I have a studio full of toy,  children’s books, crayons and coloured pencils. They bring me joy and ease my anxieties in life. My studio is a reflection of what goes on in my head…stories of pirates, of naughty geese and silly ducks. 

Over my career in accountancy I have trained many employees on software, how to do their work, how to do sets of accounts. Training probably came to forty percent of my time and after four four years of living in France permanently and getting back to my love of illustration and writing, I decided it was time to add some training to my life again. So at the end of March, after a final push to get the studio tidy and functioning, I braved an advert for one to one art lessons via our new group on Facebook:  

https://www.facebook.com/groups/costincastillecreuseactivites/

So far I’ve given three two hour courses and have one today, a complete beginner. I am loving it, even though full of nerves as I am still following my own journey exploring techniques. But I have tealized I am good enough to do it and so far the classes have given me really positive feedback. I have a returning student in a couple of weeks too!

My courses are in the afternoon and it gives students time, if we overrun, not to be against a deadline, to relax and complete their practice illustrations.  There is quite alot to cover, I like to pack in as much as I can and provide a full set if notes to take home, plus I continue to support via messaging or email.

I love whimsical, so choice of subject to work with is normally a toy, one with a soft texture, one with hard, shiny texture or made from angular from wood. This allows exploration of texture in pencil, ink and watercolours. We practice hatching in pen, washes in watercolour and blending in pencils, different paper textures,  use of erasers, pastels, masking fluid, and how light and shade affect the contures of the subject. Plus a look at grissaille to shade all your shaddows in before adding layers of colour.

We look at the colour wheels, mixing colours to avoid using black, creating the sense of white by using colours and tinted papers, using tracing film in ideas and acrylic pens for highlighting. After building confidence in the materials we do two illustrations to use different techniques, pencil and hatching, watercolour and pencils. I am adding a follow up lesson for perspective, and other pencil techniques.

Below is how I structure my illustrations, from soft outlining, to working layer by layer till complete. My students know my work already from social media and that gives them confidence to see what I can create as well as teach.

This is one of our whimsical subjects. We look at expressions and backgrounds and I have added a Children’s Illustration Course to the list, as there is a slight change of methodology when you are working on a book commission or to produce a set of illustrations to sell. It will involve storyboards to plot your many designs, to balance passive and active scenes, ensure continuity between the pages and ensure you can get to the standard thirty-two page length.

Here are my students work. From the usual fear of white paper, of not feeling good enough, of being told they couldn’t do art as an adult, or just not knowing what to draw, what style, they produced lovely pieces. It’s a start. It’s practice, experimenting, trying techniques, looking closely at your subject to get hints about light, shape, texture. Choose a great gut feeling subject you love and work on that as a niche. If you like toys, like I do, use them in your work. If you like steam trains, or ducks, or even kettles, you can make worthy compositions from these subjects. Moving away from the normal will help your work be memorable. 

I use AI to run my ideas through. It provides a visual of what in my head. A project for the future is sea birds and skeletons. It sounds wierd but after an hour of AI promoting, I found my idea worked. I like it’s qwerkiness and will maybe exploring acrylics too, to achieve this. Art is about exploring and if it goes a little awry, no matter, try again.

I recently took on another book commission from Florida. Its been exciting as the subject is birds, but I am trying a totally new way of putting the final illustrations together. It’s worked for my first three that have been approved by the collaborator photographer and I am very excited to spend autumn on this. More in another post.

Practice as much as you can and remember too, if your drawing skills are limited but you want to start painting, shading in, trace your subject and move on to start adding colour. The drawing stage is practice but don’t let that stop you from moving forward.  Artists trace all the time, use photos, use projectors.  If you learn structure as you trace, your learning. It’s what you do with those outlines that matter…how you journey to the final piece.  Have fun. ♡