Alice in Modernland

Here is a piece I created for the SCBWI contest 'Undiscovered Voices'- a brilliant opportunity for undiscovered illustrators and writers to get their work out there and create their first book!

There were different titles to choose from, and the one I picked was Alice of Wonderland Road - Remarkable Tales of a Runaway. With this theme I immediately thought of a modern twist to the story where Alice runs off looking for a different country to go to.

Here is the initial sketch of my idea. This is a style I've been working with for a while now and like the idea of developing with different themes. I tried to add as many relevant objects relating to the fairy tale, for example: roses, teapot, clocks, etc.

Let the carbon copying begin!

The submitted piece had to be in black and white. I used watered down acrylic paints to achieve this.

The final piece!

Nando's Menu

I love to see the process of a sketch resulting to its masterpiece so I thought I'd talk through my process when I painted this illustration for a Nando's competition. I will try and do this for all future pieces of work.

So let's start off with the idea. I sketched out what I already had in mind doing this painting. I knew I wanted circles and symmetry with as much relevance to Nando's and their food as possible.


With the idea sketched out I created the outline using Illustrator to do the circles- any non-circle drawings were done by hand.

With the outline complete the acrylic paints came out of the box! Painting is so therapeutic and I enjoy it tremendously- until the hand cramps come in that is.

With the painting complete I scanned the final thing and opened it in Photoshop.

The background was filled in digitally, thus ending up with the final result.

Watch This Space

I can't believe it's been two years since I wrote my last blog! Where did the time go? What have I been doing with myself?

Well, in the past two years, I'd been going back and forth between working my retail job AND doing internships on my days off. Many weeks of working 7 days were done but in the end it was worth it as it landed me my dream job of working for children's publishing.

It's been five months into my career started and now I want to do more! The sun is out and my creative juices are flowing. It's time to bring some colour into this new season.


Watch this space…







(I promise  I will do more blogging from now on!)

Jelly London Work Experience

After graduating from university this summer I thought that looking for a job in my chosen field would be a piece of cake, until I realised that my course didn't prepare me at all for working in the real world. So from September I decided to start applying to places that would let me do an internship or just work experience, unpaid, I wasn't asking for much really. Still it's been pretty tough just looking for work experience in a lot of these graphic design and illustration companies. Lots of 'no, we don't take interns' and lots of no replies.
 Fortunately Jelly London, an illustration and motions agency which represent some brilliant artists from the likes of Steve Simpson to Steve Scott, got back to me allowing me to spend a week at their office; and what a brilliant week it was!

My first day I got given my first brief to work on (amongst running a few errands). It's hard to determine how much time you need when you get given a brief, I gave myself two 9-5 days, it took me about three late nights to work on it. The beauty of this field is that you get to learn so much from it, and I don't just mean how to become a pro with PhotoShop and Illustrator, I mean you could learn anything, absolutely anything.
 For this brief I had to recreate the map of the British Isles using type and illustrated icons only to represent the music that us Brits have produced over time. I spent a good few hours looking up all the classic bands that have provided us with some great songs, as well as finding out where they all originated.

In the end, I got something that looked a little like this:

For my second brief, which I am still working on, I had to create a new book cover for the classic Breakfast at Tiffany's, without using the iconic image of Audrey Hepburn's face, but instead using her stray cat to represent the book.

So after playing around all day with different kinds of cats, while simultaneously watching the Breakfast at Tiffany's film, I came up with a variety of ideas but stuck to mainly two of them:

I would like to add a big thank you to Jelly London for allowing me the opportunity to do some work experience at their agency. It was a great experience and it's definitely making me look forward to spending most of my life doing this job!

See more of their artists here: jellylondon.com

Pillow Talk

So, one of my artworks have been entered for Ohh Deer's Pillow Talk competition.

My idea came about from originally painting an illustration from a song called 'Lonely Alcoholic' by singer/songwriter MIKA. I designed a comic strip, where, instead of using boxes to draw out the scene, I used wine-glass shapes instead. Each wine glass contains a little scene of the alcoholic.

The pillow is available for purchase here.

My Sister's Journal

Earlier this year, I made my sister a journal (ok, I painted the cover of a journal, I didn't actually make the book itself) for her birthday. I had promised her for the past couple of years that I would paint her something, and times were hard with the cash in my pocket, so I figured what can I get that is both useful and cheap? I always found that getting a gift that is handmade has much more value than a shop-bought present that gets added to the pile of junk that is waiting to accumulate dust. Saying this, I have never received something that was hand-made as a gift *hint hint*. 

So, before I go further off-track, here are some images of what the design itself looked like.

 And here's the final thing!

My First Blog

So, this is the first time I'm doing one of these. The last time I did anything similar was when I decided that writing down my thoughts and my life in a diary made out of paper was just not as cool as writing one up on a computer, online, for no one else to see but myself.

So what will I write in this first blog? Should it be about what I've been up to with my life? Should it be about what I want to do in my life? Or should it be just a way to kill time as the rain is pouring out of my window?

Maybe I will start by representing some of the work I have done in the past. Nothing like a million colours to wake one up in the morning!

 

So here are some examples of work I have done for my friends, keeping only in mind what they like, what they're into, and some sort of anecdote that represents them (or mostly our inside jokes). There is something very rewarding about putting your mental thoughts onto paper. This was done with the use of acrylic paints.

I need an excuse to make some more of these. Not everyone is into getting a random painting with their name on it for their birthday (or Christmas, or Hanukkah or whatever). If you're keen, let me know!

Tip: After you've finished your masterpiece, REMEMBER to scan it or take a good quality photo of it. Don't do any last-minute photo on your camera phone, it won't show the artefact at its full potential. Doh!