Children's Picture Book Review: Gaston

Time for a creative children's book review! I love beautifully illustrated children's books. I'm always drawn towards the illustrations in a book first, but then a creative interesting story is icing on the cake. I have always collected children's picture books, I did before I had kids, and I will continue to do so when they've grown up.

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Today I'm looking at the book Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrations by Christian Robinson.

Gaston

This is a fun children's picture book with stylish illustrations that Miss 6 had me reading over and over. It's a clever book involving two families of dogs in France. I'm assuming France because there are names like "Antoinette" and language like "oui oui" in the book. And I'm pretty sure the dogs are french poodles and french bulldogs :)

Two puppies get switched at birth and are somewhat misfits within the other family; but that dynamic feels natural to them. It's a book about being different and fitting in anyway. The story could act as a discussion prompt with kids about being who you are: an individual, complete with all your quirks and flaws.

Seemingly simple graphic-style pictures, the expressions on the dogs portray their emotions well. The stylised shapes of the dogs really make me smile.

Christian Robinson's illustrations have me in awe and wonder. Some people are in awe at super realistic technical illustrations, but I am in awe when an illustrator can really pump a lot of style into the artwork, yet still portray all the emotion that's needed in the story. That's a real skill. The illustrations are just gorgeous.

The story is super cute, the illustrations are super cute. Adorable!

I had a poke around at Christian Robinson's website, which I enjoyed looking at, and can be found here: The Art of Fun

Gaston can be found here.

I would love to check out some other books illustrated by Christian Robinson. I think I'm a bit taken by his illustration style!

Josephine

Rain

So cool. I think his illustrations have a vintage feel to them, but they also look modern at the same time.

I hope you enjoyed this book review! Happy reading...

Jules :)

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Testing Out My New Prismacolor Pencils

As I mentioned in a recent post I have newly acquired some Prismacolor pencils. (Affiliate link- see end of post.)

I seriously feel like a kid at Christmas with these new art supplies in my hot little hands!

I bought the 36 pack. I also made my husband go out to his car at 11pm at night as he picked them up for me. No, I couldn't wait until the morning!

The colours are vivid, and being the colour lover that I am, this is a must. They feel soft and buttery, and I was surprised as I was drawing with them because I was expecting them to be smudging on my work and my palm that was dragging across the page in my sketch book, but they didn't do that. Hardly any colour was on the side of my palm.

Playing with my new art supplies :)

They draw over a lot of surfaces. They even had a go at drawing over some gloss medium! Not fantastically, but to make a mark over a gloss surface is the sign of a great pencil. I don't know how they got them to do that without being smudgy!

This is my sketch book where I used a mix of pencil & acrylic. I love the way they draw over the acrylic paints and the colour is still intense. I'm really getting into art journalling lately.

Close up. Paint & pencil.

This is just pure pencil. Of course I couldn't help to put a couple of strange creatures in there. How can you blame me? I was listening to Beck sing about silver foxes looking for romance. (Weird music is very cool to get the creativity flowing, if you ask me!) I love Beck!

This is again a mix of pencil & acrylic paints. I can't help introducing paints early when I'm drawing. But as I'm loving the intensity of these colours so much I'm happy just drawing with them for longer than normal before I pick up the paint brush.

So, the verdict is that I am in love! If I was stranded on a desert island, these pencils would be a no brainer!

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.

Art Book Review & Road Test: The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy.

Art book review time! Today I'm reviewing The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy.

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First of all, I can't believe I'd never heard of this artist before. I thought I was fully immersed and up to date with all this arty stuff online. But when I saw some images of a fellow artist friend's work on her instagram that she had completed whilst taking one of Alena Hennessy's online art courses, I immediately googled Alena and I was so happy with what I discovered. (Surely I have seen her work around, and just not known who she was? Surely!)

When I first got my hands on this book I couldn't stop to read any of the information as the pictures were so beautiful it teased me to just look through the whole book first! The first thing that jumps out at me is her colours. They are bright and bold, which is what I like to use too.

Once you've got that out of your system, you can focus on the information and 52 prompts given in the book. I love that they are prompts so that you can take some inspiration or guidance from them but create your own individual & original artwork. 

Some of Alena's breathtaking art...

Just so amazing and beautiful.

As the title suggests this book is about creating art/ paintings. It goes through materials and tools and the uses and applications of different paints, mediums, surfaces and extra things you might like to use whilst creating art. Then, some basic techniques, colour theory and other thoughts regarding creating art are discussed before moving onto the prompts. Some of the prompts are followed by mini workshops, where she goes through a certain technique in more detail. 

This is not a how-to-draw book, but a book full of prompts that Alena has outlined with an explanation for each on how you might get started. You can use the prompts to push your own boundaries, try something you've never tried before (like paint a picture with a minimal colour palette for example) or use it to help get out of a creative slump. Or just for plain fun!

