Happy New Year!

I hope you all have a wonderful (and safe) night and a wonderful 2013!

*please don't give snakes alcohol like in this picture...he's just a naughty snake celebrating it being his year!

Christmas!

This Christmas was quite stress free! Relatives visited us so I got to stay indoors all day, drinking pear cider and watching festive films. We swapped gifts, had a good laugh, watched the Fellowship of the Ring and had a really lovely day! I would of posted a picture of the Christmas dinner, but I was SO hungry and it was SO good that it didn't stand a chance!


I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Oh, Life...

Last week: I was made redundant...not very Christmassy.
I've gone through a variety of emotions about it all and i've decided to take Christmas off. I'm not going to worry about a new job until January. I'm spending this Christmas period working on my portfolio and trying to feel festive.
I have a couple of story ideas that i'm working on and i've come up with a fun promo pack. Once it comes to January i'm going to have to look for a "normal person" job... BOO... but for now i'm going to enjoy myself doing what I love most.

ALSO, I shall be opening up my etsy shop this week. I need to tweak it a bit but please keep your eyes peeled for some wonderful stuff going on sale!

Commisions...

I recently created this portrait for my friend Viv and thought that maybe, (seeing as it's christmas) some lovely people would like to commision me to draw them and their loved one as a gift to their other half...or maybe a nice portrait for your mother of her parents?

Basically: i'm open for commisions! So please don't hesitate! I'm a fast worker so will get the picture to you before christmas.

Temporary Tattoos...

Since my niece and nephews loved the colour in pages I made them, I decided that for christmas I would create an activity book for them. I have decided to use Rabbit and Glenn as the main characters for the activity book and have created some temporary tattoos of the characters for them.

A photo of me sporting one of the tattoos...

Rabbit and Glenn tattoos...

They aren't like the typical temporary tattoos from my childhood where you use water to apply the image...they're more like transparent stickers but they look good if I don't mind saying so myself. I think I will re-open my etsy shop soon and sell some sets of different characters and maybe even commision some.

Introducing a few new characters...

This is Rabbit...

...and this is Glenn who happens to be a lovely dragon.

He might seem a bit scary at first, but then he offers you a toasted marshmallow and a seat by the fire and you can't help but become friends with him.

Lionel and Bike Riding Bear Fanbook...

A few months ago, I printed off a few copies of my Lionel and Bike Riding bear illustrations and gave them to my niece and nephews to colour in and cut up/do what they wanted with them. My sister said they loved the pictures so much that they wouldn't colour the copies I gave them, but would trace the pictures and colour them in instead! Here are some images of a wonderful book my nieces (made By Chloe and Shannon=BOOM!) which is just so amazing! They even put some of their own drawings of birds, ghosts, people and bats!

This gift reminded me of when I was a child and would trace Quentin Blake's illustrations for the BFG (sorry about that Quentin B!) because I loved them so much! It's nice to know that my target audience enjoys my illustrations as much as I do! It has also inspired me to make and activity book for them all for christmas which will feature a few new and old characters, wordsearches, spot the difference and some little tattoos. Can't wait to get them made! I shall be printing and binding them myself so I better get started soon!

My cushion!

I found out a couple of weeks ago that I did not win the Ohh Deer pillow fight competition, but it was fun to have the opportunity to have something I had designed in their shop. I was the only person to buy my cushion...though I was disappointed at first I now feel quite happy about this, as I am the only person to own a cushion like mine! It's lovely and comfy and the faux suede is so soft! I love it!

My cushion on my computer chair.

Me, squeezing my cushion!

Camera Obsession.

I've always loved photography and recently I have fallen in love with old cameras! ( By old, I mean film cameras...) and have started finding them at carboots and being given them as gifts by lovely friends. You can see half of the collection in the image above.

I will be going to Manchester this week for my anniversary with the mister and should be getting one of my films developed too...shall hopefully stock up on film aswell. Would be nice to take some pictures of the lovely Autumn colours.

Happy Halloween!!!

This is one of the first Halloween's where I haven't taken part in much Halloween fun. I did go to a zombie walk the other day though which was fun! It took three days to get the fake blood off my neck. Anyway! I hope you have filled yourselves with sweets and chocolates and have frightened yourself with a good scary film!

My cushion is on sale!!!

A few months ago I entered the Ohh Deer pillow fight competition, and though no winners have been announced yet they have given everyone who entered another chance by letting us sell our cushion in their shop! We basically have to promote our cushions as much as we can and the people who sell the most will be considered to be part of the shop!yey!

Tonight my cushion finally went on sale! I'm so excited! My design will be available to buy for a short time only so make sure to get some bought for your loved ones for christmas! I know i'll be buying one!

Ghouls and Goblins...

I'm quite excited for the arrival of Halloween and came up with some dapper costumes for Terry and Lionel. These two will be attending a little Halloween party so you'll be seeing these guys again!

Inspiration...

I'm trying out some new stuff at the moment-trying to keep my work looking fresh and engaging. Here are some pieces that are inspiring me at the moment:

Babar by Jean de Brunhoff.

I'm not sure who created this but it's lovely.

Laura Park.

Alexis Deacon.

Mike Smith.

Audrey Malo.

Laika the Spacedog.

Sarah McIntyre.

Tor Freeman.

Sarah Dyer.

Beatrice Alemagna.

Viviane Schwarz.

Tor Freeman again (couldn't help myself...bugs with instruments!AHHH!)

Getting Results...

Argument...

Resolution...


Recently, as I have said before- I have been trying to keep my illustrations bright, engaging and fresh as I have a tendancy to overwork my images. Here are a couple of pictures I recently created and i'm so happy with them. I'm going to continue to create my images in this way as it's just so much fun!

What I did today:

Did a lot of playing about with layers,lots of scanning and whatnot. It's been a lot of fun. What do you think of my most recent illustration?

Redone.

Trying something new...

Watercolour on different kinds of paper, using a 5B pencil and hair spray (and water colours of course).