Mixed media birds

I've been really busy over Christmas but still somehow have found time to do some art :) my mum got me a  book called 'British Birds' for Christmas  - i chose it because it had some really good photographs of birds up close and in flight. I think birds are really fun to draw and i am trying to practise drawing and painting them more realistically. Here are two i have done so far, there may be more to come :)

Mixed media birds : Watercolour paints,Conte crayon,black fineliner,white gel pen and chalks.

Kind of creepy edited photos

These are some photographs of dolls i took for a college project a while ago, i thought i'd put them on here :) I edited these by flipping/copying the photos and i think i ended up with some quite interesting, kind of freaky looking images.

Using the same technique i also edited these picture of Lady Gaga, and i think she's still pretty even with 3 eyes haha.

Angelique Houtkamp

I have always been interested in tattoos and have never had the oppertunity to get one before i moved to uni last september, but now i've got my first one and i love it :)For years i have been collecting tattoo books and magazines and i have come across many artists who do tattoos or tattoo related artwork that really interest me. I plan to write about these on here and also upload some of my own artwork that has been inspired by these artists... so here is my first one :)

Angelique Houtkamp - I'm so in love with her right now... I ordered both of her books from amazon (tattoo darling and tattoo mystique) and i really like her unique style and western-traditional style tattoo designs.

I would recommend these books for anyone who is interested in tattoos, they were reasonably inexpensive but are both full of beautiful, colourful images and interesting articles/interviews- very inspirational.
On looking through the books there were a couple of images in particular that really caught my eye, so i decided to draw my own versions of these in line that i may later add colour to.

The same elements tend to appear in her work but in different arrangements, imagery such as hearts, anchors, rope, flowers, eyes, skulls, swallows, keyholes, arrows, horseshoes, daggers, snakes, women and lightning bolts. I think it's really fun to come up with designs by combining these elements... much experimentation to be done! :)

My first post :)

So i'm new to this blogging thing but i thought i'd give it a go, i'm used to having a DeviantArt account and on there i upload pictures of my art, but it didn't really give me much space to talk about my work or what inspires me, so i created this blog so i can ramble on for a bit :) Seeing as it's coming really close to Christmas i thought it would be nice to make a few presents for people rather than just buy them all. For ages i have been collecting little bits and bobs, (buttons,beads,broken jewellery,ribbon,scrap material etc.) and after thinking for a while what i could make for people i decided to raid this box and see what i could come up with. Here is the result...

I should name them all...

I'm not really sure what to call them, other than scrap dolls :) The green one is for my dad ( who is into guitars) the dotty one for his girlfriend and the bottom purple one i made for my mum, and added some charms from old jewellery to give it some glam.

I guess these could have been inspired by Ugly Dolls, i think they're soooo cute :3