Creating a Wood effect

I thought I would share a brilliant wood effect I discovered when I was experimenting with the wood for the floor for my man falling down a hole. It is remarkably easy and looks very authentic. I found to create the right lines and knots it is best to copy real wood for the design. Then all that is needed is to copy the pattern of the wood in pencil with short strokes all facing the direction of the grain of wood. Then using a brown water-colour paint, just follow "the grain" with long strokes with a large flat brush, this has the additional advantage of locking in the pencil marks to a certain extent, so it doesn't really fade. To further ensure it's protection, I them followed the grain one more time with a couple of coasts of PVA glue, making it shiny. I painted a hard back sketchbook with this effect, but I'm sure it will work on whatever medium proving it takes the pencil, paint and glue. Have a go.

Hand painted signs

As I was looking for great shop fronts, to aid us with designing our Launderette, I came across a sign writer based in Singleton who was running workshops, sounded like fun I thought. Sadly his workshop for August was fully booked, which would have been ideal. Nonetheless he said I could pop round for a visit to his workshop. I wanted a go at sign writing, and I wasn't giving up that easily. So yesterday I made a makeshift Mahl stick (from a bouncy ball and piece of doweling) and today gave it a go, I was reasonably pleased for a first attempt, although admittedly it did take me near on 5 hours to write the word "JUMBLE."

What looks white in these photos, is actually gold and looks quite pretty when it catches the light. 

Peg painting

My Sisters are setting up a launderette in Bristol and so peg decoration has sort of become an ongoing project. When I looked online for inspiration, as I so often do, I found a few examples, but few done really well, and they can be really beautiful, so get on it folks. I used acrylic paint and a very fine brush. Depending on the design your going for it can be a fiddly job, and will test your patience, worth it though. Here is one design I gave away as a gift to a friend. 

When they are packaged up nicely (in a plastic card-making self-sealing bad) they make a great present, along with some home made biscuits in a glass jar, I think she was pleased. I kept them evenly spaced by pegging them to an old map that I hope I'll never need! 

Another theme I went for was iconic logos and packaging, have always loved all things packaging, so that inspired these pegs, again I gave these as a present, this time to my sister for the launderette! 

It made for a fun game to having them guess all the brands, I was pleased they managed to guess them all, some are more obscure than others...

Isometric Drawing

My GCSE Graphic teacher would be proud! I kept up my isometric drawing long after our lessons finished, by far my favourite style of  drawing, I was talking to a friend the other day on the downs, and we were agreeing that technical style drawings are far preferable to flowing expressionism of "art," graphics all the way. As I continue this blog you will undoubtedly pick up on a certain Mac obsession (even worse than the deer one)....

Tile Effects

Not so long ago, I was playing around trying to gage what my mac could do, and I came across this great technique which means I can make any sort of animal by tiles, or anything else for this matter, if anyone wants me to create the one for them, feel free to post a comment.

The deer is my favourite, don't know why I have an obsession with deer at the moment, I apologise for repetition.

when I discovered I could do this, I got all excited and started making all sorts of things.