Jump

I haven't put anything up for Illustration Friday for a few weeks, so here is Lollipop the cat and his kangaroo friend springing into action and having a bit of a jump. Ideal for this week's topic. I painted these two on a wall in one of the party rooms at Lollipops play centre in Narre Warren using acrylic house paint, mostly applied flat, but with some airbrushed details and highlights. Hmm, I must pull out my old air brush again some time! 

Vocalise

I've never had formal vocal training, but I do know that the secret to good singing is using your diaphragm to support the air. The diaphragm is a muscle (apparently) beneath the lungs, which is used by singers, and players of wind instruments to get full value for the air in their lungs. If your tummy goes IN when you breath in, you're doing it wrong. Make sense, if you thing about it. When you breath in a full load of air, your tummy, should, by rights, expand. And then when you breath out, you'll find you can breath out longer by squeezing your tummy in, forcing the diaphragm to push much more air out of your lungs. This will result in longer notes that sound less strained. The tenor in this illustration is demonstrating an artificial means of enhancing the diaphragm and producing beautiful, sustained notes by using my latest invention, the hand-operated Diaphragm Augmenter.

Please be in touch if you would be interested in beta-testing this device, once I make up a working prototype!  

Return

Farewell, my love. One day I will return to Stromlemov, the pearl of the North...

From my sketch book, and, as an experiment, scanned via the Camscanner app on my smartphone. It really boosts the linework, ups the contrast, which would be helpful for scanning text, but it tends to make things a little harsh for subtle illustration. The colours are quite contrasty...

And on Saturday I returned to the Swamp Store (subject of last week's sketch) to see how it was coping with the expected flood. Fortunately the river peaked at 7.2m, well below the worst fears, which had water up to 8m. The Swamp Store is on the right of the photo, you can see how close the waters actually came. In the end, very few houses in town were affected, the one in the foreground was the worst I saw with water right through the yard, but, like many houses in the area, it was built on stilts, raised well above the ground. This is not only for flood relief, but keeps the house cooler in the warmer months.