Unique Blogger Of The Year Finalist

I'm so incredibly excited to tell you that I'm a finalist in the Bloggers Lounge Awards! Eee! I've been picked out of hundreds of entrants (internationally!) as one of five blogs up for Unique Blogger Of The Year. 

Blooming exciting.

I'll be heading down to the awards evening in London in late January, but to be in with a chance of being named Unique Blogger Of The Year I need a hand from you: the winners are based on public vote and I'd so so appreciate your support.

You can vote for me at http://bloggers-lounge.co.uk/bloggers-of-the-year/blogger-of-the-year-2015! I really recommend having a snoop around some of the other blogs up for awards, there are some really amazing ones.

I've spied few news articles floating around about my shortlisting. Last week I was featured in The Lancashire Telegraph with a silly grin and some nice words about me and my work! It's amazing to see so many people pop up to support me - I really, really appreciate it.

So, if you have a spare minute, nip over to http://bloggers-lounge.co.uk/bloggers-of-the-year/blogger-of-the-year-2015 and cast some votes (no signup) or share it with your mum / bestfriend / piano teacher / cat-sitter before voting closes on December 24th this year. I have my fingers super-crossed for January!

Jessica Jones

I've been a little bit under the weather since Thought Bubble Comic Festival (and an adventure to Nottingham last week to boot) so naturally, I've basked in the warm embrace of Netflix. Jessica Jones, a new show based on the Marvel comic, has just popped up and I've absolutely stormed through it as, well, it's brilliant. 

I love TV shows with strong-but-realistic female lead characters (yup, I've been meaning to draw a million Buffy characters) and you'll notice a lot of tough ladies in my illustration work as well. I love Krysten Ritter's portrayal of super strong, humanly flawed, witty Jessica (and apparently I love drawing leather jackets) so I had to draw a quick ink sketch of her, bourbon bottle n all.

You can see this illustration on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and in my Behance portfolio.

I Survived My First Convention! Thought Bubble 2015 Round Up

So I survived (and absolutely loved) my very first convention! Last weekend I exhibited at Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival in Leeds, it was an incredible experience and I have to say it was brilliant to get away from my desk and interact with real-life humans for my work.

Thought Bubble has been going for a few years now, but this was my very first time attending and my very first time tabling - so it was a little overwhelming on the first day. I'd applied for a table earlier in the year to act as a deadline for me to finish some of the comics I'd been working on (I'm a bit awful when it comes to procrastinating over my own work). I find a lot of the time I need a set deadline to make sure I equally prioritize my personal work alongside commissions. 

Well, after a few late, laattee nights preparing and a lot of organising and the invaluable help of Andrew Jolly: I managed to rustle everything up, get a zillion things printed and packed it all up in cardboard boxes to trundle over to Leeds.

My table was in The Royal Armouries hall in, as I soon realised, a fantaaastic location (well lit, great traffic and lots of space) with the lovely Tor Freeman tabling next to me. I didn't really know what to expect from the festival, and I'd been a little worried about over or under preparing, but I managed to pitch it just about perfectly (although I sold out of a few prints!). I had been nervous, with classic "Oh god, what if nothing sells? What if everyone hates my work?!" sort of thoughts running through my head, but after selling a few big bundles of prints within half an hour I relaxed a bit!

It can be pretty daunting having so many people wander up to your table looking at your illustrations, but it was fantastic to meet everyone and get a real sense of live feedback on my work. It's really useful to put yourself out there and be able to take a hard look at what doesn't sell as well as you expected and what surprises you and sells out! 

I was also offering live portraits for the first time. That was really a trial by fire as I'd never live sketched with the drawee watching before - but, again, I think it's all about pushing yourself to take a risk and leap in to new areas. Luckily everyone seemed to absolutely love their sketches, and I had a blast doing it!

I met so many people over the course of the weekend: long-time Twitter friends, publishers and comic creators, classic Draw North West-ers and a few of my very favourite artists! I only meant to give myself about twenty minutes to rush around the other halls before running back to my table, but I ended up taking over an hour as there were just too many chats to have and comics to buy.

