Playing with colour & Uniball Posca pens!

I've wanted to try out Posca pens for absolutely ages - I've heard such great things about them, and I've seen countless comic shop windows adorned with Posca-drawn illustrations, so they've always piqued my interest! So I was thrilled when the lovely team at Uniball were kind enough to send me a whole rainbow's worth of colours and nib types for me to play with and explore creatively (hurray!).

Right, so before this little exploration (or shall we say, scientific creative experiment?), the only thing I really knew about Posca pens were that they're the go-to pen for drawing on glass as they have such a broad range of sizes, opaque finish, and most importantly they're perfect for easily wiping off afterwards. I recently found out about a bit of a disaster a few years ago at a local library, where someone had decided to decorate the library windows a) without permission, and b).....with permanent ink pens....ARGH! So it's safe to say, if you feel the need to get creative on glass make sure you're using the right pens! You'll be glad to know that after a little sketch or two with the Posca pens on my own home windows, they look amazing and clean off perfectly with water and a tiny dash of washing up liquid, phew!

Beyond glass, I was really excited to learn just how many surfaces you can work on with the pens - everything from ceramics, to paper (obviously?), to fabric. I kind of had to restrain myself from bounding about the house doodling on everything like a three year old on a sugar high.  I particularly enjoyed adding a little pizzazz to this flower pot (home to my beloved chilli plant), and I have some big plans for the potential to illustrate my designs onto ceramic jewellery over the next few weeks - I'll keep you updated!

One thing I didn't know before using the pens, was their versatility in terms of working with their opaque quality. Obviously, I'm constantly drawing, but with traditional media I'll admit it would mostly be pen-on-white-paper; but with the Posca pens I'm able to draw on a huge variety of paper colours with a bold, strong line even with the lighter pen colours (and gawd the metallics look good!). It's been incredibly useful for signing my prints as well, especially with all these comic conventions coming up! A gold Posca pen has definitely become a staple for my comic-con artillery for quick signatures on books, prints and live drawings, whatever the background colour.

In my illustration work, I most often use ink brush pens to create my linework; so it was great to try out Uniball's Posca Free Size brush pens. Again, they have that great opaque colour, so it really opened up a lot of opportunities for me to play creatively in ways that ink might not necessarily allow. I did find that on some paper stock, overworking an area sometimes led to a little eating away at the paper texture, so I'd recommend using a good quality paper if you're doing anything more than light sketching. I absolutely loved the broader 1.8-2.5mm bullet nibs for drawing on larger surfaces and block colouring, whilst the 0.7mm bullet nibs were my favourites for sketching and for illustrating faces. The 0.7mm pin type nibs were a little bit fine for my style of illustration, but perfect for writing, or if your usual style is fine linework, more controlled comics art or you want to transition from biro pens.

The range of colours is really impressive; they're all so bold and have a gorgeous chalky quality to them. One look at my portfolio and you'll notice I use a lot of coral and teal in my work (not sorry), so some of the pens wouldn't have been my very first choice of colour for a final illustration, but my oh my do they make me happy to use for sketching and ideas! I'm also really excited to try them out with some of the window illustration projects I have coming up later in the year - those are the kind of times that call for bold colour!

The metallics were really fun to use, although they might not factor into my everyday professional illustration much (as so much of my work needs to be shown digitally), they're a joy to use for adding an extra flourish onto original watercolour illustrations or ink drawings. I found that the thicker nib pens had a slightly more opaque ink flow than the smaller pin nibs, but obviously with a thick nib you can't get as much detail in - so I'm definitely going to look into buying a 0.7mm bullet tip gold pen which will be perfect for details and the print signing.

The pinks, oranges, red, white and gold were definitely my favourites - I found myself reaching for them again and again to draw with. Maybe the Summer has put me in a warm colour palette kind of mood!

All in all, Posca pens are definitely going to become a staple in my preparatory work, sketches, and print signings - and I think they'll really come into their own when I use them as part of the window illustration trail at LICAF this year!

Head over to the Uniball website to have a browse of their Posca pen line, and if you've tried Posca yourself, show me your creations! 