I think regardless of if you were wanting to get some prompts to start painting, the simple act of just flicking through this book is inspiring enough for me and just makes me want to paint anyway!

I decided to try a bit of 'finger painting' and 'paint with prints'. You know, I never finger paint. Maybe I have with my kids but not on my own personal artwork. 

So I took out a half finished painting, one that has been sitting around in my studio for a while and I added some components from some of my old unusable prints.

 ...And then dipped my finger in some paint.

Very fun and liberating! I added some splodgy marks here and there.

Other prompts I focussed on during this painting from Alena's book were 'repetition' (which I added in the form of repeating patterns), 'add some script', 'layering' (always!), 'draw on top', and 'found objects'. I used some bits and pieces from my mosaic stash :). 

My finished "prompted" artwork 

I really love this book and was so happy to discover the gold that is Alena Hennessy's work and teachings. It's the kind of book that will happily live on my coffee table just for the pleasure of reading through it to kickstart some inspiration, or just as valuable accompanying me in the studio.

I do think this book could be used as a fantastic tool for kicking some creative block. Just start with a prompt and hopefully the flow will return. And with 52 prompts there is one that's sure to spark some inspiration.

If you'd like to know more check out Alena's The Painting Workbook here or visit her website here.

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.

New Art Material: Testing Out Montana Paint Pens

Recently I purchased some new art supplies to trial: Montana Paint Pens through Hobby Hoppers, which is an Etsy shop in Australia.

For years & years & years I've used the same supplies. A matte flow (as apposed to a structured) acrylic paint in a few select colours (just 4 different tubes can you believe!?) and a gloss medium. For years. Did I mention that already!? It's just that I feel a little sad that all that time I could have been hanging around with some exciting new studio buddies!

Recently, (in the last couple of years) I started experimenting and branching out to try other colours, mediums, techniques and media, and I'm so glad I did. You never know when you're going to fall in love with a new colour or medium, and what effect it will have on your work. I have branched out to use turquoise colours, deep red (cool) hues (I only used to use warm reds), stencils, printing techniques... I have always tried lots of different crafts, but within painting I seemed to just stick to the same limited tool box. Too safe!

I was reading an art book recently where it talked about using paint pens. I was intrigued and just had to try. These opaque acrylic pens that go over just about any surface, including gloss paint/ medium! Which is super great because I love my gloss medium.

The Montana brand was one of the brands that was recommended in the book due to their lightfastness, their quick drying ability, and their ease of use. You can write over the top of your artwork or block in some colour. You could use them to draw a picture over the top and then paint it in. Polka dots, lines; the options are limitless. I bought three pens in the fine 2mm size.

Before I used the paint pens here, I started with my sketch book and started quickly filling in the page with colour and texture using a 7B pencil (I love those pencils, they are more like a soft black pencil than graphite) and acrylic paint. 

I used thin washes of acrylic paint & scungy thick brush strokes coupled with the pencil. You can see from my strokes this was quickly done. I also used a bit of matte medium to thin down some paint and do some quick washes.

I usually like to fill in all my background, whether I'm working in my sketch book or a wood panel or canvas. Even if none of the colour or marks will appear in the final, it always adds more interest and depth to the finished works in my opinion. It's like adding a bit of history.

I also love to use acrylics watered down instead of watercolours. Because I usually work in multiple layers, I would get annoyed with the underneath watercolour layer shifting underneath, hence the reason I use my acrylics.

Time to experiment with a paint pen. I bought a bright pink, a lime green, and white. Apparently the pens are refillable too, which is great to know.

I added some geometric shapes.

Then some cactus-y shapes

Here we go, the finished (for now anyway!) art journal entry. The green wasn't as opaque as the white and pink, you can see a few scribbles there, I think it still works well.

I've also started incorporating the paint pens into some of my other works as you can see in these snippets of artwork. (This is a section of a unicorn print in my shop.)

The white is quite opaque, which is fantastic. I love the white.

Testing the white out again on this small canvas. I think I went too far, and added too much. (Yes, that happens whilst creating artwork.)

The pink really stands out here in this section of a painting. It's quite opaque too.

So if you're wanting to try out the Montana paint pens I found a few colours available in Australia from Hobby Hoppers. 

I hope you enjoyed this post. Any techniques you'd like me to show you how to do on the blog? I'm all ears, just let me know in the comments.

Jules :)

Art Book Review & Road Test: Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough

Today I'm chatting about the art book Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough.

This post contains affiliate links (see bottom of post for explanation).

Daring Adventures in Paint

I have admired Mati Rose McDonough's artwork for a while now. She has this amazing ability to create modern artworks that look like they are directly from the inner child. Like gallery-quality-kids-paintings! And it may look like an easy thing to do, until you try to do it. It is in fact, so hard to do. Personally I think she has perfected it.

Some of Mati Rose's work. Those elephants are just so wonderful.

In Daring Adventures in Paint Mati includes ideas and prompts for creating art, and shares some techniques that she uses.

