Winter Sketchbook

I recently got a Pentel Brush Pen and I've been using it for location drawings. It's much more expressive than the rapidograph or mapping pen, and pretty handy for creating spontaneous drawings while out and about.

My brother Sean

People in a café

A very bad drawing of my brother Lewis, which makes us both giggle

Scarf on an office chair

A pot of tea

Vaslav Nijinsky

Just a couple of drawings I did of Nijinsky for my own amusement, straight from photographs of him.
I've been reading about his life, which the ballet critic Richard Buckle once described as: 

"ten years of growth, ten years of learning, ten years of dancing, thirty years of darkness."

Portrait Commission

part of a set of portraits commissioned by a lovely client in New York

David Lynch & the Dalai Lama

Lou Reed

When I was little, Transformer was our staple record for long car journeys (along with David Bowie's Hunky Dory) - me and my brother's knew it off by heart, back to front, upside down, and never, ever grew tired of it. Our toy monkey's sang along to "Make-up" through many a rain-swept voyage into darkest Wales, delighted to come out of their closets, bom-bom-bom-bom bombombom.

Later, when I was 17, clumsy and shy, somehow sent floundering after the death of my grandmother and my first visit to New York (one freezing February, central park pristine with snow and bare trees), I listened to a cassette of Lou Reed's New York album on repeat, kept afloat amid a sea of the mean-seventeens (possibly not helped by reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted in quick succession).

My portrait of Lou Reed is now available printed on t-shirts at WeAdmire. 

"I can't express anger. That's my problem. I internalize everything. I just grow a tumor instead."

A postcard sized portrait of Woody Allen, 

sketched in ink with a paintbrush

(drawn for a sketchathon with Little White Lies Magazine)

Process pics

A few months back I completed a painting for a client in New York who commissioned a portrait reflecting the style of classical Hollywood.

I really loved working on it - it taught me to plan out my images beforehand, because I have always been someone who draws straight off in pen and ink without any kind of pencil guide, and I always felt like drawing in pencil first was somehow cheating (thanks, Aubrey Beardsley).

But actually, the longer the process of making something, the more room for discoveries to be made, and it's often where the best ideas regarding colour and composition have chance to step in.

Lately my process is: detailed light pencil sketch (focusing on areas of colour) > then watercolour > then add ink lines (sparingly). 

If I draw in ink before I watercolour the tendency arises to stay too strictly within the lines, and the colours can't interact as much. There is still plenty of room for improvement - I always feel that I could paint much more loosely than I do - but it's all part of the learning process.

 

first sketches

 

pencil and watercolour

watercolour, gouache + pen and ink

final piece

close-up

James Joyce & Charlie Parker

James Joyce

Charlie Parker

more Portraits on Postcards

Hugh Laurie

Jeff Mangum

Paul McCartney

Tracey Emin

Portraits on Postcards

Edgar Allan Poe - SOLD

Billie Holiday - SOLD

Etta James - SOLD

Vivian Maier - SOLD

All postcards commissioned through my Portrait on a Postcard Project: http://bit.ly/18W3oTm

Rorschach Calligraphy

Ink on watercolour paper, taking a line for a walk.

Portrait-on-a-Postcard Project

Are you interested in owning one of my original artworks? 
Or would you like to commission an artwork as a gift for a friend?

   For a limited time, 
I am now running a portrait-on-a-postcard project

Inked, painted and posted, for just £10 
(& will post to anywhere in the world at no extra cost)

The theme of the project is "I admire..."

I often make portraits of the people who interest me 
(such as Bob Dylan, pictured) but I'm also interested 
in discovering who other people admire, and why.


The subject can be anyone throughout history - musicians, 
poets, writers, filmmakers, playwrights, scientists, engineers, 
philosophers, artists, designers, actors, activists, comedians, 
journalists, soldiers, saints, politicians, revolutionaries, composers, explorers...anyone. 


As long as you admire them.

The original artwork will be posted to you (on Daler-Rowney Langton cold pressed 300gsm acid-free watercolour paper) and all of the portraits will be collected together on a blog.



If you're interested in taking part, email me at emma.ridgway@live.co.uk with the following details:
_______________________________________________

Your name:

Who do you admire?

What do you particularly admire about them?

Address you'd like the postcard to be sent to:
_______________________________________________

Finished postcards will be sent out on receipt of payment of £10 via Paypal.

If you have any questions, please get in touch via email.