i'll be gone for a while...

i'm back in middlesbrough now and settling into my new house before starting my second year of university in october. due for the first day back is a project that consists of three tasks (only one of which i've currently done,) so i'll be spending the next month working my way through the project until i've an entire A3 sketchbook to show for my efforts (sob.) this means i'll probably not have much time to work on personal things, so before i have my summer project work to show here, i'm leaving you all with a couple of illustrations i've completed recently that were inspired by the, uh, bugs i've encountered over the summer... these two are butterfly and spider inspired, and where i planned to do a few more, i've really just not had the time. hope you all enjoy what may be left of your summer!

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my favourite ladies

last week i decided to experiment with pencil and watercolour, and after enjoying the results that i achieved, i decided to have a go at creating a set of images within this style. i chose to use some of my favourite ladies as my models, marina diamandis, ellie goulding, zooey deschanel and emma stone, because i have a soft spot for every one of them but also because they're all beautiful, too, and i've found that drawing beautiful people is, for some reason, very enjoyable.

so, there we have it. a 'project' of mine, if you like. hopefully when uni's done with and i'm not a slave to my coursework i'll be able to set myself some more projects and have fun with them!

 please view on flickr for better quality!

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late night experiments

lately it seems that i'm at my most active late at night, so tonight i set myself the challenge of painting something using only two colours. i decided to paint myself, for no good reason, just because, and i'm really quite pleased with how this little experiment turned out. definitely a technique i'll revist at some point or another!

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recent work: dulcie

with my main project for this term being over and me having gotten my relief out of my system (by going out four times in one week, oops,) i finally got around to sitting down and finishing off a few of the outstanding illustrations i'd promised people a couple of weeks ago.

above is an illustration i did for dulcie over at la-dulcie-vita as a thank you for the post she recently featured on her blog which featured a short interview with me and displayed some of my work. it was so flattering to have dulcie approach me and ask if i'd be happy for her to feature my work, it's really incredible to think that so many people have laid eyes on my work and that a percentage of those people are actually interested enough in my work to approach me about it! so once again, a big thank you to you, dulcie! if you'd like to read said post, you can find it here.

some of you more observant followers may have noticed a slight difference in the texture of this illustration compared to previous ones, and that's because i've finally ran out of watercolour paper and am now working using coloured pencils in a sketchbook that really won't take watercolour (the pages just tear apart, boo); in future i'll know to not buy a sketchbook just because it's cheap! it's been quite refreshing reverting back to using coloured pencils, i find shading to be a lot more enjoyable, however, the whole process just takes so much longer! a punishment for being cheap, i imagine!

what do you think of my pencil illustrations? do you prefer this texture to watercolour?