Spirit please assist me to be open to discovering something new.

Discovering Through Play...

This week I've been discovering or rediscovering a range of different things; new music, re-tasting food and new creative explorations.

New Music: I listened to the Oscar nominated songs I have not heard before and I went down a rabbit hole listening to a music style called Bardcore. Bardcore is revamped popular songs using medieval style  music. I listened to quite a few songs by an artist known as the Canadian Hildegard von Blingin' eg. Jolene, Painted Black, Wicked Game, Holding out for a Hero and Bad Romance.

Re-tasting Food: I am in the process of feeding my gut biome a larger range of foods. This week I re-tasted sardines and artichoke hearts after years of not eating them.

Creative Explorations: I also took some time for intuitive creative play in my sketch book, while listening to bardcore music. Drawing lines and shapes with a gel pen*. Trying washes of light coloured acrylic paint. And playing with a red fineliner^ pen and unactivated Scribble Sticks*^, a water-soluble pigment, like a woodless pencil or crayon.

I hope that you too can discover something new this week or something you haven't done for a long time. 

* Uni-ball Signo Line Gel Pen 0.7 black

^ Staedtler triplus fineliner brilliant colours

*^ Dina Wakley Media Scribble Sticks, water-soluble pigments by rangerink 

Affirmations: Week 51 2023 - Stepping Stones

Affirmation for Week 51 2023: Stepping Stones - I will break my big dream into tiny steps to make it achievable. (SoulSisterToo - Living)

Intention Setting: Spirit, assist me in taking the small steps that will help me in fulfilling my larger tasks.

Affirmations: Week 49 2023 - Serendipity

Affirmation for Week 49 2023: Serendipity - Moments of serendipity is when the universe is showing me the way. (SoulSistersToo - Soulfilled)

Intention Setting: Let me hear and see what spirit is revealing to me serendipitously. 

Affirmations: Week 47 2023 - Breathe

Affirmation for Week 47 2023: Breathe - I will take a moment to center myself and breathe. (SoulSistersToo - Soulfilled)

Intention Setting: Spirit, show me different ways to center and breathe.

Affirmations: Week 43 2023 - Stillness

Affirmation for Week 43 2023: Stillness - I take moments to be still. (SoulSistersToo - Soulfilled)

Intention Setting: Help me feel no guilt when I take time moments to be still or when I choose to do nothing.

Affirmations: Week 40 2023 - Mindfulness

Affirmation for Week 40 2023: Mindfulness - Stop! See - Listen. Be Mindful. (SoulSistersToo - Soulfilled)

Intention Setting: May I have moments to stop, to be mindful and peace filled. 

 

Dream Nourishing: Taking a time out of your regular life

Taking a time out of your regular life can be as small as taking an afternoon off work or something longer like a two week holiday. 

It is important to schedule these breaks into your calendar. The intention behind this is to ensure that you have opportunities to relax, recharge, do something you enjoy and to get away from the normalcy of your daily life.

I like to call this time, Dream Nourishing. It is time to do things that are on your dream/bucket list and time to nourish your body, mind and soul.

Day Two: Portfolio Project with Nina Rycroft.

Day Two of Nina Rycroft's online course, Portfolio Project. 

It has taken me a day (today is actually Day Three) to mull over the CHALLENGE set by Susanne Gervay and Marjorie Crosby-Fairall. They set an illustration challenge to take a child from a classroom and give them a character.

My mind went blank and I've worked in schools for many years. I was thinking all kinds of things to illustrate even an incident in the sand pit and then POCK! It hit me in the head like a yo-yo trick gone wrong. 

This is a work in progress and still needs colour but I like to let my ink dry for 24 hours before I paint over it.

Susanne & Marjorie: Illuminate Don't Decorate (Show Don't Tell)

The second session was a video of Katrina Avery about 'Fitting it all in - An IllustrationBiz Planning Tool'. I was a founding member of IllustrationBiz and I value Katrina's insights about the business of illustration. 

Towards the end of 2018 I began working on planning my day in blocks around my energy levels and daily commitments. This change was inspired by the YouTube video The Daily Block Schedule by Jordan Page (Thanks Jen Storer for sharing this in the Duck Pond). I found that Katrina's planning tool dovetails quite nicely in with Jordan's ideas. 

Katrina: Organise, Prioritise and Plan 
I also liked this thought from Katrina 'Is your disorganisation my emergency?'