My Thought Bubble comic haul ft Matt Taylor, Natalie Andrewson, Fleur Sciorliano and Nicolas Delort!

I also got the chance to pop in to the Joan Cornella exhibition at the Gallery at Munro House, which was brilliant (despite me having to run and dry my clothes in the bathroom after getting drenched in a fast car + puddle situation) and on the Saturday night I went to the mid-con party where Darryl McDaniels from Run DMC popped out and rapped a few hits! 

The whole weekend was a beautiful blur, and I'm so relieved it ended up going really well. Hopefully I'll be able to exhibit at Thought Bubble again next year (I've really got the convention bug now) and I've carefully noted down all the little tips and edits I've learnt along the way. I think it's always worth throwing yourself in to a new experience like this, even if you're a little hesitant, because there's so much to learn about yourself and your work if you go for it.

See you next year Thought Bubble!

Emmeline In The Guardian!

If you've read The Guardian this week, you may have spotted me featured talking about my plans for Small Business Saturday!

This year I've been picked as one of the Small Business 100, a select group of one hundred small business from across the country chosen as representatives for Small Business Saturday on 5th December.  

We're an incredibly diverse bunch: from candle-makers to green-grocers and freelance illustrators like me! My big plan for Small Business Saturday is to create a series of illustrations celebrating the huge variety of small businesses across the country, and post these throughout the day using #SmallBizSatUK - keep an eye out!

I won't deny it's pretty bloomin' exciting to see my little face featured in The Guardian, and I absolutely can't wait to show you the illustrations I've been working on for Small Business Saturday! If you can, I really recommend getting involved on December 5th, it's so great to have the importance and strength of small businesses celebrated.

Thought Bubble Festival & My First Ever Comic Reveal

It's been a hectic one this week: right now I'm putting together all my final little tweaks to a whole host of illustrated goodies for Thought Bubble festival in Leeds this weekend. Yes, I was up until 4am last night and had to get up at 8; yes I'm going a bit loopy from stapling and folding comics; and yesss I'm excited!

This year's Thought Bubble festival will be my very first convention stall! I applied for a table towards the start of the year as a deadline for me to complete some of the comics ideas that I'd been procrastinating over - and finally, they're done.

It's going to be an amazing festival - the line up is incredible! If you happen to swing by, find me at table 4b in The Royal Armouries Hall! It would be amazing if you came and said hello.

I'll be debuting a completely brand new, entirely un-seen comic (well, collection of two comics) 'Small Stories: The Flood & Eggs' aaaand a physical 'Creative Tips For Your Fight Through The Freelance Jungle' booklet with all sorts of advice on starting up or maintaining a creative career (with a bunch of new content and illustrations!). Small Stories will be my first ever official comic! It's been so great to work on and I'm excited to show you all.


I can't wait!

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!

Exciting Small Business 100 Feature!

Very pleased to announce that today is my Small Business 100 feature date!

Throughout the day you'll see tweets, articles and clips on my freelancing and illustration promoted by Small Business Saturday UK. One hundred diverse (and very talented!) small businesses across the country were chosen to feature in the run up to Small Business Saturday on December 5th. 

You can see all the businesses involved and find out more about the day over on the official website. It's all about getting together to support small businesses and celebrate our drive to do what we love for a living.

Today's #SmallBiz100 is @emmelinedraws from Chorley http://t.co/mc7gIj3J4W pic.twitter.com/rudlP3yDUU

— SmallBizSatUK (@SmallBizSatUK) October 19, 2015

I really recommend finding some way to get involved this December.  For last year's Small Business Saturday I hosted a picture book reading and children's art workshop at Ebb & Flo bookshop in Chorley - sometimes you really just have to break away from the desk and connect with other people! It's incredibly rewarding.