Note - This is not a paid-for post, although the pen set was provided - I'll always give you my honest opinion :)

Macc-Pow Comic Festival

Little me at Macc-Pow comic festival last weekend! 📸: Richard Buck

A post shared by Emmeline Pidgen (@emmelinedraws) on Jul 4, 2017 at 5:53am PDT

This month kicked off my string of 2017 comic festival appearances with Macc-Pow, the first of four I have lined up so far!

I was invited as a guest to table at the one-day festival in Macclesfield, with a big ol' table selling my prints, comics and books, and plenty of space for my live portrait sessions.

All set up and ready to go at Macc-Pow comic festival! 📓💛

A post shared by Emmeline Pidgen (@emmelinedraws) on Jul 1, 2017 at 2:25am PDT

The festival took place in Macclesfield town hall, and was brimming with talented comics creators from near and far! Organised by the incredibly lovely Marc Jackson (who I'll be doing some comic workshops with at LICAF later in the year!), the festival catered really well for families and young comic fans - it was so inspiring to see how many children there were ridiculously enthusiastic about comics!

A post shared by Emmeline Pidgen (@emmelinedraws) on Jul 1, 2017 at 6:52am PDT

It's always a pleasure to spend time drawing live portraits at these sort of events - it's great to get a chance to chat to new people and to spend some quality time drawing. I had quite a few live portrait commissions, and although it's always a little nerve-wracking, it's the best feeling when they absolutely love the drawing!

I'll hopefully be back at Macc-Pow again next year, with even more comics and illustrated goodies! Here's to a thriving northern comics scene!

Emmeline's Illustrated Home: Big Steps, Interior Design Trends & A Collaboration With DFS

So this year has been quite a year so far, but after more than half a decade of living in a teeny, tiny studio flat, I'm pleased to say I finally have my first house! What?!

Freelancing and home ownership aren't usually ingredients you'd think of in the same cake; the prospect of trying to get a mortgage as a freelancer absolutely terrified me for a long, long time. But after a lot of work, a little luck, (and a life based far, far, outside of London); I finally have a place to call my own.



Our first week in the house was serious go-time, Andrew and his Grandad completely redecorated the living room, whilst I hulked-out a little and dragged up the long-pile bathroom carpet (whyyy) and painted, re-floored, grouted and even re-plumbed the bathroom 💪 We have a little veg patch in the garden now too!

It's definitely been a work in progress. Honestly, the number of times I've wished I could instantly decorate, fix everything and create the perfect furniture with my mind Sims-style has been ridiculous! It takes time, and sometimes it's frustrating having all these incredible design ideas, but lacking in the free time and budget to make it happen.



One room we're finally in love with is our living room! It's our space for relaxing, playing Witcher 3 on xbox, eating snacks, watching Twin Peaks, film nights with friends, playing music and reading books; our window to the outside world, and the first impression we have for visitors. 

We've completely shaken up the design from the previous owners, with a new warm-grey wooden floor, ghost white paint on the walls, a burst of orange with the curtains and some choice art prints (naturally!). But the thing that's really brought the room together has definitely been our gorgeous charcoal Zinc sofa and footstool from DFS. Seriously, after years and years of hand-me-down sofas disguised with throws, it feels so great to be able to curl up on one that actually looks amazing.



Working with DFS, we looked at the key trends from the Salone del Mobile design festival in Italy, and focused on the yum combination of burnt orange and the revival of the footstool! Okay, so you might not have instantly thought that's a footstool in my photos, because yaasss we've multi-purposed it into a little reading nook seat! 

We have a lovely big window in our living room, so Andrew and I thought about our space at different times of the day: during bright daytime, the far end of the room is the perfect spot for reading, thinking of creative ideas, and gazing out of the window; whereas at night we love cosying up in front of a film - so we needed our space to work for all purposes. We realised the footstool is perfect for that! With a few cushions on the back it works as a great little reading seat between the bookshelves - but can be easily moved over to the sofa for when we want to stretch out like big ol' starfish to watch a few episodes of Orange Is The New Black!

Speaking of orange; with the living room as it was, it was practically a Pleasantville-style monochromatic world; seriously, almost everything was greyscale! Once we'd moved in our book collection, and a curated a few of our favourite boardgames, we brought a bit of extra warmth to the room with a shock of burnt orange textile - and it makes the world of difference. The orange really brings out the warm tones in the floor, gives it that bolt of the unusual, and makes everything just seem that bit cosier. As an illustrator, colour is obviously incredibly important to me, and it's taken time to make sure everything is accented just right, and works wonderfully with the base greys and whites.



