Birds and seals, an experiment

Hello lovelies,

I hope you’re having a delightful summer filled with fruit salad, slow walks in Nature and lazy mornings!

Summer weather hasn’t really kicked in here in Scotland, other than a few days of warmth and sun in June, it’s been quite cloudy and wet… I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit tough on the mood (although seeing the heatwave and bushfires happening in Europe and other parts of the world is really upsetting… That being said, we wouldn’t mind a bit more warmth here…).

This year I’m working on two picture books (part of the same collection), It’s a lovely and exciting project but it’s extremely time consuming! I don’t have much time to do anything else (while squeezing in all the little tasks related to my shop). I’m trying to carve out the time to go for walks and make art for myself… It seems there aren’t enough hours in the day, which is frustrating.

This is quite new for me, until now I always had plenty of time to dedicate to my own personal projects and create products for my shop. Client work was sporadic.

I keep thinking it’s important to sometimes slow down and sketch a few things for myself. The project I’m working on requires lots of little details and precise attention. You know how much I love working for hours on the same piece, but I also need to sometimes go back to my sketchbooks and draw freely, spontaneously.

I recently went to a local birdwatching spot (Letham pool) and stumbled upon these Reed buntings. I enjoyed watching them chirping and rummaging in the reed plants. To begin with I thought there were collecting fluff to make a nest but in fact they seemed to be looking for something underneath (seeds?).

A few days later I felt the need to scribble and loosen up with my crayons. Inspired by the sepia tones of the birds and the plants, I started to apply colours and textures to a few pieces of paper, with the idea of making a collage afterwards. Again, I was improvising as I went, just curious to see where it would lead me.

I deliberately made this quite rough and spontaneous, the goal here was to assemble these interesting textures and see how they worked together.

Then I scanned this happy mess and tried to give it a bit of a cohesive look digitally.

And here is the result! It’s certainly messy but I like the energy and playfulness that emerges from it. I find that the colours and different textures of brush strokes and crayons compliment each other. Anyway, I couldn’t go wrong with it as the purpose of this little workshop was to play and relax.

Coastal path walk

You might remember my previous blog post A solitary retreat by the sea where I told you about the days I spent by myself on the coast. I had stumbled upon a bunch of seals but didn’t have my camera with me. A few weeks later I went back to the same spot, with my camera this time, hoping to see them again. And here they were, chubby and adorable, chilling on the rocks.

I always get ridiculously excited when I spot sea animals, as a person who grew up in the center of France, far form the coast, this is always an unusual and marvellous sight! When I tell Scottish people about the seal encounters they’re always surprised by my excitement, yes, a seal, and so what? It’s totally normal for them :)

When I was a kid I was obsessed with these animals, my ultimate dream was to swim with them (and not with dolphins like most people). I thought they looked like weird cats with no ears, I found them utterly cute and funny. Until a few years ago I had never spotted a seal in real life, and even to this day the magic is still here. I love observing them chilling on rocks looking so fat and clumsy, and yet see how agile they are once in the water.

Back from my stay by the sea I felt inspired to draw and paint some simple sea scenes. Between two client projects I went back to my experiments and painted a few pieces of paper with blue and brown ink. Already a therapeutic process!

The idea was to create a small series of seascape collages and add some seals to them.

I finally decided to scan the seals page and add them digitally. A mix between traditional and digital collage (recipe that worked well for my Advent challenge back in December).

I ended up having so much fun doing these! It looks quite different from my usual “style”, although I’m trying to step away from this notion of style, which feels limiting to me.

I enjoyed working with simple shapes and moody tones, the playfulness and a certain childishness of the result make me happy!

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to finish them (they were 4 collages in total), maybe another time!

Interestingly last month I was working on a client project involving seals, what a funny coincidence! Well, not really a coincidence as this is an illustration that will be turned into a puzzle. The theme of the collection being “Tales and legends”, I was free to pick and illustrate one tale of my choice (I chose a famous Scottish one!). I’ll tell you more about it when the puzzle is released at the end of this year.

Pure joy to be working with this blue palette! For this project I’m back to my good old Acryla gouache (still a challenge though as there is an important part dedicated to the seascape and it even involves a human character!)

That’s it for today my dears, I hope you enjoyed reading this random blog post and having a look at my creative experiments!

I wish you a wonderful summer, see you soon!

Cécile

Hello September

A solitary retreat by the sea