"I love writing honestly about my experiences to help #smallbiz - that sort of advice is invaluable" @emmelinedraws pic.twitter.com/gcXTCqslFp

— SmallBizSatUK (@SmallBizSatUK) October 19, 2015

You can keep up to date on all the Small Business Saturday social media hum over on Twitter and Facebook. You might well spy little snippets about my work floating around today, so keep an eye out for those, and I'll hopefully be making an appearance with some very interesting people on the Small Biz UK bus tour in Manchester this November! Hurray small businesses!

An Illustrator in Italy - travel, sketching and snapshots from Lake Garda

When I’m travelling, you’ll almost always find a good portion of my suitcase brimming with sketchbooks and pencils. There’s something so personal about documenting your experiences through a sketch. I find it really builds a memory and captures the atmosphere as you study each detail and transfer it to paper.  Reportage and travel sketching has become an integral part of each trip I take, and looking back over my sketchbooks immerses me in the memory often far more than a quick snapshot can.

Well, after this near disaster at a festival recently (and only taking hand luggage) I opted to leave the ink pot at home and stuck to pencils, brush pens and a watercolour set as I took a week in Italy last month. I’d never visited Italy before (despite dreams of going to Bologna book fair each year). This trip was purely for family-time (and a much-needed break from work!) so we headed to Limone on Lake Garda for lake-swims, mountain climbs and castle adventures.

There aren’t many views I love more than mountains and vast stretches of water. I love the variety of weather, the way the light plays on the peaks and the array of colours as the day cycles. The lakeside beaches were calm enough that I could sit for a few hours to read, paint and brave a swim.

Limone is famous for its gorgeous lemon groves, and it’s one of those places where the tourist shops grab a theme and run with it (doesn’t everywhere?). There were bundles of lemon themed gifts, the best lemonade I’ve ever tasted and the town centre had wafts of sweet citrus as you walked along the cobbled streets. Luckily, I love lemon! I really enjoyed learning about the heritage and history of the town at a few of the restored lemon groves/museums where I also found this little guy below (the cat not the grapefruit, but yes, also the grapefruit). I won’t pretend my travel photos don’t always contain at least two pictures of cats.

We hired a car for the week, so we had the freedom to explore the less-touristy spots and visit other towns on the far stretches of the lake. I picked up these beautiful illustrated postcards in an old bookshop in Riva! It was a bit intimidating navigating the narrow tunnels with ginormous coaches hurtling at you like a stampede, but we made it through with only a few near misses.

Illustration by Ricardo Guasco [left] and Antonio Simeoni (1926) [right]

I’m back at work now, my family returned to their respective opposite ends of the country, and the memories of feeling warm in a t-shirt are gradually being swaddled in coats and knitted scarves (hey, it’s fine, I love Autumn!). One day I’ll put together a book with all my travel sketches, but until then, I’ll just look forward to my next adventure.

Just a note to say many of these photos were taken by the wonderful Andrew Jolly! 

Do You Believe In Fairies? Vintage 1930s Peter Pan Book Illustration

With Egmont's new edition of Peter Pan popping in to bookshops last month, and my recent post about the behind-the-scenes processes of illustrating the cover, I thought it was about time I shared this nice dollop of inspiration with you. 

When I first told my Mum that I'd been commissioned to illustrated the cover for Peter Pan, she got pretty excited and said "I HAVE A BOOK TO SHOW YOU!". So next time I visited Cornwall, she dug this beauty out:

This edition of Peter Pan and Wendy is from 1931 and illustrated by Gwynedd Hudson. It's falling apart a little bit, it's got that gorgeous old-book smell and the illustrations are beyond beautiful.

I spent most of the afternoon carefully going through each page and taking photos of all the interesting bits of illustration (I can't feature them all here, there are so many!) to make sure they're preserved, to share them with you and to use as a little catalogue of inspiration for when I'm home!

Although my book cover and illustration style followed a completely different path, it was so inspiring to see this take on the Neverland world whilst in the depths of working on the project. I particularly love the really clever use of colour layering when working with a limited colour palette. It took me back to all the figuring out I had to do whilst arranging an illustration for risograph printing!

