Art: New Animals

A couple of days ago I started doodling a new elephant character in one of my sketchbooks, and I realised it had been quite a long time since I drew a character that wasn't a deer, giraffe or rabbit! There are so many animals I could and want to use for my characters, so I decided to make a start on coming up with some new ones.

Here's the finished coloured illustrations of 6 new animals:

These are just ideas for now and I'll probably develop them a little more before I use any of them in any of my designs. But for now my favourites have got to be the panda and the horse! What do you think?

Over & over: Winter Berry

Now that my birthday and graduations are out the way, I'm hoping to get back on track with all of my regular posting, starting today with a new "Over & over" pattern design:

Winter Berry

Life: I graduated!

On Thursday I had my official Graduation ceremony back in Southampton.

Seeing as we actually finished back in June, it had been a pretty long wait to officially graduate!

Me, Jamie, Mum and Dad all went down the night before and stayed in a hotel (which happened to be right next to our old flat!) and got up early in the morning to and get my robes (and hat of course!) and have our official photographs taken. I had a bit of an issue with my sash as it kept falling off my shoulders, and Jamie had to run into town to get me some pins!

The ceremony itself was great, we all went up one by one and shook the Vice Chancellor's hand and were given our degree certificates (all with lots of cameras pointed at us!) and then there were a few speeches, including one from Sir Peter Blake who was given an honorary Doctor of Arts degree at the end of the ceremony.

Afterwards it was outside for lots of photos! Including the obligatory throwing our hats in the air, of course. Here's a few of my favourite snaps from the day:

So thats it! I am now officially:

Emma Simpson Ba (Hons) Illustration!

I should also now be getting back to my regular schedule of illustrations and blog posts. And I'll also be carrying on with designing my new range of cards ready to be launched in the New Year!

You can keep up with all of this easily by following me on Instagram @emmamargaretillustration

Life: 22

Tomorrow I'm turning 22! 

To celebrate, there's 22% off any orders over £5 in my Etsy shop using the code:

CELEBRATE22

(Expires at midnight on Monday)

(And the above illustration is a little peak at the new range of card designs coming soon!)

In my sketchbook: 13/11/14

My sketchbooks have been filling up quickly over the last few weeks as I've been continuing to work on my new Greetings Card range, as well as few other new products coming in the new year. I've been drawing cakes, flowers, animals in party hats and lots of other fun things.

Here's a few snippets of my recent sketchbook pages:

(Excuse the poor lighting, writing blog posts at 4pm means the sun is already starting to go down!)

Wise words: Life is tough

I'm a few days late with this week's "Wise Words" post, and in fact I'm quite behind on all of my regular blog posts! There's been a lot going on lately, and over the next week or so I'm going backwards and forwards a lot for my birthday, and both mine and Jamie's graduations so it may be a while before I get back on schedule! I do however have a couple of posts planned in that time, including a special shop discount to celebrate my Birthday!

In the mean time, here's this week's/last week's bit of inspiration for you... 

Shop: Christmas Cards

Over the weekend I listed all of the new Christmas cards in my Etsy shop and on my website!

There are 6 new designs, all £1.75 each, 3 for £5 or one of each for £9.50 (+P&P)

To see all of the designs in full, head to my Etsy shop (which has also received a little festive makeover!) or my website!

Over & Over: Odd Socks

I've mentioned a couple of times now that I'm really enjoying making patterns that involve drawings lots of the same object over and over again and adorning them with different markings and shapes. A collection of socks seemed like a great way to do that again, so this week's pattern is "Odd Socks".

I went for quite a wide range of colours for this one (as opposed to last week's limited colour palette for "Tea & Coffee") to try and make this a fun, colourful collection of odd socks!

I'm starting to struggle with ideas for these patterns, so any ideas for themes would be appreciated!