The Illustrator's Teabag

On the giving of advice

2008-09-23T23:38:00.006+01:00

Poor Illustration blog, how I've been neglecting you! Lately, in between all my other ventures, I have been secretly sketching and digital-collaging away. There's a marvellous project being run by my old uni, called Advice to Sink In Slowly.

The idea is for graduates to create a poster (or video or song or 3d artwork/item) passing on advice for new students. Each Fresher gets a free poster at the start of the year. It's a great idea - I wish it had been running when I was a student!

The brief was wide open and I had several ideas - two of which I decided on. They will be available to buy as A3 posters soon - here's a sneak preview:

First, the final image that started with that squibbly sketch a while ago

Entitled 'Don't Search Alone'

And second 'It Will Be Worth It'

As advice goes, it's quite simple I suppose and perhaps on the surface a bit obvious. But for me, the thing I needed most at uni was to be reminded every now and then of this sort of simple thing - don't isolate yourself (as artists in particular so often do) and however daunting things may seem, keep going. I think its fairly universal and applies for most people.

I've never seen my work printed out on such a large scale, so I'm sort of half excited, half nervous to see how it looks. I'll post the link to the new website for the project once it's up and running. :)

Don't forget to dream

2008-04-24T23:29:00.004+01:00

This is another sketch for a series of images I'm doing.

It needs a little refining...

Imaginary people

2008-04-14T13:43:00.005+01:00

I'm trying to draw people more. Its something I must confess to avoiding, but if I want to improve (which I do) then I must make myself. This is a quick drawing I did of a girl, from my imagination (though parts of her are based on people I've met...especially the stripey socks) I want her coat! The initial drawing wasn't very good, so I did what I often do, and traced over her and made adjustments along the way.
She really just popped into my head, fully formed with her socks and her hands in her pockets, listening to her ipod. Her brooch is based on the ones I've made recently with circles of felt.
I think her feet are too small...or it might just seem that way to me as I have massive feet...

The Search

2008-03-31T21:09:00.004+01:00

These little drawings of people are preparation work for a new image, the rough (very rough!) layout for which is the main feature in picture two. It might not look much at the moment, but hopefully it's going to pull together nicely. I can picture it in my mind as a nice finished piece, but getting it from my brain to paper is the thing - the thing for all artists of course. When I was little I used to wish I could plug in a projector to my brain and show people exactly what my mind's eye could see. This is the next best thing (if not better...who wants a plug socket in their head?!)

Warning to blog friends

2008-03-29T23:57:00.003Z

This is a totally non-illustration related post. I just wanted to warn visitors and friends with blogs, if you see a comment in any blog with a link in it, especially if that link says something like 'see here' DO NOT CLICK! Its a virus. I advise anyone who sees this on their own blog to delete the comment so that you can protect yourself and blog visitors.

And now...in full technicolor...

2008-03-26T00:29:00.003Z

These are some of the images in progress. I'm going to play with different textures and varying degrees of complexity, since I'm not yet certain if these will be printed by inkjet printer or screenprinting.

Sketches and squibbles

2008-03-12T00:26:00.008Z

Here are some more line drawings I've been working on. I've also been doing a few more bits to use as textures, which I have decided are called 'squibbles' - they're not quite scribbles, because there is some thought behind them. It might look like I'm just playing, with my pencil held loosely and my tongue sticking out...but this is work!

2008-03-06T17:22:00.004Z

I've been neglecting this blog for months now, naughty me. I've decided to do a spring clean (no better time, surely!) and removed some of my old posts so that I can keep this blog strictly Illustration related, and the other blog for my crafty things.
This is what I've been working on lately:I'm planning a range of nature inspired illustrations, with a view to making them into cards and stationery. As well as the Honesty seed pods (above), I'm working on oak leaves and acorns, fern leaves, bullrushes and possibly some dandelion clocks, since those are one of my favourite things :-)
I'm exploring different ways of creating texture (this is a posh way of saying I've been making lots of scribbly lines on pieces of paper...) and different layers of transparency.