She talks about ideas for getting inspired, plus where she personally pulls inspiration from. I always love to hear where other artists get their inspiration from.

There's an honest story in there about her own beginnings and feelings as an artist (and I can totally relate). 

She talks about habits and rituals and finding your own style/ voice. All important stuff. Being an artist and creating is not all about the physical act of painting or making, it's a whole jumble of feelings, life experiences and your perspective that make up the unique-you, which all comes together to make the artist that creates. She talks about finding your own unique voice: "Your voice is a mixture of all the sparkliness and grit that tells your story." I love that. 

I also love the bright colour and the beautiful photography in the book.

I think you would gain something from this book if you like the style of Mati's work, and are interested in learning about some of her techniques and how she creates her paintings.

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So, here's the road test! The book goes through creating a piece of artwork, and you see how she completes each stage until the painting is finished at the end of the book. There are also other paintings in there with different techniques explained.

I chose to create my background with a few techniques Mati describes, including covering the background with some paint applications with a couple of Mati's techniques, and I also chose to do some collage with decorative paper. 

Paint, collage, then more paint

I then chose to invite collaboration (another prompt in the book). Luckily I have two little artists living in my house! "Miss 6!... I need you to draw a tiger!" We both have a thing for tigers lately.

In she came and sat down and boldly drew a tiger. I've said it before and I'll say it again; we need to learn from kids' fearlessness when it comes to creating art. She had no issues about taking the pencil and just drawing top & centre over my art!

I then continued with some collage and added a few more elements here and there. In the book it describes placing other elements over the top of your prepared background so I used some of the ideas in the book plus a little artistic license.

I like the previous collage element and how you can still see a glimpse of the patterned paper above the tigers head.

And then the finished painting. 

Close up detail of Miss 6's tiger

I had fun with Daring Adventures in Paint and I'm sure this book will be out on my coffee table often for random perusing.

I hope you enjoyed this review & road test. Do you own or would love to own Mati's book? Or love her artwork as I do?

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.

Book Illustration Inspiration From The Past

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Hello! I'm going to chat today about the inspiration that lead me to where I am today: immersed in a creative world of art and illustration.

My Nan (rest in peace) always said I'd be an illustrator. Ever since I was young she would tell people that. Even before I knew that's what I would do.

At one stage in our lives she ended up in a TAC centre (a place for road accident victims to recover) after a pretty horrible car accident. I used to visit her in my old Gemini car (that had handmade bear seat covers complete with faces and ears on the top) and hang out and draw pictures for her walls. I always drew pictures for her.

A copied May Gibbs illustration by my younger self

The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie

The iconic Australian illustrator May Gibbs was one of my first illustration loves. Gumnut baby after gumnut baby I drew. I especially loved when Snugglepot & Cuddlepie ventured underwater and met Little Obelia. I remember clearly drawing Little Obelia and shading those pearls with my cherished set of 72 derwent pencils. I think if I ever got a tattoo, it would probably be a homage to May Gibbs. Probably Little Obelia!

Holly Hobbie was another fond memory. My Mum painted pictures of her and I got my hands on my Mum's imagery, I don't know if it was books or her own paintings, but I remember copying the Holly Hobbie images. I was fascinated with the detail in them.

Me and my Primary School bestie at Dromkeen

In primary school we took an excursion to Dromkeen which is a place that exhibits and houses picture book art. I distinctly remember the end of the tour where we were taken to an area that held crisp new books and I had some money so that I could buy one. I remember holding a ten dollar note in my hands. My childhood was not filled with extravagant amounts of toys and possessions, so I really valued this chance to buy a book. I remember a stack of The BFG books and that was the book I chose. This also spurred a love of Quentin Blake's illustrations. His seemingly haphazard line work is quite intentional and brings out the emotion and movement of characters. He captures personality with the free flowing lines, and lessons of studying this flow seeped in to my psyche and became part of my understanding about how shape and line can come together to form natural expression.

Quentin Blake's illustrations are full of flow, life and fun

The BFG

I read The BFG book many times, to the point of it literally falling apart. We have a new copy that I am currently reading this book to my girls, but the old one is still a treasured possession. 

I also loved Dr Suess illustrations for their flowing spilling wavy look. It looks as though some of the drawings have been squeezed out of a tube, know what I mean!?

And I'm sure Golden Books were are part of many people's childhood. I had a few favourites in there, but as an adult I can't go much past the texture and detail of Richard Scarry's illustrations. I love the paint work which looks like he uses dry brushing that gives the illustrations a textural look. 

Ah, such memories. And I am grateful to all these amazing people that have inspired me along my journey. I'm sure there's more that I haven't thought of! I'll have to update this post if I do. I'd love to hear your favourites!

Jules :)

*Affiliate Information: Affliliate links help me earn small commissions on products (at no extra cost to you), which helps support my love of blogging and sharing creative things. I only ever recommend or link to products that I'm genuinely into.