Heidi

These illustrations have taken a little longer than I hoped due to a few issues with my computer last week. But thats all sorted now and the Heidi inspired series in now finished.

I've created a set of six illustrations, including 2 book cover designs, all inspired by the scenery and characters in the story of Heidi:

Next up on my list of illustrations to finish off is The Language of Flowers series. Hopefully I'll get those finished and share them here some time next week.

A Little Princess

Last week I finished reading A Little Princess. I'd watched the film multiple times when I was younger but had never read the book. There are a lot of elements of the story that are changed between the book and the film, and I'd definitely say I much preferred the book (apart from the fact that the father doesn't survive in the book, I wasn't as keen on that part!)

The story is full of beautiful imagery and gave me plenty pf ideas for illustrations. I've created a book cover, character design, and two illustrations of key scenes in the story (the girls sat on the rooftop overlooking the street, and Sara discovering the "magic" in the attic)

Here's a few close-ups of my favourite parts of the illustrations:

And some work in progress shots from my sketchbooks:

I'm really pleased with how these pieces turned out, and I enjoyed working on some more detailed scenes for these ones. I'll be reading Heidi next and hopefully producing a series of images for that too. I'll also be back later in the week with another instalment of my Fairytales from around the World" series.

Alice in Wonderland

This illustration has been in the works for quite a while now.

I read Alice in Wonderland last year and made lots of notes and doodles in my notebook, and came back to them last week to finally create the illustration. 

When reading the story I had the idea that all of the weird and wonderful things Alice experiences could be all in her imagination, inspired by an odd assortment of toys in a dolls house. Its a sort of "hand-me-down" dolls house where various pieces have been lost and replaced with mis-matched toys, resulting in the strange scenes that Alice imagines.

Everything in this illustration is based on characters, objects and scenes in the story:

The cat, the rabbit, bread and butter, a caterpillar, chess pieces, Queen of Hearts playing cards, tea-cups, a toy train etc.

Here's a few close-ups: