Digital colouring

 Spring 2025

After my eviction drawings I had an artist block, I felt absolutely no inspiration to draw, I spent all my time in the garden. Come spring I turned my computer on and opened photoshop. 
I decided I wanted a big coloured version of "Summer" on my bedroom wall, so I finished the black and white digital drawing and coloured it.

Both the drawings are available as A2 Giclee prints, you can find them Art Makers portfolio

HERE - https://www.artmakers.uk/portfolio/amanda/https://www.artmakers.uk/portfolio/amanda/

I enjoyed digital colouring so much that I decided to colour Ilfracombe too.

I wasn't 100% happy with the colour, so I tweaked it and then couldn't work out which one I liked the best, so both of them (plus the black and white) are available from my Art Makers portfolio.

Eviction drawings 2024 to 2025

In February I finished my eviction series, the drawings aren't very neat, but as I'm going to keep them it doesn't really matter. They are the memory of a very difficult time in my life, that miraculously turned into happiness.

"My Now House" Lynton 2024

"My Never House" 2024, when life was at its darkest and I was researching the price of caravans and the cost of storing all our possessions.

"My New House" Combe Martin 2025

Photo's on my Phone 7th August 2024 to 22nd of August

 The sun still shone (for a while).

 

We went on a family trip to Landacre. All the grown ups laid on the river bank and enjoyed the sun, except for Mummy who played in the river with the boys.

I didn't take any photo's, the ones above are of another family trip back in 2015, with our grown children (before the small boy's existed) and our beloved previous GSD Loki, I miss them all so much....

Anyway I did a very bad sketch, which I had to colour in when I came home as I didn't want it to ruin my sketch book. The only bit that remotely looks like the Landacre are the bridge arches.

The next day the sun went away and the rain arrived.

So we took the boys to soft play, which is the best rainy day invention. This was our view for 2 hours, the boys came back once or twice to demand drinks & food, we enjoyed every minute of it.

I finished my second colouring. It's an A4+ print, hand coloured with water colour pen. I've included the pen so you can see the size and depth of detail.

Last Thursday we received an official looking e-mail from our landlords solicitor, we've worried about eviction for a long time, the e-mail didn't say we were being evicted, but it made us fear what was coming next. We took the dogs up to Countisbury to try and blow some of the worries away. The colours were amazing in the early evening sun. We met a herd of Exmoor ponies and stood still with the dogs while the ponies passed us on both side. The dogs were amazing just stood still with us and watched, both Siri and Ron had a slight wobble, but didn't bark so the ponies ignored them. We were both so proud of our dog boy's, seems like all our constant training is paying off.

On Monday both us and Dais were served a section 21 no fault eviction notice. We both have 2 months to find a new home, before our landlord starts court proceedings.

At the point in time when this photo was taken both Maggie and Siri had no idea that Queenie and Grandpa were scared and angry and trying to hide their tears. I wish I could say they were still oblivious to what was happening. Mummy is doing her best to protect the boys, but it's too big a thing to hide, they know they are going to move house and maybe have to leave their friends & family. Siri is worried and stuck to my side like glue, he's scared and doesn't understand what's going on, so I'm making sure he spends lots of time with his girlfriend & her mum.

There's a housing crisis, too many houses have been sold as second homes & airbnb's, there is no where for the locals to live. 

To make a single mum with 2 small children and a slightly broken old couple close to retirement age homeless is devastating, it means our family has been broken in two and face an uncertain future.

I have no doubt our flat will be sold as a second home or airbnb and will remain empty for months of the year. 

This is the 4th time we have lost our home, the first was our house when Phil was made redundant, the sale of the house went through the day before the bailiffs turned up. 

The second was because our landlord didn't want to repair the chimney so evicted us and sold the flat so it was someone else's problem. 

The third was a bolt hole the second time Phil was made redundant. We have very kind friends who helped us out when we needed it, we knew it was only temporary and would be sold, but it still hurt when the estate agent came round to value it.

