Life: New Studio Space

I've been absent for the last couple of weeks whilst I moved home and got everything all sorted out. We' been staying with my family for a few weeks whilst we looked for a place nearer to London for Jamie to get to work, we struggled to find somewhere to begin with, but two weeks ago we moved into a lovely little maisonette in Dartford. We worked really hard over the bank holiday weekend and within 4 day everything was unpacked and organised!

Within our new home, I've been lucky enough to have a new little studio space in our living room.

I spent a day organising all my art supplies, creating an inspiration wall and filling shelves with pretty things. My new space is now bright and colourful and full of inspiration, with everything need in easy reach. Here's a few snaps of the finished area:

I decided to create the inspiration wall using wire and pegs rather than blue-tack or pins, so that this way I can change the pictures around whenever I like without causing any more damage to the wall.

The little animals were something I made last year with some plastic animals and a can of white spray paint. In our old place I had them dotted around the various rooms, but this time most of them are in a little row along my desk windowsill. 

A few old favourites are still up on the walls, such as my meerkat painting, the wooden typo postcards my owl illustration, along with some new things such as the bird garland around the window, and some of the pages from the "Today is going to be a great day" calendar.

And here's a few snaps of the other rooms:

Now that I'm all settled in (and finally have the internet installed) I'm hoping to be back to blogging a little more often, and creating lots of new work. My first task however is to get the shop back up and running! I have some new products arriving tomorrow so I'm hoping to have it all done by the end of the week. Look out for new products and huge discounts on old products too!

Art: New Illustrations

I've spent a couple of days working on some new illustrations from last week's sketchbook drawings.

There's two new character designs, a building illustration and 2 pattern designs.

I've been wanting to do an illustration of Downton Abbey for quite a while, and this week I finally got round to it. I only discovered I enjoy drawing buildings when I was working on the castles for my Once Upon a Time project, and I really loved doing this one.

This is the second instalment of my new Flower Girls series, and of course it just had to be a giraffe.

The first image can be seen in this post, and there'll be more added to this collection soon.

I've also been planning for ages to work on some pattern designs. Last week I was watching My Fair Lady with mum and it became the inspiration for this pattern. A little way into the film there's a scene involving a Chinese fan and a bird cage, an along with Eliza's huge feathered hat I thought that would make for a pretty combination of items.

This is my submission to this weeks theme on Illustration Friday: King.

Based on my characters in Once Upon a time and the Flower Girl characters.

Another pattern, this time based on summertime, with strawberries, ice-cream cones, daisies and parasols.

I've been really enjoying producing work again, and have lots of plans for more designs in the near future!

I've also added some of these designs to my Society 6 and Art Rookie stores, so they're available to buy on a huge range of fun products!

Snap Snap: 08/08/14

The last two weeks in photos.

- Adding pattern details to some illustrations.

- A lovely walk in the sun with these two. This has to be my favourite picture of the three of us <3

- My book on display at the Conningsby Gallery in London.

- Iced lattes in the sun.

- A beautiful Rifle Paper card from my cousins.

- Lots of drawing has been happening lately.

- Pretty flowers at the pub.

- Strawberry doodles

To keep up to date with what I'm up to, you can follow me on Instagram, here.

In my sketchbook: 07/08/14

This week, my sketchbook has been filled with all sorts of subjects. From fairy-tale castles and forest trees, to bird cages and floral fans (and lots of other things in between!). I'm having one of the times at the moment where I have too many ideas and not enough time to complete them. Before I get around to scanning in a drawing and colouring it and turning into what it was intended for, I've come up with another idea and have started drawing that too! Tomorrow I'm planning on trying to change that slightly and actually make a start on finalising some of these ideas. So look out over the weekend for pretty patterns, character portraits and fairy-tale maps!

I've also made a start on doing some of the drawings in my "642 Things to Draw" book.

I've stuck to the more simple prompts for now, but hopefully I'll get a little more adventurous with the ambiguous ones soon!

Back soon with some finished illustrations to show you!

Art: New Illustrations

On Wednesday, I finally got around to sharing some of my sketchbook pages with you. And today, I have some finished, coloured illustrations to share!

Other than the birds, these are all for a project I'm working on with my Illustration Collective, Pastiche. However, when you see them in the final outcome of that project (which is still a secret at the moment), they'll be looking quite different to how they do here (any guesses what we're working on?).

