The only Zen you'll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you - Alan Watts

(mountain print available from Society6 here)

brush pen drawings from my sketchbook...

Garden

Dan and I are growing gem lettuces, tomatoes, kale, courgettes, peppers, chillies, french beans, strawberries, rosemary and mint.

I know it's not the done thing for an illustrator to have so many different styles, but I am always fighting between making nice little neat tight drawings and making big loose messy paintings, and I can't see how the two can ever be reconciled. I love working in a detailed and precise way in ink or gouache, but it's so much harder to be loose and it's what I admire in my favourite painters...there's something more human and authentic in going against the urge to make things look perfect and tidy, and it feels really good to paint without worrying what anyone might think about the end result. 

If you're in your comfort zone drawing neatly, I suggest you buy a big paintbrush, maybe a Daler-Rowney system 3 SY21 Long Flat Acrylic brush (I know...very precise - it happens to be my favourite brush). You can't be neat with it. It holds too much paint and water. You can use the edge to create lines, but not so precise and not much in the way of detail. But that's good - it's liberating to face up to your weaknesses. It's a challenge to try to suggest something with as few brush-strokes as possible.

Le Jardin de la Mémoire - episode 1

(I drew this last night and coloured it today)

No one knows where we go, when we're dead or when we're dreaming

Here are some photos I took last time I went back home. I love nasturtiums, they are so vivid, and the way they grow makes them look like fireworks or explosions. These pictures were taken in my mum's garden:

I've just taken 4 paintings to Mustard Cafe in Norwich - the original Nikola Tesla drawing that WeAdmire turned into tshirts (and probably the most popular of all my t-shirt designs), a painted portrait of the daschund from my comicbook "Les Jardins...", and two of the Mata Hari illustrations, are now all available to buy (framed) at my favourite cafe in Norwich. Mustard also make amazing coffee and really really good food - pictured is their Ginger & Lemon cake and a flat white:

View from Wertheimpark

Emma Ridgway (c) Copyright 2010

The Plant

Emma Ridgway (c) Copyright 2010

comic book front cover

Emma Ridgway (c) Copyright 2010

Front cover design for my comic book. I'm tempted to change the background colour to something more textured (although I don't want to make it too busy) and I still need to decide on the name, but I have written most of the script now and I am planning the pages in my sketchbook.

To be able to feel the lightest touch really is a gift - Christopher Reeve

I've been dipping my toe into watercolour painting...and I am starting to like it. (That's why the portrait project went downhill so fast I'm afraid. Because Dan bought me some beautiful distracting flowers and I just had to paint them.)

But now I have an exciting new project to work on - a record sleeve for a folk musician!

And I've just re-discovered this:
http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto.html
In the past, whenever I was struggling I would turn to that list of delights.
Or Alan Fletcher's fantastic book "The Art of Looking Sideways".

(Its good to grow and experiment. I remember a few years ago having a tutor tell me "you really need to stop taking risks". It really bothered me, because what's the point if you never take risks with your work?
But then, when I went home that day The Short Films of the Brother's Quay had arrived in the post, and I fell into their world and realised I should never stop taking risks. And that's how I got into pictorial calligraphy.)

The Calligrapher - rejected BBC2 ident by the Quay Brothers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgA0WBKQUqM

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies - by the Quay Brothers: (I can still remember my amazement at the moment when the mapping pens pirouette calligraphy spirals in stop motion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JajPuTn8IHM

Anyway, enough blabbering. Back to the drawing board.

a birthday card for my cousin Amy

Porcupine

National Vegetarian Week