The Girl and the Bird

My course leader Ashley Potter from Plymouth University has been running a project to investigate how different people tackle illustration work and how this may relate to their personalities. 

The project was entitled "Girl & Bird" this subject has been tackled many times in the past in all different ways and we were asked to interpret it however we liked, and then answer a questionnaire about our work which involved questions about ourselves, the work we did and about our personality types. 

I used this project as an opportunity to do a "real" illustration project, after months away from university I have found myself spending much less time on research and drawing development in the work I do and I wanted to push myself further in this one to try and create something exciting.

I used Pinterest to collect a variety of images to inspire me. Since I started learning aerial hoop I have been collecting different poses to motivate myself and I found myself drawn to the idea of including this in my work for this project as the grace and elegance of aerial artists posing in hoops reminds me of birds sat on branches. 

The first aerial girls I drew were ok, I found myself reverting back to the style I used when drawing the circus characters for my final year project. Whilst the facial expressions for that worked well, I wanted this girl to look less juvenile and more sophisticated.

After researching pierrot makeup and fashion illustrations I spent a while experimenting with different face styles in the drawings shown below. 

I much preferred these to the simplistic expressions I used to use and decided to carry this as a theme within the bird character. My first birds were fun, but rather fat :

I developed these using longer, curvier lines and more sophisticated faces, I wanted them to look more like birds of paradise.

For my final piece I chose a hanging pose for the girl on the hoop as I really liked the pose, I decided to use textured watercolour paper as it gave the line work a rougher style.

After scanning the drawing in I coloured it using Photoshop, I chose a palette of bright, fun colours to fit the fantastical theme, I was very happy with it and I hope to put prints online soon!

Eden Project Flower Studies

I went for a short break to Cornwall last week with the boyfriend. Since I he has never been to The Eden Project and I haven't been for years, we decided to take a day trip in the hopes we could see some nice wildlife and get away from the great british weather which basically has so far consisted of vast amounts of flooding! 

We were very lucky with the weather, it was cold but dry and quite sunny, when we were in the biomes we sat for a while and pretended we were in another country as it was lovely and warm! Definitely in need of a real holiday I think...

Here are some of the awesome things we saw whilst walking around:

Birds with furry heads

Flowers with furry heads

A hot air balloon

Some epic metal sculptures

And of course many, many flowers! I was feeling a little down the other day having not done any drawing for a good while and looking through these photos motivated me so I sat and had a little sketching session:

I used rotring rapidograph pens with 3 different nibs to create depth in the drawings by varying line thickness. Hoping to edit these and maybe put them together for a print or something when I get motivated to scan some things :)

Happy Easter

Here is one of the drawings I did to show the people at The Great British Card Company last week:

Instead of eating chocolate all day today I am curled up in my grandad jumper doing a combination of dissertation, 100 page report and possibly some circus drawing for the opticians! 

How is everyone elses easters going?

Get Your Commercial Head On

I have spent the past four days doing a work placement at The Great British Card Company in Gloucester. All year I have had people asking what I will do when I finish this summer and the thought terrifies me so this was an opportunity to learn more about the commercial world of illustration and how I can make my work more sale-able!

I spent my time working with In house illustrators Carly and Simon who quickly showed me that I have no clue about what is considered "commercial" by the general public... With their help I managed to create a range of cards with careful consideration about how to make them appealing to the masses whilst also still using my strengths and my own personal style.

It was a definite learning curve, and even if I don't go into this industry I feel a lot more knowledgable about commercial card design and the range of skills used. I also got to play around with the foiling machine and flitter (glitter) to add extra bits to my cards. However cringy and girly it sounds I did love doing it! (and the glitter is still all over me...) 

In the end I managed to make 4 card designs and 6 gift wrap designs, heres a few samples! The balloon is my favourite, hoping to make a couple of cards to go with that one, my eyes started to blur today from too much Photoshop so I didn't get to finish it. 

These both have glitter and foil but it is pretty impossible to photograph well...

Ballooooons!

The Great British Card Company

So tomorrow I am off to Gloucester to do a 4 day placement with Paperhouse at The Great British Card Company. I had been putting off doing the prep work because I couldn't choose a theme for my cards, I settled on birds but still found it hard to start. I think because I am quite worried about what they want from me... it is a little strange going in with such an open brief and for once I was really nervous about my ideas...

Here is part of one of the visuals I made-bit different to anything I have done before and it isn't quite finished but I hope to get some feedback tomorrow!

owls in suits!

After seeing a pennyfarthing bike at the Exeter Museum I decided I wanted to draw a character riding one! Have made my owl a bit more posh, put him in a suit.

Proportions and that are a bit out but I like the character of him, might give him a tophat in the next one!

owl progression

Starting to turn some animals into characters for 241. Started this off as a guy with an owl head, but it stopped looking like an owl and was more of a fluffy monster head! so now am adding wing hands and making the body rounder and more owl shaped, the bottom one is nearly there, but I think it needs more rounded shoulders... not sure how owl-y I want to go yet haha, will continue tomorrow!

Ghost bird final books

Haven't posted on here in about a week since after our hand in the sun came out and I have had an absolutely glorious week sitting out in the sun instead of doing work!

Working on an essay at the moment so nothing too exciting. But here are some photos of my final books for the Ghosts Of Gone Birds Project. I have enjoyed myself so much in this module, think I have finally worked out what I am doing!

Firstly the Auckland Island Merganser book. I made a box for this which I hand embossed with an image of the bird on the front, and the story of the bird on the back. The Embossing powder makes amazing sparkly effects when used for text!

The Moa book, I redid these because the tracing paper cases on the others kept breaking and I also wanted to try the images on matte paper. These are printed onto Bockingford watercolour paper which has amazing texture. I used the same paper for the covers and hand embossed these with images of the birds.

Auckland Island Merganser final (woohoo)

It is 9pm in the studio and I am starting to go slowly mad...

Finished my final book though, this one is showing the Auckland Island Merganser being predated on by rats.

It is pretty dark to be honest, I got a little angry with the ink....;)

  

and it all started off so peaceful and lovely! 

collograph prints

Spent all morning in the print room yesterday. These were a pain to do, I kept getting white patches where the paper didn't take up the  ink which meant I used up all my good paper on ones I didn't like! Ah well, the brown and red ones are my favourites. Will be selling some of these to raise money for the RSPB at some point in May :)