The birds are my first submission to Illustration Friday, for the topic "golden". I'm hoping to start regularly contributing to Illustration Friday, as a way of responding to drawings prompts I wouldn't normally think of. I also bought myself '642 Things to Draw', a journal/sketchbook filled with unusual drawing prompts, so you should be seeing some illustrations coming from that soon as well!

In my sketchbook: 23/07/14

An "In my sketchbook" post is long overdue, its been over 3 months since I last shared any of my drawings with you!

Over the last couple of weeks I've been working on a few projects, including some work for our Illustration Collective, Pastiche, but I can't say too much about any of it at the moment. But I can share a few of the drawings from them, and leave you guessing as to what they might be for!

I've recently treated myself to a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, and I highly recommend it. Its a refillable brush pen that allows you to draw in the same you would with a brush and ink, only without the constant dipping! Its a great time-saver and a lot less hassle (and no washing brushes or ink pots!).

Hopefully as the projects develop, these drawings will become finished coloured illustrations that I'll be able to share with you!

In the meantime, look out on my Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages for snippets of what I'm getting up to.

Life: Updates

Hello!

I've been pretty absent again lately due to moving out of the flat, but I do have quite a few things to share with you now!

First up, earlier this week my degree results came through, and it turns out I got a First!

Obviously I couldn't be any happier with that result and its so nice to know that all that hard work was worth it! The graduation ceremony isn't until November, so there'll be lots of celebrating then!

Things only got better the following day when Jamie was offered a job in advertising in London.

We're staying with my family for a few weeks but very soon we'll be looking for a new place of our own nearer to London.

Here's a couple of snaps from the last week:

- Off out for a meal with family to celebrate our degree results

- Mum and dad bought me  Pandora bracelet to congratulate me. I went for a leather bracelet with 3 charms: A pretty pink one, a giraffe (everyone knows how much I love giraffes), and a fairytale story book (how could I not get that one when my result was because of the fairytale book I had illustrated?!)

- Pretty flowers on my walks with Beabea

- Lots of cuddles. Especially last night with all of the End of the World type thunder!

Aside from all that, I've been working on a couple of possible projects, so hopefully I'll have lots of new work to share very soon. And I'm also planning on getting the shop back up and running with the new products over the next couple of weeks.

In the mean time though, my latest work is now available to purchase on a variety of products on both Art Rookie & Society6.

Within the two sites you'll find 8 of my designs on products such as phone cases, plates, cushions, bags, clocks, rugs and much more.

As I produce new illustrations I'll be adding them to these sites, so look out for new ones coming soon.

Hopefully it won't be too long before my next post, but in the mean time you can keep up to date with what I'm up to over on Instagram: @emmamargaretillustration

New Blood Finds

Hello!

Today I'm sharing a few of my favourite finds from the D&AD New Blood festival.

I picked up a huge amount of business cards, and I still haven't had time to go through them all properly yet, so this is just a snippet of the artists I saw and liked!

The pieces here aren't necessarily what they had on display at the show, instead they're pieces I've picked out from looking at their websites.

Oasis Suite of Service messages by Carrie Yates

The 7 Wonders of the Ancient World by Joel Lillington

Hamleys Poster by Rachel Saunders

Animals by Clair Rossiter

Pattern by Samara Hardy

This really is such a tiny proportion of all the lovely work on display at D&AD, and I hope I can get around to looking through the rest of the business cards soon and sharing a bit more with you!

In the meantime there's a round-up of the show over on Creative Review (My course's stand is the first one featured here!), or you can find loads of pictures of the show by searching for #newblood on Instagram!

D&AD New Blood 2014

This week myself and other students on my course had some of our work on display at the D&AD New Blood festival in London.

I went up yesterday to help look after our stand, and to have a look around at all the other universities' work. There was some great work and it was a really inspiring exhibition.

This is how our stand looked (my book was displayed on the shelf), and we were also handing out free newspaper, badges and business cards:

And here's a few other snaps from around the festival:

 It was pretty manic so I didn't manage to take note of which Universities I was photographing, but I did pick up a LOT of business cards (see the huge pile below)which I'll be sorting through and sharing some of my favourite work later on.