Each chapter heading is so dynamic and captures the essence of the story. There are loads of tiny spot illustrations dotted around the margins as well, which are really lovely to see as you read through; it immerses you in the atmosphere without being too visually prescriptive. 

I adore old books (and, well, books in general obviously) and collecting inspiration from vintage illustration. It's definitely a great find by my Mum, I'm so glad she rescued it and kept it safe! 

I'll be posting more of my vintage book illustration finds soon, so keep up with it on Illustrated Life or by following on Bloglovin here. 

Inktober 2015 - A Daily Ink Illustration Challenge

Today marks the start of Inktober, a daily ink illustration challenge running throughout October each year. I took part last year and it was incredible for pushing my motivation to create and for sparking new ideas (I'm currently working on a series of comics based around The Falconeer above!). 

I'm a huge fan of monthly illustration challenges. It's often so easy to get sucked in to the admin side of business (or life?) and spend hours emailing or organising, whilst neglecting the creative element. Prompting yourself to create each day you do end up discovering a lot about how you work and what you actually enjoy illustrating.

That said, I'm sad to say I can't properly take part this year as I've got some huge things coming up this month where I'm 90% sure I'm barely going to get a second to break out the ink each day. But I'm hoping to dip in every so often with a drawing or two.

So, if you'd like to take part (and I really suggest you give it a go at least once!) take a deep breath and commit to one drawing/painting/scribble in ink each day in October and post it on Twitter, Facebook or wherever you like with the hashtag #Inktober. If you don't want to take it so seriously, no problem, but you might fall in love with it.

The full collection of my Inktober drawings from last year can be found here, and a summary of everything I learnt, enjoyed and struggled with is on my blog here (worth a read if you're going for it!).

Go and have some messy, inky fun.

Illustrating Peter Pan - Secret Illustration Process & Behind-The-Scenes Peek!

So, the new edition of Peter Pan that I illustrated for Egmont Publishing's new classics range is now officially out! 

It was definitely one of those dream book cover illustration jobs. It's such a beloved story, full of magic and illustrative potential! I know that with other artists, I love to see the behind-the-scenes breakdown of their work when tackling various projects, so I thought it would be great to share my process with you.



This commission flowed smoothly (like, um, delicious custard?) although we did run through a few different iterations of Peter's stance and outfit colour. It can be surprising how differently a slight change in head tilt or shift in colour can communicate with the viewer; and with book covers in particular you have to get that balance between intrigue, representation of the story, a unique style and (definitely with classic stories) a certain relate-ability and recognition that "Oh yes! That's Peter Pan!".



When we first started discussing the commission, I was given a few pointers of what the publishers might like to see on the cover: a scene with the mermaids, a London-at-night flyover or the instant Wendy, Michael and John start floating in the nursery. I had a lot of fun imagining these scenes and ended up feeling inspired to add an extra option of Peter and Tink gazing out over Neverland from a tree, which, quite happily, Egmont decided to go for as a night-time scene.

Hopefully this gif showing each stage of the process will load for you.

These early sketches are always the most loose and un-bridled, and the publishers wanted to retain some of that hand-drawn feel from the Peter character sketch for the final illustration. I did a lot of research on early interpretations of Peter Pan, and particularly fell in love with the theatrical costumes showing him (often played by a her) in a gorgeous feathery, leafy tunic. 

You might be surprised to hear, but before the oh-so-famous Disney version of Pan, his outfit was most often featured in shades of brown, said to be made of autumn leaves and cobwebs.  Although in the book itself Barrie never describes Peter's outfit in detail, leaving it to the imagination of the reader and various adaptations, I think these days when someone mentions "Peter Pan" we often instinctively think of a green outfit. I won't delve too far into the theories and psychology of all this (maybe another time!), but as you'll be able to see from the prep work I did try going with a 'classic' brown leafy outfit, but eventually this was swapped for green after some uncertainty from the sales department that it wouldn't instantly communicate Peter Pan, which is completely understandable.



