EMELBI

Digital Artist and Illustrator

  • HOME
  • INFO
    • WHO IS EMELBI?
    • WHAT I CREATE
    • BRANDING
    • CREATIVE WORKSHOPS
    • ART EDUCATION
    • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • T&C
  • GALLERY
    • CHARACTERS #1
    • PORTRAITS
    • GRAPHICS #1
    • MYRIAD
    • THE CHIKKET IMPS
    • SYMMETRY VERSIONS
    • SKETCHBOOK IMAGES 2021
  • COLLABORATIONS
    • WILD IN ART
      • Kirklees Snowdogs Support Life
        • Snowdog Artist EMELBI
    • THE LAUGHING BOY
    • Oi! RUG
    • ACCESSART COMMISSION
    • TTS ARTICLE
  • HODGEPODGE
    • CARTOON STRIPS
      • STONES & STICKS
      • COPS ‘N’ FODDER
  • SHOP
    • PRINTS
    • BASKET
    • T-SHIRTS
  • BLOG
  • CONTACT

Penzy – Sketchbook Illustration – Coffee, Quiche, Cake and Conversation

21st March 2023 By EMELBI

I love to fill sketchbooks. I always have a couple on the go. But my go to paper of choice is a sheet of A4 printer paper. I’m not sure why I favour this. I think it’s because it’s just a nice big sheet of clean paper ready for some new creativity. I have boxes and boxes full of drawings on A4 paper that I have done over the years. I love to get things down quickly. When I’m creating characters I keep everything loose, scribbled almost. There is a lot of energy in the resulting imagery.

It’s good to draw. To constantly draw! When you do it freely and almost for the sake of it, you never really know how the image is going to unfold, or what you’re going to end up with. In my experience , the excitement of creating like this happens from that first mark on that pristine peice of white paper, right through to the finished artwork. If indeed you take it that far!

I was down in Penzance in Cornwall recently. I was having a coffee and a slice of cake with my daughter in a fabulous little cafe called ‘The Honey Pot’ on Parade Street. It’s well worth checking out by the way. While we were there we met a lovely couple on the next table. They engaged us in conversation because my daughter and I were both drawing. We ended up talking about art and culture and what makes us tick etc. The gentleman’s name was Richard Sorrell. He gave me his card and told me that he was also an artist and that he lived locally. His work is quite different from mine. He likes to draw people too. There is a lot of energy in his work and some great colour use. You can see his work here… richardsorrell.co.uk

He had a sketchbook with him and was also making marks in it as we spoke. They were a smashing couple. The conversation was lovely. For some reason I felt that I wanted to give them the sketch I had made while sitting there in the cafe. It was more or less like the sketch below. I did this second drawing immediately afterwards, as I could still see the pressed lines and therefore the image that my pen had left on the sheet underneath the one I had worked on. The following morning I took the sketch into Procreate on the iPad and made this illustration from that drawing. I called it Penzy. I wonder if you can guess why?

Why am I telling you all this? I have always found that creativity brings people together. Over time, I have noticed that people will engage with you if you are doing something creative. There seems to be an energy that occurs when one is being creative. Some positive vitality emerges and stretches out in all directions, encompassing the space. Perhaps all space?! It nourishes and is exuberant.

The day after this chance meeting my daughter and I were back in the very same cafe at the very same table. I told you it was a good cafe. The goats cheese quiche is unbelievably good! While I munched into that, my daughter had some more of the chocolate cake that we had had the day before. We were both drawing again. I was sketching on the iPad this time and my daughter was being creative in her sketchbook. Two ladies sat at the same table beside us, where the couple we spoke to the day before had sat. They immediately engaged us in conversation, again because we were both drawing. They told us that they were travelling and were from South Africa. We talked about all things creative again. A lovely natural conversation opened up about positive energy, education and creative endeavours. It turns out that that younger lady was also an artist. She showed me her work. Fabulous imagery of flowers and plants, bold marks and wonderful colour use. Lovely observational work.

So my advise is to draw and sketch in public with wild abandon. Put away all inhibitions. Be creative. Always! You never know what wonderful things it will lead to. Chance meetings and great conversations in this case, and a nice new illustration for my portfolio.

© EMELBI 2023 – All Rights Reserved

 

See how the illustration came together in Procreate in the video below

Colour Variations

Head Study Illustration

27th February 2023 By EMELBI

One of the things I love about creativity and art, are the journeys you go on. Simple sketches can turn into intriguing and fun circumnavigations of colour, texture, tone, shade and line. This simple pencil sketch turned into an interesting head study regarding those elements. I photographed it on my iPhone and then sent it to my iPad Pro to work on in Procreate. I worked on it until I was happy with it, keeping the process as simple as possible. I then explored some different colour version which has been something I do quite often at the moment.

See the YouTube video below to see the colouring process.

© EMELBI 2023 – All Rights Reserved

 

Enzo Valentino – Character Illustration

7th February 2023 By EMELBI

A recent illustration of a character that I sketched on a spare piece of envelope while on a conference call. I photographed the sketch and took it into Procreate on the iPad and embellished it with colour and texture. Using a limited colour palette of reds and blues, I went on a bit of a creative journey and ended up with this character, which I ended up calling, Enzo Valentino. I also ended up creating two or three symmetry version also, which has been another of my recent obsessions in the creative process.

Check out the video below for how this character came together.

© EMELBI 2023 – All Rights Reserved

Red Ed – Two Minute Time Lapse Illustration

9th February 2021 By EMELBI

This image was made as part of a new series of two minute time lapse illustrations that I am embarking on for my YouTube Channel. I’ve called this one Red Ed.

