July 2024 | big paintings and sketches

This may be a short one compared to my other blogs! It feels like I did very little in the month of July in terms of art-making, and anything I did make was sometimes private so I won’t be sharing it here. I think I needed a break after all the art-making I did in June!

Stockton Bury painting #2

In my last blog I mentioned the large paintings I made, some of which I submitted to a local artists’ vacancy. I didn’t mention this other piece I painted as I hadn’t yet finished it. I finished this very experimental piece at the start of July, playing around with negative space and allowing it to be very loose!

I also updated my website a little, adding all my latest paintings and drawings in the 'Drawings and Paintings' and 'Digital illustration' sections.

Pet Portrait Commissions

I am still open for commissions! I shared a couple of reels showing my process. You can find out more about getting a pet portrait from me here.

Water lily painting

A big piece of art I started this month was this gouache on canvas of the lily pads in the pond in my garden. I want to make the piece bright, colourful and painterly; lightly inspired by Monet’s water lily paintings. I am about half way through it, taking my time to paint when I really want to paint. It was lovely taking the chance to paint outside some days, taking advantage of the sun we finally got.

That Zine Thing

I carried on with the challenge I set myself in June, making zines at least once a week! Though it always takes me the first week to make just the moodboard, meaning I only end up having time for 2 or 3 zines! Oh well...

This was this month’s moodboard, a somewhat farm-y theme:

I managed to make 3 zines around this theme! The first was a photography/collage zine using my own photos, the second was a zine I took with me to sketch in during a walk, and the third was a bunch of my favourite sketchbook spreads during a couple of trips right at the end of the month. Here are some of my favourite spreads from each:

You can have a better look of each one in the posts I shared on That Zine Thing.

Novel sketchbook

This month I decided to combine my art-making and novel-writing into one, and started a new sketchbook! In this sketchbook I will be illustrating concepts, scenes, landscapes and (maybe) characters from my novels. I’m not sure how I didn’t think to combine these two before, but it makes complete sense! Thank you to the ones who suggested the idea to me!

My art and my writing has always felt very separate from one another. Yes, sometimes I have drawn characters or landscapes from my books, and for not one but two Final Major Projects at university I made concept art books for them, but drawing stuff from my novels still felt like a far-away concept for some reason.

I decided I need to have a main focus for my art, as I feel it’s all over the place right now, and I need to give myself more time to write, as I always push it to the bottom of my list of things to do even though it is the main thing I want to be doing! (I want to have the first draft of my first book finished by the end of this year!!!!) I think that combining the two will help me to conceptualise my world to help me write, and will give me lots of subject matter to draw! It’s a win-win.

I think this will be a fun project and will hopefully give me more focus. We’ll see how it goes - I will post pages of the sketchbook on my blogs (without giving too much away about the story itself) and will hopefully be able to post the art I make on my social media too :)

I went a little crazy for the first two spreads! Used watercolours, a bunch of my own stickers and art, and old concept art from the aforementioned FMPs to give me inspiration. Also used my note stickers to give me places to write down ideas and parts of my book that I can try drawing and developing. I’m especially looking forward to designing cities and buildings from the different made-up countries in my story.

✨When the Stars Align ✨

A sketchy one-page illustrative comic. I'm pleased with how it came out! :)

Sketchbook pages

The end of the month was when most things happened! We travelled up to Yorkshire for a family member’s wedding and a couple of days later was my birthday, where we went out to Hidcote Gardens near Evesham. Both events were great, and I made sure to sketch down as much as I could to capture the moments. Here are some pages!

Thank you for reading my July blog post! No YouTube vlog this month as I didn’t film very much, and I’ve still got all of the last months’ vlogs to catch up on…! (Not having Premiere Pro anymore has really taken the fun out of video editing, it’s so painful now.)

If you’ve read this all the way through, consider going over to my Etsy shop and having a browse if you like zines, stickers and prints all based around nature and travelling. You will also find my pet portrait commissions there! letsgetartyshop.etsy.com <3