The First Pond Life Finished

To follow up on my previous post about my planned series called Pond life I finally finished the first painting. I added a bit of gouache to give the painting depth especially around the leaves. Not too sure what I'm going to call it yet.

Work In Progress

I may be 24 but I still love...

Picture books. I  have 'The Clock Without A Face' to read in between my adult books without pictures (boooooo!) but I can safely say they are all great additions to my expanding collection.

Thanks so much for giving me them Suzanne and even though you find it amusing for somebody to love picture books at my age, I'm pretty sure that you'll be reaching for the bookshelf when I'm not looking.

New editorial work.

Soon after getting back from the lake district (which was marvelous) a recent DPS I did for Legal Business magazine dropped through my letterbox. I had a ridiculous amount of fun doing this, it's got explorers and medieval detailed maps - need I say more :-)

Below: A work in progress photo and underneath the finished artwork.

The man in the bottom right hand corner is Tim, the website guru who is waiting for me to get my act together and send him some meta tags (I think?).

Pond life

The title 'pond life' could mean lots of different things to lots of different people. I always enjoy encountering a fantastical miniature world whenever I take the time to just crouch down on the banks and stare intently.

I was lucky enough to grow up next door to a stream. The memories I have of that place are incredibly nostalgic but I still think I'm not over-exaggerating when I say that the water had an energy. The best place to appreciate it was in the pools the stream created further down. The energy the water created would (in my child's eyes) pass onto the creatures consuming it and plants around it.

So why gabble on about streams and ponds? Well I've decided to start another series of paintings and maybe some etchings that the title 'Pond Life' will encompass. Ideas and images are incarcerated in my head just trying to dig their way out with a spoon and their constant scraping is becoming too much. I only hope they don't have to crawl out of the sewage pipe Shawshank Redemption style!

Here's a WIP. I can see a different version of this concept already on the horizon but for now this painting will feature on the local Swindon Arts & Culture Magazine 'Frequency' (fingers crossed).

Discovering A Muse (or technique)

I finally got a bit of time to finish my ArtOrder submission for the 'Discovering A Muse' challenge. Mainly I stuck the the photos I took myself but just in case here's a link to the original model's site Veronika.

I tried to step away from the typically strong, sexy and independent heroine you find in a lot of fantasy based imagery (the kind where she's in a leotard toting a machine gun) and went with a more striking magical image. I thought a more subtle way for her to appear strong would be for her to be looking down on the viewer with a look of mild disdain. Hopefully I achieved this, in any case I enjoying creating this watercolour and discovered some fantastic watercolour inks when working wet on wet for the background. Maybe I should call this post 'Discovering A Technique.'

'WIP'

No it's not on grey paper, I'm just shocking at taking photos. Heres a work in progress for the ArtOrder Muse challenge complete with masking fluid. I'm not too sure where this is going right now but I'm going to have a play

Legal Business

I had a lot of fun working on this. The good people at Legal Business Magazine asked me to create a Savile Row Tailors interior for a double page spread (see top). I enjoy commissions that ask you to illustrate something you wouldn't even think to do in your personal work. You end up looking at things differently (i.e suit jackets) and in this instance it was a brilliant excuse to flick through some Norman Rockwell interiors. I even visited my local tailors with my camera in hand!

The finished illos was done in watercolour with the odd gouache and pencil crayon highlight.

Resurface for a while.

I haven't posted in AGES! Not good, must try harder. Here's a card design I finished last week, whosoever has a birthday next will be receiving this in the post I can tell you. Most of the icing was finished in Gouache so I could have more control over the pastel colours. 

Just to let you know there is a back log of work that I will be posting, some WIPs and another in which I am waiting to be published.

Until then, avoid the ash!

Scaling the shelves

The lovely people at Management Today asked me to create an illustration about certain successful independent products doing well in supermarkets. Obviously it's not easy for these small companies, so I decided to show their products literally climbing the shelves.

First I started with a pencil line drawing on some stretched watercolour paper. When there is lots of detail involved sometimes I work up an acrylic underpainting to establish the tonal values and effectively seal the drawing so it doesn't disappear when I apply watercolour. However I did actually shade certain areas in pencil beforehand because the medium offers more control and I can erase my mistakes!


With the acrylic underpainting I concentrated on the background to try and set this back from the characters.


The finished illustration with watercolour and gouache over the acrylic underpainting.