Illustrating Autumn Faries with The Big Draw & The RSC

Every so often, I'll stop for a second and be hit with the realisation that I haven't drawn anything in ages. It can be surprising how little physical drawing time can go in to running an illustration business sometimes!

Yesterday was one of those days, and I fancied a little bit of a warm up before delving in to some serious work. You may have seen The Big Draw floating around on social media or the news recently - they're, very basically, a huge campaign to get people drawing. This week they've joined forces with The Royal Shakespeare Company to theme drawings on fairies and A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

I illustrated this little Autumnal fairy quickly, in ink, then sort of fell in love with her and decided to add in full colour in Photoshop. I'll admit that I rarely draw fairies. I'd been told too many times that I had to draw fairies in anything for little girls that it irked me - come on, we all know little girls can like space, treasure-hunting, dinosaurs AND fairies. I'm not one for telling anyone what they should or shouldn't like.

If you've kept up with my Pinterest boards lately, you'll see that I've been pinning a fair few golden beetles, so if you look carefully you'll see a couple of them make a little appearance in this Autumn-inspired dress, along with a few delicate cobwebs. Anyone else want a life-size version of that outfit? I know I do.

You can see this illustration featured on The RSC's facebook page and on my Twitter here!