What Emmeline Wore In July - Day 1

Hottest day of the year? That calls for ice cream AND ice lollies.

After a string of comments asking if I would make my 'What I Wore' illustrations into a regular project, I thought it would be a great challenge to illustrate my outfit for each day in July this year.

Illustration-a-day challenges are a great way to jump up that learning curve and really hone your skills. After Inktober and Illustrated Advent last year, I realised that they're a brilliant way to stay motivated and productive, even if it is tricky to squeeze in the time!

For this self-set challenge, I'm going to be creating an illustration like this for 31 days this month, and linking to some of the statement pieces in the outfits. I have some great brands on board supporting me with this project (Cath Kidson, Clarks, Moheda, Poppy England etc) and I'm really excited.

Keep up to date by following 'What I Wore' on my blog, Bloglovin', Google Friend Connect or following me on Twitter or Facebook.

Dress - Boohoo.com

Illustrated Life Giveaway Two. Win £20 To Spend At Ohh Deer!

To celebrate the launch of Illustrated Life on the blog last week, I'm running three consecutive giveaways, with over £50 worth of goodies to be snagged each Monday!

Giveaway two is now live, and you can get your paws on £20 to spend at Ohh Deer! Yessss!

Enter via the widget below:



Ohh Deer: the home of illustration & quirky design led gifts. I'm sure you've seen Ohh Deer products bobbing around the internet, design fairs and your favourite shops (or at the very least some of my illustrated peices on my blog!), their products are stocked in the likes of the V&A, Tate, Urban Outfitters...among so many others. Big stuff! They launched in 2011 and I was lucky enough to jump on board near the beginning as one of their first selection of illustrators. So go and see what you'd spend that £20 on! www.ohhdeer.com

Remember, you can keep track of these rolling giveaways and new Illustrated Life posts by following on Bloglovin', Google Friend Connect or through the #IllustratedLife hashtag!

Overly Critical Music Snob Cat

I've been meaning to take part in Off Life Magazine's quick draw challenge for a while, and luckily for me they fired it back up a few weeks ago and I jumped on board.

The basic idea is: they tweet a theme, and you have one hour to respond to it with an illustration. This week, the theme was 'weirdest thing I've seen at a festival', and I ran with it, creating overly-critical-music-snob-cat. 

I just loved the idea of this little guy roaming around the festival stages, in full pretentious snark mode. I think we've all heard someone making comments like this at one point or another...

I do love the pressure of a timed drawing challenge, and it's always so satisfying when you realise you've sprouted an idea and created something that might never have happened if you hadn't taken part. I'm even feeling inspired to write a story now!

Join in with next week's quick draw challenge by following Off Life on Twitter (Thursdays 8pm GMT!)

*Slightly larger version of the illustration available here.

Illustrated Life - Busy B Sticker Set

You may have seen me post about Busy B earlier this week with the launch of 'Illustrated Life', my new blog section celebrating my very favourite illustrated products. 

Well, to kick everything off in a bloom of gorgeous stationery, I have this sweet little tin of floral stickers to decorate my notes.

I'm a little bit addicted to cute tins...and illustrated stickers..and floral patterns, so this was perfect for me. 

I've been trying to get back into the habit of letter writing (nothing's nicer than getting a sweet letter through the door as opposed to bills or spam!), so I might surprise a few of my far-away friends with little notes this month.  The colours and patterns are really, really lovely and once I've used them all up I'll still have the tin for my trinkets or smaller art supplies!

Busy B have really been on my radar recently, I bought this calendar from them a few weeks ago (yes, it's June, but I'm finally getting organised!) and it's a beaut.

So, If these pretty bits take your fancy you can find them all on the Busy B website, and until Monday 29th June I'm giving away £10 to spend at Busy B to celebrate the launch of Illustrated Life! Hurray! 

Enter the giveaway here and remember to let me know if there's anything you'd love to see featured.

Illustrated Life Launches Today!

Today's the day! Illustrated Life has officially launched! Keep up to date with all the very loveliest illustrated prints, homeware, fashion, books, games - all of it! - right here.

Now, I told you I'd be giving away some amazing prizes to celebrate, and the first is go today! You could get your mits on £10 to spend at one of my very favourite stationery companies: Busy B!