Life has kicked us so many times, I fear that if we have to leave our friends, family & village behind there won't be much left to kick.

The one thing I am adamant about is I will not give up my dogs, I would rather live in a tent and you never know it might just come to that.

We have applied to the council for help, but have been told we are in a long queue due to landlords panic selling. Labour have promised a new law making section 21 notices a thing of the past, but until it is passed there will be a lot more in the same situation as us.

On the day the notice arrived we took the boys to Dunster.

Dunster beach was grey and gloomy, but we made the most of it Grandpa climbed rocks with the boy's while I threw (and lost) balls for the dogs. Then we ate ice cream in a gale on the top of the hill overlooking Porlock.

In an effort to avoid looking at the packing boxes surrounding me and to try and take my mind off it I've coloured a second Summer print. Its also coloured in watercolour pens, so strictly no tears or the rainbows will end up running all over the page.

The photo is of it almost finished, I've finished it now and moved onto the next.

Rainbows are full of hope & positivity , if I colour enough of them maybe the positivity will rub off on us and we won't have to spend Christmas Day living in a tent.

We are off to stay with our son & his husband next week, so we can visit family and have a couple of days with them. We both desperately need this break, maybe it will help us come to terms with what's going on and help us move on to better things.

Photo's on my Phone 28th July to 6th August 2024

Seems like ages since my last post, but it was only a week ago.

The sun has finally come out so the day's have been warm and fuzzy.

Ron didn't want to play ball anymore so he refused to move and forced his master to carry him. It was early evening and even though the temperature had gone down he still exhausted himself. This was after 5 mins of play, trouble is he runs a million miles an hour so gets tired really quickly. So no more ball play for Ron until it gets a lot cooler.

We went to lots of beaches. 

This is Woolacombe, in between swimming and playing football the boys pretended to be really cool, all Queenie and Grandpa wanted to do was lay in the sun and read their books, but alas caring for two small boys makes it impossible.

In between swimming and shouting at small boys to try and stop them kicking balls at people I did a sketch, which I'm not terribly happy. The tents were supposed to look like jelly fish and the jelly fish tentacles to look like the sea. I shouldn't have added the parasols, but I quite like the people, I added the spots to make it better, but instead I've made it worse. Sometimes things aren't meant to be.

The dogs re-enacted a photo taken about 9 years ago, only Tinks remains of the original 3. Siri has replaced Loki and Ron has replaced Billy, which is ironic because Ron hates cat's. I wish I still had a Billy, he was the best cat ever, but sadly we will have to wait until Ron has gone, fingers crossed it's a very long time. I will wait for another Billy in the same way I will wait for another Land Rover.

Our next beach trip was to Blacklands which is our local beach at the bottom of the hill,  it's a huge contrast  to Woolacombe. We did more swimming and I attempted to do more reading, I might of managed a page or two. I hate photo's of me, but this one is ok, its me & my small boys at home in my happy place.

Yesterday's beach was Crow point, no swimming as the tide was out, but plenty of sand, most of it is in still in my hair and sketch book! A little bit more relaxing as the boy's played on the big sand dune, which is on its own and means they can't disappear into the Burrows like rabbits never to be found again.

My Crow Point sketch is just a pencil sketch, I will work over it in fine line pen.

I've finished my first colouring of the ghost of Hollerday House, it's interesting to see how the colour changes the image. I love it and have already started on the next coloured print, the coloured Hollerday House will be available to buy as soon as I've worked out how much to charge. If you are interested please let me know.

I'm still working on the digital version of Summer, I can't wait to start colouring, but it will probably be digital colouring as the A1 print will be far too big.

Drawing for me

Looking through my photo's I realised that last year was the year I drew for everyone else but me. 

I wanted (and needed) to sell prints, due to the recession which has shrunk all my income streams into a trickle.

