Face only a mother could love..

 A quick Pastel sketch using techniques from the book Drawing and Painting People-A Fresh Aproach by Emily Ball.

Gross detail was done,not looking at the Paper at all but staring at the mirror instead,extra details were done by starting at the nose as a jump off point,then not looking at the image until that particular colour layer was complete. I cheated by blocking in the background afterwards(a cardinal sin according to Ms Ball!). I Think next time will try not looking at all and using random colours then see how that goes.

BOTH by Tom Gauld and Simone Lia

An early Birthday present from Sarah, Tom does what he does best here,mixing the mundanity of daily existence with extraordinary circumstances. A pair of peeved astonauts stuck with each other for company on an Alien world. Masked wrestlers trying to have a day out without being recognised. Low key but witty in its execution and beautifully composed.

Simone Lia's niave drawing style is always(for me) a pleasure to look at. Her humour is more surreal(woman wants to go out with a fence....? A prudish sweetcorn kernel..) This book also contains the first appearance of Fluffy the Rabbit who thinks his/her owner is its daddy. Fluffy got a book all of it's own  in 2007,which I recommend reading also.

BOTH is out of print now but you can still pick up a copy on Amazon if you've got a spare fiver and don't mind second hand.

My apologies for the fuzzy picture edges but the book was slightly to big to fit on the scanner without overhang,hence out of focus at extremities.

UCLAN Drawing & Image making Degree show 2011

Recently Visited the UCLAN Degree Exhibitions. The D&IM Show caught my eye for it's Illustratyness(?). Where the 2D image is still King. Though there was a wide variety of mark-making techniques used, Charcoal,Ink,photography and sewing onto fabric to name a few. All bar one(see bottom) resulted in 2D finished pieces. Not that I dont like a bit of installation work myself, just it's nice to see how the other half do it within the self initiated brief structure of Fine Art.
 Visit: http://www.drawingandimagemaking.com/

                                       Mark Moore
See more at http://www.markmooreillustration.com/

                                       Emma Rowell
Needlpoint and Animal carcasses.
See more at http://www.emmarowell.tumblr.com/

                                       Lucia Perrigo
Collages of Artists own drawings.
No link sorry.

                                    Rebecca Elliston
 This piece was based on the concept of escapism. During the exhibition it contained soil and plants,like a minature jungle in a tent, In my opinion it could have possiblybenefitted from being much larger as it was only about 1 metre tall, something that the viewer could actually enter and explore would have had more impact I think.
More of Rebecca's stuff at http://www.flickr.com/people/beckiboos