It's easy to enter, just follow the instructions in the widget below (comment, tweet and/or subscribe to enter) and you will be in the running for a treat! This giveaway will run until midnight Monday 29th June, and I'll announce the winner then! The NEXT giveaway will be launching that Monday as well, I'll be keeping you on your toes!

Please take a second to read the Terms and Conditions (notably this is a UK only prize, but don't worry worldwide friends, there's an international giveaway coming up next week!)

If you like the idea of the new blog section, do spread the word and make sure you keep up to date via BlogLovin.

Note! Giveaway two is now live!

Good luck, buddies!

Kissing

Happy National Kissing Day, lovebirds. This was just a quick ink sketch inspired by the theme, with a dash of digital colouring. I really love drawing coiffured, tattooed, leather-jacket-donning biker-rockers, so I had a lot of fun with this!

Something Exciting Is Happening...

This June 22nd I'll be officially launching 'Illustrated Life', a new section of my blog focusing on featuring my very favourite illustrated products, fashion, books, games, stationery, homeware and practically every beautifully illustrated object I can find!

To celebrate the launch next Monday, I will holding a HUGE GIVEAWAY with £50 worth of goodies (from some amazing companies) being given away each Monday over three weeks.

To make sure you're in the running for the first giveaway on Monday, follow on BlogLovin, Twitter, Facebook or keep an eye on the hashtag #IllustratedLife.

Beautiful illustrated objects and features comin' up soon!

The Absence Of Light EP Cover

You might've seen a little sneak peek of this illustration a few days ago, but now I can finally reveal this cover illustration for Andrew Jolly's first EP release in full!

I wanted to keep with the feeling of the EP (dark, atmospheric but warm) and step away from my usual character-driven work into something more environment-focused.

If you can, grab your headphones for 15 minutes and check out the tracks on bandcamp.

New In The Shop! Shebeen Queen Riso Print

Ohh yeah! There's a brand new risograph print in my online shop! For today ONLY there's an introductory price with £5 off, so act fast if you want to grab a bargain!

http://emmelineillustration.mysupadupa.com/collections/art-prints/products/shebeen-queen

You can find out more about this illustration here.

Peter Pan Cover Reveal

Egmont Publishing have just revealed my book cover illustration for their new Classics edition of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie! 

This was a bit of a dream project to work on, and it's brilliant to have the go-ahead to show this to you after I've had to keep it underwraps for so long.  I'll be blogging a in depth process post at some point soon; there's some really nice prep work, roughs and alternate versions we cycled through, so it should be an interesting one!

This new edition of Peter Pan is one of the first six releases of Egmont's new Classics range.  It's definitely worth checking out the others (in particular the gorgeous A Little Princess cover by Jonathan Burton) http://www.thebookseller.com/news/egmont-reveals-first-classics-titles

They'll all be popping up in bookshops this August, so I'll keep you posted! 

What I Wore

So I treated myself to a new Summer outfit from H&M (thanks to some birthday vouchers!) and the colour combo sparked me into sketching my first ever What I Wore illustration.

It's just a quick 'un, but it was great to get in a bit of practice in drawing standing pose weighting (it's always good to brush up on it!).  

I've been considering launching a 30 days of 'What I Wore' with a sketch like this for each day of July! I'm not denying there might be a high percentage of pyjama drawings in there if I'm doing them each morning, although it's likely I'll put in extra effort to get beautifully dressed that month!

Sound like something you'd like to see?

Murakami Illustration Feature

Earlier this week one of my Twitter buddies sent me a message to say my Norwegian Wood print had been featured on the Haruki Murakami facebook page! 

Murakami's one of my very favourite authors, which is why (back in 2011) I submitted my poster illustration for an exhibition at the Curzon Soho cinema to celebrate the launch of the film adaptation of Murakami's Norwegian Wood novel. 

This is actually one of the few illustrations from t'olden-days that I'm still happy with, so it was humbling to see such a huge response to it!

So, yeah, I've been dealing with a bit of a landslide of print orders this week...but I've just posted a bag-full off and I'm diving back into illustrating! If you fancy a look at the prints I have available, they're all in my online shop here (and psst! a brand new print will be popping up there soon!).

Definitely tempted to step into a Murakami novel this weekend! Cats and jazz forever.