Okay, so let's knuckle down to process. With this project I wanted to make sure I really paid attention to my tonal values, as a) this is a book cover, so had to look good in print, on a bookshelf, on display in a shop, or indeed as a tiny thumbnail on amazon - and b) it was a night-time scene, but needed to remain vibrant and cheerful. So to start, I sketched the cover digitally in black and white and slowly introduced colour, keeping in mind the elements that needed to stand out and where the light would fall naturally. At the beginning I wasn't paying too much attention to having a really refined line or shapes (as these would be developed a little later), just a basic indication of what would be where and a real focus on the general composition and, as I mentioned, developing strong tonal values. 

As you can see, there were only really a few fundamental changes to the original composition: the position of the pirate ship, Peter's stance, and the size of the moon; the rest remained relatively similar throughout with just a few minor shifts as the linework was defined.



Peter's pose cycled through a few versions to allow us to get more of a sense of his cheeky, confident (slightly arrogant?) personality. The hands on hips pose is definitely another one of those classic Pan-signifiers, which I did initially bypass, but I think that along with the fact he's now looking up at the moon lends itself really well in terms of shape, balance and sense of fluidity as your eye is led around the cover. 

This cover is part of a series of a new Classics range from Egmont, so the moon was tweaked a little to be cohesive with the yellow-heavy colours and bold shapes of the other books in the series. Again though, this was one of those tweaks that really brought the final cover together as an individual piece.



For the majority of the cover I built up the linework and colour using customised textured brushes in Photoshop (most often set to 'dissolve' as it's yummy and chalky), with hints of scanned watercolour overlayed for texture (see the moon etc). As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to retain a sense of sketchiness from the initial drawings, so my linework in the tree and on Peter in particular is slightly scratchier and pencil-like than a lot of my finished illustrations; but I really love the sense of the hand-drawn and childhood nostalgia it brings to it.



The book itself has gorgeous hints of Spot UV printing on the cover, highlighting the leaves on Peter's tunic, Tink's glow etc which gives it a really nice tactile quality to it. I always love elements of physical printed media that you can't get from just an image on the computer or an app. Long live books I say (although, yeah, I love the Internet and apps. Best of both worlds?).



As a pretty lovely little extra, proceeds from the sale of this book go to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity, carrying on J M Barrie’s bequest and support of the hospital. If you fancy picking up a copy it's available now from Amazon, Waterstones and a bunch more. Keep an eye out for it in bookshops, and then you can impress all your friends by knowing cool facts about how the cover was designed. Oh yes!

If you have any questions on the process or the book, feel free to drop me an email or leave a comment here! 

Sketching Festival Number 6 // 2015

Last week I headed back to Festival Number 6 for a weekend of music, magic, dancing and tasty, tasty food. Last year the festival completely blew me away with its beautiful location and eccentric atmosphere (and inspired me to illustrate this!), and of course this year was just as magical. 

This year my friends in Geins Family Giftshop were performing in The Gatehouse comedy tent, so it was brilliant to be able to see them there and support their honestly genius show (seriously, if you like dark, hilarious sketch shows see here).

Between some amazing gigs by the likes of Shura, Dutch Uncles, Everything Everything and a brilliantly theatrical performance by Grace Jones, I spent a lot of my time just soaking up the atmosphere and sketching.

I'm recovering from a sprained ankle at the moment, so striding around at a fast pace was kind of out of the question (although I did manage to explore and work in some careful dancing!) so it was great to just schlomp out on grassy verges or deckchairs and people watch (let me tell you, sequins, so big this year).

So this is quite a short and sweet post, but if you fancy reading more (and seeing more) about the festival it'd definitely be worth reading my post from last year, which also features my Festival Number 6 illustration!

I'll be posting more adventure inspiration and travel sketches soon as I'm heading off to Italy for the first time! Think mountains and lakes and finally taking a real break from work-mode, yes!