Life: A week in the Fjords

This weekend I returned home from a week's cruise around the beautiful Norwegian Fjords.

I went with Jamie, Mum and Dad on the P&O Azura and we visited Stavanger, Skjolden, Geiranger and Bergen. The views were spectacular and we had some really lovely weather (we were expecting rain so this was a great surprise!) We saw countless stunning waterfalls (many of which created beautiful rainbows in the sunshine), tree covered mountains, colourful houses and pretty flowers.

As you can imagine, I took a rather large number of photos whilst we were, in fact between us we took over 1200 (!!!) but I've selected just a few favourites to share with you here.

The whole holiday was fantastic, and we all enjoyed getting dressed up for the formal evenings on the ship too! (Not to mention swimming in the pools, playing in the casino and eating far too much good food!)

I definitely recommend visiting the Fjords, and cruising in general too, its great for visiting lots of new places in one holiday!

I'll be using lots of the photos I took while we were there to inspire a new series of illustrations. I've already made a start so it shouldn't be late until I have something to share. Meanwhile you can see works in progress over on Instagram (@EmmaMargaretIllustration)

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!

Life: A week in Turkey

Hello!

If you follow me on Social media you'll probably already know that I spent last week on holiday in Turkey.

This was our first holiday in 3 years, and only our second holiday together ever, so it had quite a lot of expectations to live up to!

Well, it definitely didn't disappoint, everything went exactly as we'd hoped (if not better), everywhere we went was beautiful and we had so much fun!

In one week we managed to squeeze in a full day boat trip and swimming in the sea, a day trip to Rhodes, a jeep safari, a water-fight, swimming in a fountain, walking on water, a swim in a natural thermal pool, water-slides, local shopping and lazy hours in the pool. Oh, and a LOT of Turkish Delight, ice cream and delicious local food (if you're ever in Rhodes we both highly recommend getting lunch at Island Lipsi, Jamie had a fantastic stone-baked pizza and I had the best pitta and hummus I have ever tasted!)

Here is just a tiny snippet of all the photos we took whilst we were away:

We stayed at the Grand Yazici Club Turban in Marmaris, which I would throughly recommend. Its a lovely hotel in a gorgeous setting, nestled in the trees, right on the coast with its own private beach, and we had not one complaint the whole time we were there!

As you can probably guess we weren't too pleased to have to leave, especially when we came home to this grey and miserable weather! But we had an amazing time and have so many good memories to hold on to.