I thought that if I drew what I thought people would like to buy that the prints would sell, but I hadn't considered that just because you like something it doesn't mean you are going to buy it.

I also drew for the people who said "I'd love to see a drawing of my building/shop/house etc etc" at the time I considered this was an intent to buy, but it wasn't. It was exactly what they said, "I would love to see.." not "I would like to buy.."

Over the last year attending fairs & markets numerous people commented that their house wasn't on one of my drawings, so they wouldn't buy it, but if I did a drawing that included their house that they would buy a print.

Over the past few weeks I have been considering starting several new drawings that would include all the missing houses, I even printed several photo's to use as inspiration, but I haven't been inspired enough to put pen to paper.

I think life is telling me to draw for me, so I'm rewinding, hoping I'll get back to here or some place similar.

At present I have a block about starting something and getting it wrong, so Iam colouring and altering prints that don't sell.

At the moment I'm working on Hollerday House

Which started off as this.

The coloured version is a bit of a mess, as I'm still trying to find the right pens to use, there are a few places where the markers have bled over the line or tiny spots of colour when the acrylic pen decided to leak, but on the whole I'm very happy and enjoying every minute of it.

At the moment my guilty pleasure is looking at pens on-line trying to find the perfect one to colour prints, a few have accidentally ended up in the post on their way to me 😁

Experiments & other stuff

Not only have I finished Ilfracombe , but I've also finished Woolacombe.

I quite like it, but got carried away with acrylic pen and have over worked it. I was going to have it framed so I could exhibit it, but I'm not sure its worth it, so I'll find/make a mount and sell it as it is.

After finishing a major project I always feel a bit lost, so this weekend I've been playing until inspiration strikes. I decided I needed to tackle my Verona green sketchbook, the paper is beautiful, but the green dulls the colours and colour is my thing, so I've struggled to use it. I decided to experiment with different mediums, the first was Posca acrylic pens (one of my favourites) and think I don't need to look any further they are perfect, the colours are luminous.

The drawing on the right is drawn with a 0.003 pen and coloured with a 0.5 pen, it would be nice if I could perfect combining the two pens. 

 

I follow the artist  Niamh Moran on Instagram she works over her prints, adding more colour and detail, so each print is individual. As I've got several prints that don't sell I thought I'd experiment.

This is the First quarter of Summer, I've used several different mediums trying to find one that works. I used fine line felt pens, marker pens, coloured pencils and finally acrylic pens. Fine line pens are too dark, the paper is porous so the markers bleed, my pencils are too soft, I struggle to keep them within the lines, but yet again the acrylic pens are perfect.

Experimenting with Summer has led me to look at it again.

Summer started as a drawing of all the places we had visited with our grand boys in the school summer holidays in 2022.

The original has orange juice and dog foot prints all over it thanks to my then very large bouncy puppy, so I knew I could never sell it, so I put it into photoshop and started drawing over it. In the autumn of 2022 I started drawing Lynton and abandoned Summer. At that time I had only drawn the top half, so I cut it into 2 pieces to sell as quarters of Summer.

I had several prints of the First quarter of Summer, but as it wasn't popular I never bothered having the second quarter printed.

At some point in time I coloured the first quarter in digitally, which I love. I only have one copy, which is framed and has been shown at my Exmoor Parks exhibition.

I loved the colour version so much that I want to colour the whole drawing, unfortunately I can't find the original the digital progress image, plus the two quarters didn't match up as I'd redrawn the edges where they met.

So I've started the digital drawing again. The above is what I have drawn so far, the cream background is just to give an idea of how big it is.

I have visions of an A1 coloured version, framed on my wall and maybe a plan of where to submit it if I finish it in time.

And lastly I have a new sketchbook, which I'm so excited about, it's a A5 concertina sketchbook. I will be able to draw one page at a time and slightly overlap onto the next page, enabling all the drawings to become one large image.

I'm so excited I can't wait for it to stop raining so I can find something to draw in it.