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 :)

Tigerprint christmas type competition

I was excited when reading the brief for this months Tigerprint competition because I have been needing an excuse to work on my hand drawn type and this seemed like the perfect project! I spent a lot of time working on different phrases in different styles and played around with different drawing implements. The photos below show some of my sketchbook work using brush pen, graphite pencil, italic markers and rotring fineliners to create different lines and textures. 

I played around with 5 different phrases for final designs, two I just couldn't get to look right so I scrapped them, these 3 are the ones I will be submitting for the competition:

This was my first design, I like the type, still not entirely sure the colour palette is quite right - I think I work better with a smaller selection of colours!

I loved drawing the frame for this image, I wanted it to be quite decorative with simple colours.

This one is my favourite - I love burgundy and I think the type fitted the shape really well.

So Many Projects!

The past week has been truly crazy! Since I got back from London I have been attempting to enjoy the sun whilst also improving my portfolio and working on new things in an attempt to secure any job that doesn't require me standing behind a till!

Tigerprint are running a daily design competition up until 26th July where you can enter as many designs as you want based on the themes they set each day. I have been working on all sorts from patterns and typography to greetings card designs. 

Because the final work might be used for M&S I can't show anything yet but here are a couple of previews of a couple of my drawings! 

I also signed myself up for the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search competition. The prize is representation by Lilla Rogers' agency for 2 years. I wanted to try my luck at the competition, even though I knew the standard would be very high and it would be unlikely I would get that far. After receiving the brief however, I scared myself a bit and avoided starting for way too long:

Consequently the deadline is today at 5pm, and I started my artwork design (which I thought up last night) at 10am. 

Note to self - do not leave things to the last minute it will leave you shaky and panicky whilst trying to Photoshop well and mean you make lots of mistakes and don't feel too great about the whole thing! 

The brief was to create a Journal cover imagining the client was Paperchase. The theme was vintage playgrounds and playground equipment and you could interpret this however you liked. It seems my new autopilot mode is to revert back to drawing circus performers after spending so long focusing on them for the Opticians artwork I did! Anyhow, I drew a girl reading a journal sat on a static trapeze/swing. 

Here is my final artwork as it was submitted :) for 4 hours of panicky drawing and Photoshop it came out better than I thought. It got to a point where my goal was not to get into the shortlist, but just to submit something that wasn't embarrassingly awful and I think I got there just about! 

So much sewing!

This week has involved a lot of making things for my end of year show including cushions to be displayed and purses, pencil cases and notebooks to be sold!

My sewing machines has taken a battering this week and the light is now broken, I also may have nearly sewn through my finger - the needle went all the way into my fingertip but luckily the thread didn't catch ;).

Have put prices by things, please comment if you see anything you want!

Cushion covers printed and ready to be sewn!

First cushion cover finished :)

All 4 covers together - now I just need the cushion pads to arrive! Price to be confirmed, these will be on display at my degree show. 

Hand bound A6 notebooks with sewn spine. £2.50 each

Hand sewn coin purses £6 each

Hand sewn pencil cases £6 each

(the last two images I seem to have forgotten to make sure my camera was focused... deadline stress means rubbish photos sorry!) 

London Drawings

I went on a research trip to London with my friend Jess a couple of weeks ago, we did a lot of drawings in the V&A and Tate modern, was really nice to chill and do fun drawing for a change :)

We are planning on making some kind of book/zine with the sketches we like to sell at Bristol Artists Book Event in April so I have been playing around with sets of images, heres a little preview, let me know what you think, am wondering if some of them might work as t-shirt designs!

You can see some of Jess's lovely drawings over here

so much drawing

Oh my ghost came by
Said who do you love the most
Who you wanna call before you die

Oh my ghost came by here
Said who do you love the most
Who you gonna sing to 'fore you're gone

Oh hey heaven is the place we know
Heaven is the arms that hold us
Long before we go
Oh hey, heaven is the place we know
Heaven is the arms that hold us
Long before we go

Oh my ghost came by here
Said who do you love the most
Who you gonna sing to 'fore you go

Oh hey heaven is the place we know
Heaven is the arms that hold us
Long before we go
Oh hey, heaven is the place we know
Heaven is the arms that hold us
Long before we go

Oh if you're there
When the world comes to gather me in
Oh if you're there
I will be blessed

All I have been doing this week is drawing pages and pages of ghosts and girls! Still haven't got my character design fixed...

lyrics "I will be blessed" Ben Howard
came up on spotify and it seemed appropriate :)