Been so busy, lots of projects on, and creating my folio and banners for Surtex in New York. It’s just 10 days away now! 

It’s been a crazy year. Glad it’s time to wind down, spend time with family, relax, eat too much, and generally laze about doing nothing.

Still have a bit to do before Christmas day – a gingerbread house to be decorated, presents to be wrapped, fudge to be made….

Whatever  you’re doing this Christmas, I hope you have a fabulous time with family and friends.

Merry Christmas! xxx

It’s always time for tea in my house. I blame it on being English, I drink a LOT of tea. And I love nothing more than buying new tea cups and teapots.

I’ve been really busy these last few months, lots of new projects on, and I barely have any time to do any personal work. But after buying some new watercolours, I did manage to squeeze in a bit of time to paint a few tea pots and tea cups.

Once I started I couldn’t seem to stop.

I’ve been so busy recently, lots of different things going on in my life. But I have been really lucky to have been working hard on lots of different projects. One of the cool jobs I got to do recently was some posters for gorgeous kids online store, Psikhouvanjou! Based in the Netherlands, they sell the most beautiful selection of products for babies and kids.

I got to do 3 posters for them. One using my Nature Girl and one adapting my Deer Girl from my Christmas cards.

And I also got to have a huge amount of fun turning my Super Sleuth image (which I originally created as part of the Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search) into a poster that would appeal to boys. I loved doing this one!

As you probably might know, I have a 6 year old son, so we had a great time together deciding on all of the things that I should include….Mr Super Sleuth himself, some spy glasses, spy pens, voice recorders disguised as chewing gum, spy umbrellas, and loads of other things too. And of course, a cheeky raccoon with something to hide, trying to escape the scene of the crime….

And I’m so excited that now all 3 posters are available to buy from Psikhouvanjou!

Well I can’t believe it’s February already!

I thought it was time I updated my Etsy shop with some new prints. My latest prints would be perfect for a child’s room or a nursery, with some sweet (and some sleepy) little animal folk in them.

You can pop over to my shop if you click right *HERE*

I’ve been super busy recently creating lots of new work for Printsource!

I’m very excited to have my work at the show this year, represented by Lilla Rogers Studio. Yay!

It’s been a crazy year!  I’ve been so busy the last few months with so many different things, and neglecting my blog.

But I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas, filled with family, food and friends xx

Wow, it really has been a good day.

I found out this evening that I’m through to the final round of the Global Talent Search. I was totally shocked, and pretty excited. There were some fabulous and amazing entries, and I am so thankful to have made it through to the top 6. I have a lot of work to do now to complete my final project!!

And also I have just opened my first Etsy store, selling some of my art prints. I’ll be adding more prints in the coming weeks.  If you fancy a peek, please click on the picture!

We got the brief for the next round of the Global Talent Search competition on the same day that I found out I had made the top 50. I glanced at it briefly, but as I had a bit of other work on, I just had to put it aside for a few days.

The brief was to design an animal character  with human attributes for a child’s t-shirt. My first thought was wow, this is such a wide brief, I can really do anything, how on earth am I going to decide where to start? Luckily my little boy Toby came to the rescue. Once I told him about the next brief, he was desperate for me to design a t-shirt for boys. Something cool, he said. I don’t do much stuff for boys, and I thought this was a good opportunity to challenge myself, and it also helped to narrow down my options.  I then decided to stick to woodland animals, as they’re my favourite kind of animals to draw.

In the end I didn’t have many days left to complete it. So I started off doodling on sheets of paper. It’s how I start all of my projects. I doodle away, writing random words down as I’m thinking of the possibilities. I try not to judge or be to critical of whats coming out on the paper. And with any luck after a few pages, ideas start to flow. I drew foxes and bears, on adventures and exploring the world around them. Then I drew a fox that accidently ended up looking like a badger – and somehow Mr Badger the Super Sleuth kind of grew from there. Oh, I do love badgers.

I had a lot of fun thinking about what he’d wear – his tweed trousers and his brogue boots. And all the things he might have with him – his magnifying glass of course, a packet of moustaches for disguising himself, and his handbook on How To Decipher Clues. A must for any detective.

