Rob Ryan at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yesterday, on an extremely dreary Tuesday, me and my friend Jenny (check out her Instagram, she's a fab artist) headed out to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to check out Rob Ryan's current exhibition, made up of various paper cut, laser cut and screenprinted pieces.

Process: Painting Ziggy

I've had quite a lot of time on my hands since coming to stay with my dad in Germany, so I thought I'd invest a good chunk of it into having a go at painting my little poodle, Ziggy. As I mentioned in my last post, watercolours are a medium that I struggle with, and animal portraits are a subject I struggle with, so once again I attempted to tackle two weaknesses in one piece by painting Ziggy using watercolour alone.

finished picture book: the sloth who almost stole christmas

today i present and hand in my final *real* piece of work for the year, and i'm so stupidly excited about it that i might just bust! the idea for 'the sloth who almost stole christmas' has been floating around in my head since around october last year, so it's so incredibly satisfying to actually have my thoughts now out in the real world, written down and documented visually ready for people to have a browse through! a few of my friends and the tutors have had a read of my story in its entirety, and i'm pretty much getting thumbs up all round - one tutor even said he'd like to get a copy printed to read to his own children, what a dream! it's fair to say that i'm incredibly proud of the final outcome and i'm just so excited to be able to have it in my portfolio as a testament to the fact that i'm interested in writing as well as illustrating - note to self, explore more story ideas over the summer - and also to prove that i am capable of producing an entire picture book, on my own, from cover to cover. ah.

i'll not babble on any longer, but i am so darn happy to end second year with this hand in. squeeee! i'll leave you with some spread images to have a nosey at, which you can also view through my online portfolio.

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dance, magic, dance!

 

just popping by to post another gouache portrait i've completed recently! this time of david bowie as the goblin king from the film labyrinth, which i watched while at uni and felt instantly inspired to one day recreate the characters from it. i do plan to more simply illustrate characters such as ludo (who is just adorable!) and create a whole set of them, but i thought i'd start out here as i'd been meaning to redo a bowie portrait at some point anyway after growing more and more displeased by my original aladdin sane illustration!

i was pretty pleased with this illustration on paper, however i don't feel as though the scan does it any justice *sigh*, such a nightmare when that happens! obviously i've room for a lot of improvement when it comes to portraits, however i do believe i'm slowly getting better at creating depth which is a lot easier to accomplish with gouache paints (my soft spot for them is rapidly growing.) i suppose i've just got to keep practising and practising!

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playin' with gouache

after seeing so many good things done with and said about gouache paints, i decided to hop onto the bandwagon and purchase myself a set of them. after my first play with them, i wasn't overly impressed - they just seemed to produce the same effect as watercolours but with so much more effort needed to work with them - but i persisted and played some more and i think i may now have developed some sort of understanding that may help me to work with them in future. i doubt i'll ever work solely with gouache, but i like how opaque the colours are so they could come in handy to use alongside my watercolours and pencils!

while experimenting i decided to work with marina again because she's very, very lovely looking and i always find it rewarding to draw attractive people. hair aside, i think i'm pretty happy with this piece.

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