Illustration Friday

 ©Caroline Soer 2012

This week's Illustration Friday word is 'yield'.  Did you know that a poppy head can yield up to 30,000 seeds?  (No, me neither!)  This illustration is watercolour, gesso and pen ink.

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

Wilderness - mixed water media

This week for IF I've painted a landscape - something I rarely do!! My version of this week's theme of Wildnerness is painted mostly with watercolour and ink, with some coloured pencil and a touch of gouache detail . See more wildnernesses here !

Illustration Friday - Wrapped

'Wrapped'

This piece was a complete experiment - I was a bit stumped by the prompt this week and really wanted to try something different. I eventually decided to make an ink and plastic wrap (cling film, saran wrap, whatever you like to call it) print for this week's IF prompt of 'Wrapped'. I merrily washed on watercolours and dropped ink, sprayed with water and then manipulated a sheet of plastic wrap over the pools of colour on the paper. When dry I tried looking for something in the resulting print to link to the word 'wrapped'. Oh boy ... I started doing this on Sunday morning and discarded more than 20 different prints. Nothing, no matter how hard I looked, presented itself!

Until... Eureka! This afternoon I finally spotted something. Yep, there was a little shrouded figure and then another and look one more! I then began to work into them a little with Inktense pencils and acrylic ink to make them come to life - I really hope you can see them too!

It was fun to do - quite messy - my fingers are stained a rainbow!

Here's a close-up, but to see more clearly click on the images for a larger version.

Illustration Friday - Contagious

Here's my submission for this week's Illustration Friday theme - Contagious. A quick pen and coloured pencil sketch of some unhappy pooches - looks like a dalmation's spots are contagious now!

I was too late for last week's 'Parade', but thought I'd post it here, anyway. My version is a red carpet parade collage.



And last, but definitely not least, I was honoured to receive this award beautifully painted by the lovely Laurel of Studio Lolo. Thank you so much and apologies for the delay in posting this Laurel! If anyone's blog is uplifting it is definitely Laurel's - be sure to visit - it's a delight to read and there is always wonderful art and photography to enjoy.

Illustration Friday - Fleeting

This week's IF theme is 'fleeting'. I've posted a page from my sketchbook with a couple of illustrations of dragonflies. I'm a big fan of these creatures - so beautiful, but for such a fleeting time. Their adult life lasts around two months only.



Now, here's one that's lasted a while longer! This is a favourite dragonfly image of mine. A fabulous art nouveau, plique a jour brooch created for the actress Sarah Bernhardt by Renee Lalique. Lalique designed many pieces for her during the period 1891-94 .


Finally, here's a photo of a fabulous Hibiscus flower in my garden. This dramatic bloom is also very fleeting - it lasts only 24 hours!