May 2024 | sketching, digital art and animating

The start of May was filled with lots of little personal projects that included macramé, bead-making, making little comics, collaging and journalling. It was nice to spend time making things for only myself. I won’t be showing these projects, though, so it cuts out a bit of this blog! :)

Cryptid Zine

Our little artist collective (as we now officially are) created a zine together for a pop-up gallery space on the Isle of Wight. Our theme was cryptids - mythical creatures from each of our counties. I decided to depict the legend of The Guardian of Penyard Castle’s Treasure in this digital piece.

Here is a short description of the legend I wrote for the zine:

It is said that a large Jackdaw guards a hoard of gems and treasure in a cave underneath the remains of Penyard Castle near Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. Legends say that a farmer looking for wealth once found two iron doors somewhere beneath the ruins and managed to prise them open with twenty oxen. However, before he could get to the treasure, he saw the bird protecting it, and the doors slammed closed again with a voice echoing through the site telling him how lucky he was not to lose his life.

Photo credit @deeminie 

Draw this in Your Style submission

A Draw this in Your Style was hosted by @littlemushroomvillage on Instagram around November of 2023. I began to draw my submission…then decided I wanted to animate it…and promptly abandoned it!! I was having trouble knowing how to animated it well, as well as to get to know the new Procreate Dreams, so I procrastinated A LOT! This month I decided to finally finish it off, forgetting about the animation part and just focusing on finishing the illustration. I love how it turned out in the end!!

In other news - I GOT TO HOLD A ONE-WEEK-OLD LAMB! Can you tell I'm excited about it? :D

We went to a May Day festival local to us and got to meet three cuties (who had very unfortunately lost their mothers, so were being looked after by the farmers themselves.)

She was so affectionate, nuzzling into my neck!!

*cough cough* Anyway, back to the more serious stuff...

Croome sketching + exhibition

We visited Croome Court for the day, mainly to see an exhibition that was taking place in one of the rooms to do with a 200 year-old collection of botanical documents and illustrations recorded by a William Dean. To be honest, I thought they would be displaying the documents they found, but realised the exhibition showcased re-imagined paintings of the plants found in the documents by a contemporary local art group. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was still lovely artwork!

I spent time sketching too, and we explored parts of the site we hadn’t seen on our first visit.

CMYK + ArtHole Cardiff Zine Fest

Visited two art festivals this month and had a nice browse around. Here are my little hauls :)

Animating!

As mentioned last month I’ve been making an animation - and I finished it this month! I really enjoyed making it, and am glad I pushed myself to do it as I’ve been wanting to animate a whole video for a very long time. Using Cardiff Zine Fest’s theme was very fun and silly. I loved giving all the geese their own personalities and ways of being funny. I really enjoyed the background design too, especially the inside of the tent, thinking about what kind of products geese would want to sell!

I’ve yet to put sound on the animation, but when I do I will upload it to YouTube and place the link here!

You can watch it on Instagram or Facebook for the time being :)

The Weir Garden sketches

We visited the Weir Garden at the end of the month. I enjoyed drawing all the organic forms in the fruit and veg garden and on the trail, as well as some old man-made things!

When visiting Cardiff and Bournemouth later in the month I was able to put up more of my letsgetarty and From the Witch’s Scullery ads - they're travelling around a bit!! :D

Upcoming

Next month I will be tabling at Swindon Zine Fest on the 22nd June! I’m really looking forward to it and am busy preparing for it, making new mini zines, prints and stickers!

Thank you for reading my May blog post! I also have a May art vlog up on YouTube showing some springtime walks, day trips to the places mentioned above, some collage-making and a few other bits and bobs! :)