As part of this journey, I want to explore a variety of different mediums again and become a bit more exploratory concerning image making. Way back in 1994, I did my Art Foundation where we were encouraged to look at all aspects of creative processes and practices. From Fine Art, Printmaking, Photography, Costume Design, Sculpture…

The list is exhaustive. But it was brilliant and ridiculously informative in terms of enrichment and discovery. One process informed another and thus the understanding of materials became constantly enlightening and ideas flowed in abundance.

It’s extremely easy to get bogged down in one set of processes and stagnate. Due to the fact that I have been working with digital images for so long now, I feel that I need to get in touch with real hands on materials once again and explore mark making in a very real sense. Im looking forward to this journey of discovery and challenging myself to use materials I haven’t used before or indeed materials that I’ve not used for a long time. My aim is to explore a combination and variations of paints, inks, pens, collage, print and whatever other new and interesting materials I can get my hands on. I will still be working digitally and where applicable, I will incorporate the two processes.

Much of my digital artwork starts off as pen and ink drawings and many of the textures I use are hand produced and scanned before using them as part of the digital process. So I am used to creating with real hands on materials, but for many reasons I feel I want to delve a bit deeper into the word of illustration and image making by looking at new techniques and trying out varied approaches to creativity. All of which will hopefully inform and enrich my established creative process. Let face it, it can’t be a bad thing!

365 Sketchbook 2021

3rd February 2021 By EMELBI

I have decided to undertake a 365 sketchbook. An illustration/sketch a day for a whole year. No rules, multiple mediums and any subject. I will draw whatever comes into my head on each particular day. Just for the sheer love of drawing and for the exciting journey of exploration and discovery.

To challenge myself, my first sketchbook has got recycled paper that’s quite thin and acts a little bit like blotting paper. This makes for some interesting ink spreading. When that sketchbook gets filled I will chose something a little bit different to carry on the project.

I will add new images to the gallery as and when I get time to post them up. These are all rough ideas and not finished pieces by any stretch of the imagination, such is the nature of sketchbooking. Some of them may well get turned into artworks, or characters in artworks at some other time.

Super Quick Illustration

9th July 2020 By EMELBI

My wife asked me to do a quick continuous line illustration for a presentation she’s doing over Zoom. It had to be a self portrait and done quickly, almost without thinking. (Fig 1) She then asked me to take that initial drawing and embellish it with texture shading and form etc. Again, I had to make these graphic additions really quickly. (Fig 2) I then photographed the resulting image on my iPhone 11 Pro, sent it to my iMac and ran it through the usual clean up process eventually converting it to a vector graphic so that the line was nice and clean. (Fig 3)

Then in record time gave it my usual graphic, texture and colour treatment to get a finished outcome. Very rough, and extremely quickly. I quite like the outcome. (Fig 4)

This whole process was done in about 40 minutes.

(Fig 1)
(Fig 2)
(Fig 3)
(Fig 4)

What I most love about the creative process though, is that fact that this image didn’t exist when I woke up this morning. Out of necessity; helping my wife out with a graphic she needed, I now have this little illustration. I love what I do.

Here are some other versions of the finished image after having run them through the filters in the app RNI Films on my iPhone 11 Pro. Just for a bit of variety.

Created with RNI Films app. Preset 'Kodak Gold 200 v.4'
Created with RNI Films app. Preset 'Agfa RSX II v.2'
Created with RNI Films app. Preset 'Agfa Optima 200 v.3 Faded'
Created with RNI Films app. Preset 'Agfa Vista 100'

Sketchbook Images – December 2016

12th December 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Some quick sketches from a recent sketchbook. Number six was drawn by my 4 year old daughter. I added the kiss speech bubble. We work collaboratively some times. Children’s unbound creativity is a wonder to behold most of the time.

Beardyman – God Damn I Look Fresh

16th November 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

A quick sketch of the Vocal Beatbox and Musical Noise genius Beardyman.
He posted a video this morning on his Facebook page running a little competition for fans like myself to get involved with. I freeze framed the video and made this image from the freeze frame.

Never heard of Beardyman. Why the chuff not? Check him out here… www.beardyman.co.uk

Art and creativity is everywhere. You just need to look for it.

Beardyman - God Damn I Look Fresh

Sketch It!

22nd June 2016 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Here are a recent collection of images. They are a mixture of hand drawn and digital art play.

Close - Closed - Open

Thaddeus Hibbard

Where There's A Heart There's Its Shadow

Talking Creativity

Secret-7 Cover Graphic

Mountains of Things

Bag Bandit B Boy

21st August 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Sketchbook image and some iPhone app trickery.

Bag Bandit B Boy (Detail)

Bag Bandit B Boy (Detail)

Bag Bandit B Boy

Rage Head

15th June 2015 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

 

Illustrative play – Texture versions

Rage Head 01

Rage Head 02

Rage Head 03

Rage Head 04

Into the Matrix

28th November 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Pencil drawing and a little iPhone trickery via a couple of apps.
A nod toward the Wachowski Brothers trilogy of films.

EMELBI - Into The Matrix

Pen and Red Crayon

28th November 2014 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

Development of some ideas.

My 2 year old daughter decided to add a few of her own lines with red crayon.
I think it adds a certain jenesequa.
I love it when she joins in with the creativity.

EMELBI - Sketches and Doodles

Categories

Archives

All images on this site are Copyright © 2023 - EMELBI - All Rights Reserved.