Stag Beetles!

 It's the time of year when beetles are abroad!

These beautiful and harmless creatures are Britain's largest insect but sadly they are in decline.  We keep chopped up logs in the garden which are a haven for wildlife and attract creatures like beetles to feed on.  They also attract interesting animals like woodpeckers who come to feed on them.

http://ptes.org/campaigns/stag-beetles/stag-beetle-facts/

There is a campaign at the above link to report stag beetles if you find them.  I just sent them a report for a few in our garden.  Including the very shy female below.

 

This male was from last year but he posed so handsomely for the photo I felt I should include him here!

Dad's Day Drawings

Since it's Father's Day, I thought I'd share a funny little tradition that I started years ago for my Dad.  I love finding and choosing cards because nowadays the noisy, tiresome "U R <age> WELL DUN" ones are not the only option.  Local artists make their own you can pick up at craft fairs and even chain stores have artsy unique cards that offer variety.

Even with that choice, I felt like I should be putting a bit of originality into my well wishing for my parents, considering how much they do for me, so I decided to draw little cartoons of my father's favourite animal; the hare.

Above are two from a few years ago - and below one I drew last night, I hope showing how I've developed to sketch things a bit more organically and characterfully.

 Happy Father's Day, everyone!

Warmaster: Scenery & Terrain

 My initial plan for this year was to paint / do / make a lot more than last year.  2014 was a year where I got very little done.  Whilst I've not quite done the "10 figures a week" or the "1 blister a week" challenge, I have been chipping away at various dormant projects.

Here I have some terrain for the excellent but now sadly defunct GW game "Warmaster".  Some resin rocks from eBay that were absolutely ridden with holes and took a long time to fix up.

 And in addition, two lots of stone walls from http://www.totalbattleminiatures.com/ which are metal, not resin.  Metal chips easily so I gave them a triple coat of matt varnish, put steel paper on the bases and lashings of green static grass around the edges to give them some protection.  Warmaster is 10mm scale so these could represent a literal, small stone wall or the defences at the edge of a large town in a more abstract sense.

Ponies!

I’ve been rather aimless in terms of finding good imaginative things to draw without objectives.  But seeing how easily even a little 10 second doodle can cheer people up has put me in the mind to try and draw things for people around me.

I have a couple of very sweet girls in my life who are fans of My Little Pony.  I thought it would be fun to draw them each a character in the style of the show.  It turns out there’s an excellent spin off comic of the cartoon with an excellent and characterful illustrator called Andy Price:

http://comicsalliance.com/artist-andy-price-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-comics/

I attempted to mimic his style for these pictures.  The scans aren’t very good but I feel I managed to imbue the original pictures with a degree of character.

 The first is a "cutie mark crusader", meaning she does not have a "cutie mark" (the flank symbolthat denotes a pony's talent) but I had her making friends with a butterfly to suggest that her talent will be to do with animals, the same as the girl I drew her for.

The latter I named "Inkwell" and gave her a pen-nib as a "cutie mark" to suggest her love of reading and writing, as that felt appropriate for it's intended!

"Greetings, Traveller!"

This is my first foray into blogging – a record of explorations in wargaming, illustration and weird fiction!


I will mostly be posting pictures of modelling and wargames – along with attempts to self improve in illustrating characters and stories.