2007-11-20T11:58:00.000Z

Look out...this post contains the C word.
I can't decide which design to go for...

2007-11-08T10:47:00.001Z

Nothing like a stroll on the beach on a crisp autumn day...
The rocks on this one are so weird and wonderful, if I drew them you might think I'd made them up! I took 26 photos, some of which I hope will be good for reference

2007-10-23T16:19:00.002+01:00

Technological difficulties are finally getting out of the way, and I am tentatively starting to illustrate again. This is a quick image I did based on a doodle from one particularly quiet day at the shop. Pigeons always have a curious sort of expression, I find, as if they're execting you to reply to a question . These particular pigeons are heralding the New Craft Blog www.scatterboxtwo.blogspot.com where I will be posting pictures of things made or in progress, for the viewing enjoyment of anyone interested. This blog will be much more...illustration-y in future, though I expect illustration and craft will always be tangled together a bit.

2007-10-11T12:54:00.000+01:00

I've been tagged by Paula (www.paulabowles.blogspot.com) to show what's on my computer desktop. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be the desktop itself or my computer screen as it was the moment I got tagged...so I've done both:
Lovely calming green leaf background :)
This is Pandora.com, which plays you music similar to any song or artist you specify. I like to have it on in the background while I'm working.

I only recently found out how to do a screencapture - press control, printscreen then paste into a program like Paint, and ta-da!

I tag...Ladysnail, Natural Attrill and Emma McCann

2007-04-26T20:10:00.000+01:00

This bookcover design has plagued me for months and is something like the fourth version I've done. I'm finally happy with it. I think!

2007-03-29T14:55:00.000+01:00

So far, I have the following illustrations that I am reasonably happy with:

2007-03-29T14:28:00.000+01:00

After many drafts and versions and faffing with colour, and with much help from the kindly folks on the illustration forum, I have finished the bookcover for The Orchard on Fire. This is the first thing I've done in a long time that actually uses a full colour palette (i think its only missing purple to be every colour of the rainbow!) All in all, it didn't really take that long to do; I just kept taking breaks to do crafting.

2007-01-23T22:16:00.001Z

This is an old image, from my final year of my degree, which is a style and subject matter I'm hoping to re-visit. So much of my post-graduation work has been in the vein of 'gloomy/atmospheric' but this image is one of the few ones from my degree I'm still fairly happy with.
(apologies to Whittard's for borrowing their logo - I had to contexualise my work back then!)
I think food illustration is something to go with right now.

These chocolates were done for a cover flap for Chocolat. I had fun thinking up different types of chocolate I could do. The speckly background is cocoa powder that I sprinkled on wet paper and scanned.

2006-10-23T18:14:00.000+01:00

This is a watercolour I did during the summer, for a change from digital work. I don't do a lot of work featuring green, which is odd because its my favourite colour!

2006-10-21T21:40:00.000+01:00

Every now and then I get a mental image come out of nowhere, and I doodle the idea down on a piece of paper for safe keeping. Some days I have pocketfuls of scraps of paper, used envelopes and receipts, with scribbles on them, some of which are fairly good and some of which only make sense to me. At some point recently this image, or one like it, fluttered briefly across my imagination, and I have since lost the scrap of paper that the initial doodle was on, but this was the end result. The text across the moon was a new thing I'd wanted to try for a bit (it's text from dictionary pages relating to the moon) and is meant to look a bit like a shadow or cloud across the light.

2006-10-20T22:41:00.000+01:00

Who says you can't have icecream when summer's over?
One of my favourite things to eat is vanilla icecream with a hot chocolate danish slice. There's something about the mix of hot and cold, runny icecream and flaky pastry, if you get it just right, that is somehow close to perfection. These icecreams are inspired by the fact that I live in a seaside town that, by some fluke of nature, does not have one single sit-in icecream parlour. I started to hanker after good old fashioned icecream, but since none was forthcoming I decided to paint the icecreams instead.