In my Sketchbook: 29/06/15

I've been working on lots of different projects lately, so the contents of my sketchbooks have been pretty varied. The pages have been filled with pigeons, moons, fruit, turkish rugs and make-up brushes!

Here's a small selection of some of my favourite pages from the last few weeks:

If you want to keep up to date with what I'm drawing, I regularly share snaps of my sketchbook pages over on Instagram.

I'll be back on Wednesday with another new illustration to show you (those pages of drawings of moons will finally be explained!)

New Illustration: Flowers in the Attic

"It is so appropriate to colour hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. 'Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.' Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.'

- V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic

Hello!

Today I have another new illustration to share. (If you've visited my new website you might have already seen it!)

Recently I finished reading Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. I'd previously watched the films and enjoyed the stories but I felt they rushed through it a bit so I was intrigued to try the books and discover the full story. I've only read the first one so far, and I'd definitely recommend it. The writing style takes some getting used to as its a bit long-winded, but the story itself is great (if a little dark in places!).

I want to try and incorporate my reading with my drawing more often, and create illustrations based on the books I read, starting with this one based on the characters from Flowers in the Attic.

Throughout the book it is mentioned how the children were previously referred to as the Dresden Dolls for their "perfect" appearance, but now they've been abandoned in the attic like discarded toys. This inspired me to draw the characters as dolls rather than humans, and to draw them from behind so that they're faceless. I've also used a muted pastel colour palette to represent their life without sunshine, and avoided the colour yellow as they "never coloured even one of our paper flowers yellow" because yellow represented hope, of which they had none (I did say the story was quite dark!).

Here's a few work in progress shots and close-ups from the illustration:

I've started to re-design the layout of this a little in order to create a design for a book cover, which I may share on here soon too.

In complete contrast I'm now reading Alice in Wonderland and plan on doing a mini project based on that very soon.

New Website

I've been talking about re-designing my website for ages now, and yesterday I finally sat down to do it. I worked on it all day and managed to get it finished!

I've completely changed the whole website, with a new header, menu and gallery.

The home-page is now the gallery page, so the first thing you see when you visit my website is a gallery of my work, which was my main intention for re-designing it (this means people can see my illustrations quickly without having to navigate through a few pages first!).

I've removed some old worked and added lots of new projects too (some of which haven't even been shared on here yet!).

There's new About, Contact & Wholesale pages, as well as direct links to my blog and shop.

View the whole site here.

What do you think?

Snap snap: 24/06/15

Life lately in photos

- Currently reading Alice in Wonderland. A new illustration project should follow soon!

- Its been a varied few months in my sketchbook: Nail polishes, moons, castles, watermelons and pigeons!

- WIP for the Bir Zamanlar Illustration

- Picnics in Greenwich Park

- Packing up products for my newest stockists, Cheekyboo Emporium!

- A day trip to Chessington for Jamie's birthday

- I've added several new designs to my Art Rookie shop including watermelons, pineapples and pandas!

- Sketches for a new illustration (look out for the finished version later in the week)

What have you been up to lately?

New Illustartion: Bir Zamanlar

I've mentioned a few times over the last couple of weeks that I've been working on a new illustration inspired by somewhere we saw on holiday. Well its now finally finished!

On the last day of our holiday to Turkey we took a boat trip along the Dalyan river.

We had a great guide for the day and he was explaining a lot of what we saw as we sailed along. At one point, we went past this hill and he said "Once upon a time there was a castle on the top of that hill". 

Being a lover of fairytales, this immediately stood out to me and I quickly snapped a few pictures so I could draw it when we got home!

I've titled it in Turkish to keep with the theme ('Bir Zamanlar' translates to 'Once Upon a Time'), and I decided on a colour palette using some other photos form our holiday (see this blog post, I ended up combining to palettes).

Below you can see a few work in progress shots, including my initial sketchbook drawings, and various stages of the final illustration, and some close-ups of the finished piece. 

This was the biggest illustration I've worked on for quite a while, so it took quite a bit of patience (and a few fine-liners!) but I've really enjoyed it! I've got quite a few more ideas in my notebook at the moment for some more illustrations I want to work on, so look out for those soon!

Over & over: I carried a Watermelon

Hello! I'm back with another pattern this week.

I've still got lots of other projects that I'm working on, but I'd had this pattern idea for a little while so I made some time to give it a go.

Watermelons seem pretty popular at the moment, and I keep seeing them on all sorts of products. The colours of them stand out to me and feel really summery so they were an obvious choice for a new pattern. I'm also a big fan of the film 'Dirty Dancing' and the "I carried a watermelon" quote always comes to mind when I see watermelons, so I've combined the two in this design:

Playing with colour

I'm in the process of creating a new illustration based on a place we saw on our holiday last month (I'm fitting it in between lots of other projects so its taking a while). For the colour palette, I wanted to take inspiration from some of our holiday snaps, so today I've been playing around in illustrator, pulling different colours from some of the photos.

At the moment the ice-cream one is my favourite, but I'll try them out on the actual illustration once its finished and see what looks best.

Over & over: Pineapples

I'm working on a few bigger projects at the moment, and I'm full of ideas for more but it had been a while since I created a pattern for fun, so I thought it was time to change that!

I've wanted to do something with pineapples for a little while, and seeing as its looking like summer might finally be coming, they seemed like the perfect theme for this pattern to celebrate the arrival of some sun!

Over the next few weeks I should have lots to share, including more patterns, a castle themed illustration, some commission work, new stockists and hopefully a re-design of the website!