As I write this, I'm sat on the sofa in the living room, curled up with a cup of tea (and a cheeky biscuit), and gawd, I feel happy. Okay, so the house isn't exactly like the rose-covered thatched-roof dream home I sculpted out of clay in primary school, but right now it's everything I've needed, and I'm so grateful I've managed to get to this place. Things are finally coming together, one step at a time, and it's really starting to feel like home. 

A huge thank you to DFS for working with me on this blog post and letting me explore some interior design trends! The gorgeous sofa I chose is their Zinc Three Seat Sofa and matching footstool from the French Connection range, all in charcoal (very yum, and just a heads up that it's on sale right now if you're in the market for one) and you can see all the other colours and stylings through #MyDFS. It's not often I get to collaborate on a blog project which has such an impact on my life; there'll be an awful lot of films watched, books read, conversations had, and ideas dreamed on that sofa, and in this new house! Here's to taking adult steps!

Note! This is not a paid-for post. The sofa and footstool were kindly provided by DFS for me to explore the creative design trends of Salone Del Mobile, which is well worth checking out (hurray burnt orange!).

Illustrated Birthday Present Extravaganza!

Oh my god... Birthday present extravaganza! 💛🍰💛🐙💛

A post shared by Emmeline Pidgen (@emmelinedraws) , 2017 at 2:49am PDT

Ahhh what a pile of loveliness! So, back in May I was incredibly lucky to receive these awesome gifts from my nearest and dearest for my birthday. I like to think this builds a bloomin' strong case that my friends and family know me well - has there ever been a photo that sums up my interests quite so well?

Okay, so maybe I've been a bit slow in posting this - but can you blame me? Look how distracting all these things are! 

First up, wow, I finally got my paws on the first two volumes of Sam Bosma's incredible 'Fantasy Sports' series. It's funny, unusual, brilliantly paced and has great characters - and uarghh it looks amazing! So completely up my street. I haven't read the second one yet, but I'm excited to set aside some time to drink it in. After the first one, I'll admit I had a bit of a rummage in my garage for a basketball (before realising it went flat years ago, noo!) hurray for books that make you wanna move!

Following the Nobrow thread, I also snagged myself a copy of Robert Hunter's Map of Days, an absolutely stunning graphic novel - seriously, every panel could be a poster in its own right. Nobrow and Flying Eye Books stories are rapidly filling up my bookshelves, and I couldn't be happier - they always have such incredible curation and pay such good attention to detail and quality in their printing and binding.

Okay, I won't get far without mentioning Stardew Valley. My. Oh. My. What an addictive game! I'm not going to lie, I've sunk a loooong time into this game already. It's just...lovely! There's farming, fighting, foraging and friends - all with a nice little 'let's support the little guy!' and a 'follow your passion!' subtext to it. Speaking of games, you'll notice the Andrez Sapkowski novel in the picture, well that's the first (chronologically) in the series of books which my other current favourite game, The Witcher 3, is based on! It's on an entirely different spectrum to Stardew, but it's honestly incredible. I'm finding it hard not to read the book and completely imagine everything from the game; the short stories read exactly like the missions, although in a way it's quite a relief to know you're not going to have to make some harrowing grey-area moral choice at the end (who am I kidding? I love those!). 

Alongside that I got so many gorgeously patterned and illustrated goodies - I felt so spoilt this year. Two of my lovely friends got me this Cath Kidston bag with an incredible horse print on it (I'd seen it a few days before and fallen in love with it, but didn't quite have the pennies!); I got some beautiful quirky stationery and homeware; and my mum and dad bought me a Janome sewing machine! I've been wanting a sewing machine for years, but never had the space for it until now. Okay, I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to sewing, but I've got the drive at least! On one of my first days having it, I completely winged it with a vague idea of a pattern and sewed a top! Yeah, it was a bit short, and maybe a bit messy - but it felt so good to do. One of my serious goals at the moment is to start thinking of designing and screen-printing my own fabric to sew into products for my shop - so watch this space!

It feels like so long since my birthday now, but I still completely brim up with feelings when I think about the lovely time I spent with my friends and family, and how perfectly they know what gifts I'd like! There's no denying I'm a lucky duck (and I have a lot of reading to do). Hurray! 💗