Laura Mallaghan Illustration

Merry Christmas! Here's an artwork of the Blue Tit and White Christmas. It's a different bird this time for the Christmas theme, the robin is always seen on illustration, such as cards, because of their red breast and looking fluffy, I thought blue tit could include for this theme, looking at my painting of blue tit on a Pyracantha red berries, as known as Red Firethorn, with the snow, and though it looks very festive as well as they work well together. Here's the process of painting by using gouache paint and acrylic for the snow. Firstly, I've included a photo of Pyacrantha I took from my front garden for observational drawing.  Painting process: Once I finished painting the snow,  I thought it's looks a lot like Christmas. Plus, I'm quite pleased with my attempt of painting the snow, better than I thought. Hope you'll have a merrily Christmas Day. 🎄🎅 And hope this photo of my foster dog with a Christmas bow cheer you up from difficult year.

A robin flying through the snowfalls. Thinking about the snow, even for Christmas although it's rarely happened. The last time I remember it was snowed on Christmas Day was 8 years ago. This December is Wet December, it has been rained very often, I had a feeling it's going to be Wet Christmas on Christmas Day, but I recently checked the weather forecast that they predict it'll be sunny Christmas Day. I wouldn't mind frosty weather as it's almost Christmassy, snowing would be nice too. Whilst I was painting this, I had been thinking something wintery and/or Christmassy, a glitter vinyl that called to mind. It's a silver glitter vinyl I've found as a sample and I thought that can make it snowfall shape, I planned to use it on my paintings and here it is. I tried to get some previews of glitter reflection from the bulb-light, this result doesn't seem to work as I hoped. So then I waited for the next day for natural light. The results still the same, couldn...

Happy Halloween! Today I'm in a spooky mood so I did a drawing this morning.  I call this 'Dead Tree'. I saw the tree from the field when I was walking with my foster dog a while ago, I looked at it and thought, "This looks good for Halloween", then I was inspired to have this tree for my Halloween illustration/drawing. This drawing is mixed media, I used colour pencils, watercolour paint and a fine-line pen. I like how all these branches curved in, toward the trunk. Also, I like the numerous twigs on branches as it looks more details. This tree looks like it has been dead for many years. Being on the hillslope that has rabbit burrows, definitely not the best place to grow, even it was planted by the warehouse developer, I think, along with all these small trees as you can see behind the dead tree, and it has been the same for many years, not grown any bigger as they thought these supposedly trees would've been. Anyway, to end this post, here's my foster d...