A few words about illustration

I usually use this blog to post pictures of my latest oil paintings, with a few words about how they came into being but as some of you will know, when I am not painting landscapes, I produce a regular blog about the lives of six cartoon cows. Each of those blogs is accompanied by its own illustration, so I thought it might be nice to give you a little insight as to the process that I go through to produce a cow picture. For those of you for whom the cows are something new, you can find them via the link in 'about my work' in the sidebar, or click here: cowislandblogspot.blogspot.com . The above picture was drawn to accompany the blog 'Uncanny!' which was published on Friday 6th November 2009.

Composition.

The focus of this blog post was Captain Bill and Cyril's first appearance disguised as Norman, who is an elephant. Since they are the most important element, they are placed furthest forward so as to dominate the image. Their appearance is deliberately comic and they were drawn to look enough like an elephant so that people would recognise that but at the same time it needed to be very clear that they have failed miserably. Geraldine the penguin was given a sign to hold up, to further emphasise their failure. Next in terms of the blog's dialogue come Norma and Bertha, so they are placed close to Captain Bill and Cyril. Behind them is Annie; it was trailed in the previous day's blog that Annie can't keep away from some glue that was being used. This prepared the reader for the possibility of a comic outcome and here, she is shown having glued herself to a tree. To help convey the situation more clearly, her legs are shown and are kept clear of Norma's hat; a glue brush was also added. Note that her centre of gravity is towards the tree and works as an added suggestion of the glue's stickiness. Finally, Norman himself was placed in the background of the picture.

Tone.

...or 'shading' if you like! I use a watered down black ink and have always placed the light source at the top right of the picture. This gives the illustrations a degree of consistency and because I am left handed, it is easier for me to shade the left side of an object. With this illustration its main use is to give extra definition to Captain Bill and Cyril's costume and make it appear to hang off of them.

Colour.

My basic rule is always work from the known: the cows all have their own colour patches so I put those in first. Then, Norman's skin colour was added and after that, the sky, trees (it is Autumn remember) and grass (often wetter and therefore darker in Autumn) were coloured. There is slightly more blue in the sky than normal because several important elements push into it: Geraldine's sign, Annie and her glue brush; and as these contain a lot of white, we need blue sky around them to bring them forward. Finally, the arrow on Geraldine's sign was coloured red; an arrow is supposed to get our attention and it helps to keep you focused on the foreground.

Well there we are; I hope it's been worth the read! Thank you.

Another Autumn landscape

Just a field behind a road; there is a public footpath which runs along the side of it. When I first walked by it in the Summer, it didn't have much appeal but over the passing months, I began to see a painting within it. The Autumn colours helped to add interest and there are a few cattle as well...

20 x 16 inches oil on canvas