Thursday 24 July 2014

These lovely prints arrived today!


These yummy prints arrived today!  They're available in my online shop here.  I'm really happy with the prints, the colours are gorgeous and the paper is lovely (200gsm and slightly textured!). Nice, nice, nice.

Monday 21 July 2014

Dive!

 It's Summer! Yes! I've been really getting back into my illustration work for pleasure after tying up the last loose ends from 'The Lavender Blue Dress' book project (which was a long and brilliant commission!). Spending Summer by the sea has definitely been inspiring, and having a week off can really help reset the ol' creativity.  I wanted to have fun creating a simple illustration, and to really focus on movement - and with the hot, humid weather we've been having lately an illustration of a cooling dive into the ocean seemed perfect.

I
started with a loose pencil sketch (very, very loose!) and jumped straight into working with ink brush pen and traditional ink and paintbrush to create the fluid looking linework.  I then scanned the artwork at a high resolution and worked up the colouring on Photoshop with custom brushes and watercolour textures.  It's one of my favourite ways to work quickly as there's so much potential to switch colours around and make easy adjustments.

I'm considering making a small print run of these available (and potentially have the original artwork up for grabs in my shop), so give me a shout if you'd be interested!

Wednesday 16 July 2014

Shingeki no Kyojin - Attack on Titan illustration

Hi guys!

This is actually a bit of an oldie, but I've just realised I didn't upload it when I finished it way back in March.  
A few of you have probably heard of Attack on Titan, and boy did I get hooked on the show - mysterious walls, giant loopy-faced titans that eat people, secret keys and gravity defying battles? - Oh yeah.

I haven't read the manga, and I'll admit that I'm veeery picky when it comes to manga art styles - but I'm trying to not let that put me off some really great stories, so if you've got any recommendations go ahead.

I'm not usually one to do fan art (aside from a couple of X-files ones, Twin Peaks and an Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon one which has been in production for a while...), but I had a spare few days and thought this would be really good to try out in my downtime as it's full of dynamic movement and I could play my own style take on the characters.













I spent some time looking at photos of aerial acrobatics to get the mid-air movement looking right in the sketches and worked it up from there in Photoshop.  As you can see the titans started out with some very silly sketched faces (well, they do look pretty silly anyway), and in general the whole piece edged towards a much happier version than the super-gore and violence of the show.  I like to think of it as one of those brief moments where everything was sort of okay...

Tuesday 8 July 2014

Summer escape

 So I took the leap to spend Summertime by the seaside and really re-boot my creativity after a very long (but brilliant) book project working on The Lavender Blue Dress.
Sometimes it really helps just to force yourself to take a break and reasess your portfolio, goals and general working practice.  I'll hopefully have a far more succinct and meatier portfolio by the end of it, that's the plan anyway - you can never stop pushing your work and sometimes you just have to be ruthless!

Above is just a quick Summertime sketch to get me back into the swing of things - it's certainly been that sort of a week! I'll be back up to speed with my blogging soon, so keep an eye out for more new work!