Canberra Children's Illustrators Group June Coffee & Pictures

Another wonderful catch up with my local group of children's illustrators. You all inspire me and I know that getting together gives each and everyone a creative lift to keep on illustrating or to get back to illustrating if things have been a bit slow creatively.

It was a delight to see two tiny little ones, Suzy's new baby and Iona's niece plus we met Catherine's larger child who was home from school getting over the last of his cold.

Our next meeting dates are still to be set as I am working on my diary dates as I really want to get to Melbourne to see the MoMA exhibition at the NGV. The 1st will be an impromptu one during the school holidays and the 2nd will probably a Sunday arvo in  August.

My Practice Inspired by the Sketchbook Revival

Frenetic
Fun
Fabulous
Freeing

These four words are what I would use to describe my experience of the 2018 Sketchbook Revival: An Online Workshop created by Karen Abend.

It was quite a task to complete the 24 workshops that ran for two official weeks - with a 2 week catch up period. Each day there were two sessions to learn new techniques and mediums from a range of artist's that work towards sketching daily. Each session's video length was around one hour, so on top of the viewing time I spent extra time stopping and starting the videos, following the process to create my own sketchbook pages.
See my sketchbook revival creations later in this post.

Reflection On Workshop

It is now a few weeks since I finished the workshops and I'm really pleased that I took the time to immerse myself in developing my craft's; skills and techniques. Many of the workshops aligned with other creative practices that I am currently following ie: The Artist's Way by Julian Cameron and the Jen Storer's, Scribbles online creative writing course.

Ideas Jar - Loving the Salamander!

Wow what a change a few days can make.

When I first found out that I was going to have to draw a salamander I totally recoiled. I have now sketched a salamander for the last 4 days and I'm loving this little guy or gal.

Since the terrible first sketch I have drawn my salamander  7 times. Here is a sneak peek at some of the sketches.

Toddler

This is my illustration for the Character Design Weekly Challenge Week 2: Toddler/Baby.

Over the last week I have been working my way through the Nina Rycroft online classes for faces and body proportions. While this illustration is still very static I am showing progress in being able to draw the face and proportions of the body. 

Plus I  have included one of the toy rabbits that I illustrated a few weeks ago.

I'm hoping the toddler with the toy rabbit will appear in the illustrations of the picture book that I am working on.

Those of you who are familiar with the coloured illustrations from the SCBWI 2017 Storytime Exhibition will notice that I have used the same colour palate for this toddler illustration.

Below is an image of my preparatory work for this illustration. I have used blue pencil as part of my initial sketching process. Utilising the teardrop shaped head and quartering line on the head for proportions of the face. I also draw in the skeleton and body to give the clothes some structure to hang on.

A Bunny Infestation in Leanne's Drawings

I have been surrounded by rabbits the last few weeks and they are multiplying.

Like in nature you begin with a few bunnies and then their numbers explode.

It began with my sister wishing for an Christmas Bunny. (5 rabbits)
It then spread into the PET theme for the first week of the Character Design Weekly Challenge. (17 more rabbits) Continuing through to the Nina Rycroft online classes, The Art of Bunnies in Books. (add 60 more rabbits)
A total of 82 rabbits in the last month.

Oh there was also copying 21 rabbit faces from picture books. I spent a morning looking at the shapes of difference rabbit character's faces.
Grand total of 103 rabbit drawings.

Plus the viewing of rabbit photos on Pixabay and rabbit videos from YouTube.

Cute Baby Wild Rabbits Discover Spring
Cute Wild Baby Rabbits want a Feed / Wildlife in My Backyard

Christmas Bunny

Week 1 PET
Character Design Weekly Challenge

Leanne's copies of Nina's Rabbit and Easter Celebration Illustrations

Leanne's Toy Rabbit Illustrations

Illustration of Characters During December

Part of my focus for 2018 is designing characters. I decided that I could begin the journey by developing characters from my draft picture book stories. 

First off the rank, even though it's December 2017, is my character development of Max, my little dog that has moved to live in a city apartment.

The next step in developing my characters is to participate in some of Nina Rycroft online classes.

I joined Skillshare after Christmas and I have been working on drawing bunnies.
I have been copying Nina's illustrations and drawing my own bunnies from reference photos.











It was suggested that maybe a bunny might make an appearance in Max's story, on the farm and/or as a city pet.