Pinker than Shepherd's Delight

I sat down with my watercolours today and I had a bloody good time. Throughout my course I never really had the time available to sit and pour hours into getting to grips with the medium, and if you happen to have followed me over the last three years you'll have noticed a trend in me pulling out my paints every summer and attempting a portrait. I find it oddly exciting and relaxing to just sit and paint 'properly', so for me it's kind of cathartic to sit down in the summer at the end of a busy academic year and just pour some time into something that yields no reward, but just brings me a little bit of joy.

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!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

a tea party with alice

here's my most recently completed commission, a sidebar portrait for the lovely alice over at teapartywithalice.com. i've included some snaps of my illustrative process (i mainly post these on my instagram) as it's something i've never really done before, and i must say that i really have had so much fun playing around with gouache and i think it's finally become a staple part of my portrait style. 

i'm still open for commissions, so if you would like one for yourself (or maybe even as a gift to another!), please feel free to drop me an email at robynmakesthings@gmail.com to discuss my working methods and pricing :)

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

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!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

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.

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

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!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

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!

tweet me @xrobynm  |  follow me via bloglovin

something a little different, ft. zoe ldn

today i had a day off from working after spending all day yesterday getting one of my uni projects finished (hurrah for completion!) and went to visit some family with my mum, help her out with the shopping and we ended up going out for a meal spontaneously, too, which was nice. prior to that, i'd been watching a lot of zoe's youtube videos since watching her and lily do one another's make up blindfolded, mainly because i generally find her quite amusing to watch but also because she has such a lovely voice! not something i usually pick out about a person but just go and have a listen and you'll understand. probably. maybe. i don't know, she's just nice to listen to.

anyway, all this watching of zoe's youtube videos made me realise just how vibrant her hair colour is, it stands out from everything, and although i'm not personally a fan of really brightly coloured hair, i couldn't help but feel a bit mesmerised by it because i just couldn't take my eyes off it (mainly because it just wouldn't let me.) all this watching of the mermaid coloured locks inspired me to dig out my watercolours and look at mixing pencil and watercolour to create a contrast similar to zoe's hair and the rest of the (apparently very dull) world.

here was my outcome, it was something a bit different and fun to have a go at and something i might visit again because i think the bright colours against the softness of the pencil works really nicely when trying to create some kind of statement piece that reinforces one part of the image.

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?

recent work: roselovelybones

due to how quiet my blog's been this week, i'd thought i'd nip by just to give you all a quick update on what i've been up to this week and how next week's shaping up for me!

between my time spent this week travelling to and from uni to receive feedback on my work and collaging for hours on end, the lovely emma over at roselovelybones contacted me about illustrating for her, so i leaped at the chance to finally take a break from drawing monkeys and cutting and sticking.


all in all, i'm pretty pleased with how both of these illustrations turned out and was glad to hear that both emma and her boyfriend liked them, too. after emma blogged about my illustrations, i had a mad flow of emails entering my inbox and i now have quite a long list of requests to be getting on with, so i'd just like to take a moment to thank emma for her interest in my work and her support!

in other news, my draft poster seemed to receive positive overall feedback; of course, there are tweaks to be made such as hierarchy decisions and colour choices, but overall my tutors seemed to think my ideas and visuals seemed to work well together, so i'll be making tweaks to the existing poster and (hopefully) finishing my set of three this week!

other than that, i'm just hanging on in there and trying to create the best visuals i can before the deadline arrives and i'm stood up presenting my campaign to my tutors and peers!

sunday doings

sundays for me are largely very unproductive; i've gotten into the habit of going to bed around 2/3am and getting up at 11am during my weekends and it leaves me with very little time and very little motivation - working on my sleeping pattern is something i intend to do over the next couple of weeks!

however, this week i was contacted by natalie over at simplyjustnatalie about creating an illustration for her blog, and after my inbox had been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks, i was more than happy to get started on her illustration!

i opted for a slightly more realistic look with this illustration and focused on making it look soft and feminine as i felt that would mean the illustration would fit in well with the rest of natalie's blog, and overall, i'm pretty happy with the outcome!

i've had a couple more messages waiting for me in my inbox this week, so hopefully i'll have some more illustrations to post up on here very soon! the deadline for my digital communication module at uni is past approaching too and i have some posters to start designing (i have become far too good at procrastinating since starting uni,) so hopefully i'll be able to share my university work with you all soon as well! 

also, there are still six cards up for grabs in my valentines cards giveaway!