375 Days

Hi Everyone! So I know it has been a while since I last posted on here 375 days in fact! It has been a hell of a year full of lots of changes, work and projects and this is the main reason my blogging has taken a slip. But I hope to change this and get back into it again, aiming to post once a week or at least fortnightly about what I am up to and the projects and things you have missed in the past year..

And I thought a good point to kick start is with my current project MerMay 2020! Being the Fifth of May I shall be sharing the first few Mermaids of this years Instagram Challenge.
For those of you who don’t know about MerMay it is this rather popular Art Challenge on Instagram with 91k posts and counting in six days alone! It was started by Tom Bancroft a Disney Animator and Character Designer with different words for each day to prompt the artwork.

Planning

The first stage of any project like this for me is always to Plan it out.. I do this in physical elements such as my bullet journal where I lay out the final ideas and mark off the parts I need to do as I do them..

I also have a digital element to this stage with OneNote where I write out all the possible ideas and concepts, using my iPad to draw out elements too. All of which lead to the final plans for each day’s prompts. I also started planning out on calendars a timeline to get each of the prompts complete.. Whether or not I stick to these is more time to tell.. But here are the the pieces I have worked on so far..

 

1 ◊ Celebration

Pinch Punch first day of the month! Yes we have made it into the month of May during these weird lockdown times and that means it is the start of the MerMay art challenge!

 Kick starting with this celebration prompt I wanted to make this little stop motion animation and so created this puppet you see here and then thought actually it would be cool to try use her in more than one post so today it is a still image of the puppet mid celebration and keeps your eyes peeled for an animation created with this puppet in the future!

 

2 ♦ Warrior

For today’s prompt I’ve created this embroidery, trying out a colouring of the fabric for this armoured warrior mermaid.

 I’m not sure the greyed colours were the best to try this technique but it was a lot of fun trying out before I stitch the colours another day.. Definitely going to try this technique again.

 

3 ◊ Sunset

I am super happy with the way this printwork has turned out, Three colours and the final black layer and we have this perfect sunset image.

 And what’s the little creature silhouetted?

 

4 ♦ Star Wars

So I had planned to finish a sculpture for today’s Star Wars celebration but it is still being worked on to complete..

 So I thought I would instead post one of the designs sketches I drew up for the piece. Stay tuned for a final sculpt when it’s done and May the Force be with You!

 

5 ◊ Royalty

Another Print Day today! This time looking at one of the most famous Mermaid storirs in ‘The Little Mermaid’ as I recreate the Royal Highness King Triton in the little print..

 Not the perfect print of the design as you can see, reality being as is they are not always perfect. But this is part of the fun of it. May re-visit the Lino to work further on this in the future but for now loving this purple royalty.

Photographed on Micklyn Le Feuvre’s ‘Luminescent Rainbow Jellyfish’ Fabric purchased from Spoonflower to be used in future embroidery peice so stay tuned! <

 

6 ♦ Tsunami

For today’s posting I wanted to create this quick pace manic flow of shapes animation that I would imagine in as being trapped in such water. Not sure I captured it quite enough but really like this short still.

 

Come Back Next Week for another lot of Mermaid themed Artwork!