I’ve been a bit quiet on here due to working on a BIG project that I can now share – I have been creating illustrations for the first-ever Female Falconers Club Calendar.
To celebrate and support women in falconry, these illustrations are of club members and their birds of prey.
The calendar is a complimentary gift for members.
A lovely male kestrel.
Since having a bit more time during lockdown I’ve been researching and looking into yet more techniques for pencils, which I am now putting into practice with this new piece, and I am rather happy with how things are going. No matter how long or how many drawings you do, there’s always new things to learn – it’s never boring!
Wedding invites I was asked to create for a falconer friend. Several sketches and ideas were suggested before finally arriving at a lovely image of a pair of peregrines ‘kissing’ (in reality feeding each other).
The cards were then held together using a leather falconry jess and eyelet (for the non-falconer – these are used on a hawk’s legs), completing the theme as many of their invited friends were also falconers.
The invitations were sent out but sadly due to Covid the wedding has now been postponed, which is a shame as these cards have been one of my favourite designs I have done. A new date card will be issued in due course and I wish the couple well for the future.
Something I’ve wanted to do for a while but not had the time is a colour swatch of my pencils. I am forever just scribbling on bits of paper when I am deciding which colours to use on a piece, and since I also had some new colours I figured lockdown would be an ideal time to do this.
During the process, I also discovered that the colours react a little differently on watercolour paper than on normal stock, a lightbulb moment that explains why I have been having trouble with this paper since I started using it. Going forward this has improved my latest piece a great deal – you never know when you will learn something new!
Goshawk now complete. One of the largest head studies I’ve done at 16 x 12inch.
It has been a long time since a piece has frustrated me as much as this one did! What seemed like a straightforward colour scheme turned into a nightmare – I changed the tone so many times that it started to damage the paper and I still don’t think the colour is quite right but I can do no more. A combination of taking too long, reference material that wasn’t right, and my brain still struggling with oil-based pencils.
I did learn a lot though, so it is not all bad, and I am determined to master these new pencils.
It’s not all about the birds! A client at my day job wanted some custom illustrations for a dog feeding chart that matched with their current branding, which uses vintage pen illustrations. My hand-drawn images are on the left, which my colleague then included in the leaflet design on the right.
I’ve been tasked with drawing peregrines for a design-these ones will not feature in the finished work, but are warm-ups and experiments as I figure out how I want it to look. I am rather smitten with the one on the left!
Recently delivered commission – this smiley chap is called Diesel.
Lola
coloured pencil, sketchblog