Within the brief we were also allowed to include ideas for any other accessories that the art might work on – and I immediately knew I must design the case for a Super Sleuth Detective Kit. My little boy would love this!

Once it was finished, Toby gave it his final approval, and declared it to be cool. And with that, I pressed the submit button. And my final piece was done.

Out of the 50 semi finalists, 5 will be chosen by the judging panel to go through to the final round, and 1 peoples choice will also be chosen, this will be the piece with the most votes.

So if you would like to vote for my piece, please follow *this link* and head to the online gallery to cast your votes!! There are lots of fabulous pieces of work there. But it would be super lovely if you liked mine enough to vote for it. Thankyou!

Wow! Just heard the news that I made the top 50 of the Lilla Roger’s Global Talent search! I am still in shock I think. I had pretty much convinced myself once I started seeing some of the work that had been submitted that I probably wouldn’t make it any further. So I was totally shocked when I saw my piece listed with all of the others that made it through.

We got the initial brief a couple of weeks ago. I was both excited and scared once I saw it. Wall Art? On no! Not sure I can do that. But terrariums? Oh yes. I love terrariums, despite the fact that I have yet to keep one alive. My little boy is totally fascinated by them, particularly the ones that have animals or people inside them. We’ve made a few of our own over the last year. Though now we’ve had to resort to fake plants. He delights in choosing the miniature things that will go inside from our local art store. He has spent hours and hours arranging crazy little scenes, totally lost in a world of his own imaginings.

I thought that ‘Imagine’ could be a good word to use as inspiration for my piece. I decided upon a woodland theme, and it kind of grew from there. I hand painted lots of textures in gouache and watercolour, and scanned them in. I drew bits in pencil and ink and charcoal and scanned them in too. I painted leaves and toadstools in watercolour and then collaged everything together digitally.

It was good that I had a few days to work on it. At first it was all a bit of a mess. Everything was green. I always find it good to just sleep on it. When I wake in the morning and look at it all again with fresh eyes, I know exactly what is wrong, what needs to go, what needs to change and what can stay.

And here is my final piece.

And if you haven’t already, please look at the gallery of work from all of the people who entered. There are some amazing pieces in there!

And you can see the rest of the top 50 here

I’ve recently been working with Pingsome. They have lots of truly fabulous e-cards, by lots of talented and well known artists. And they have animated some of my drawings, which was super fun to see.

You can see my folky cuckoo lady above, if you click on the little arrow in the bottom left. And you can pop over HERE if you’d like to send it to someone.

They also animated my ice-cream girl, which you can see and send to someone HERE.

So I spent the last few weeks doodling faces here and there, and then we got our big assignment.

To do an editorial piece to accompany an article on meditation.

I found this months assignment so hard. (Which in turn made me even more determined to push on through and create something, anything!)

I love editorial illustration. I so want to be able to do editorial illustration. But I have always told myself that my work isn’t clever or conceptual enough to do this kind of work. And all that self doubt was niggling away at me as attempted to do this assignment. I wanted to do something  a little bit abstract and free, but it just wasn’t happening for me this time.

It’s not painterly or loose as I  had so wanted to do, but this is my final piece.

And the rest of the fabulous work created by fellow boot campers can be found HERE in the online gallery.

I’ve had a bit of fun so far on this Bootcamp assignment just doodling faces. And adding some colour, and some cute clothes.

I love drawing girls.

So the last week of MATS arrived, and I felt a little sad. It has been such a great experience for me. I’ve really enjoyed the online interaction with my fellow MATS class mates, and I’ve loved Lilla’s teaching and the assignments we’ve been given. Most  of them I would never have done on my own. I’ll really miss the course.

For the last week, our assignment felt a little like a celebration – we had to design party papers – paper plates, napkins and paper cups. And our theme was folk art. It was such a fun theme, and a great way to end the course.

I planned on drawing folky girls with birds and chickens. And somehow I ended up drawing this donkey playing a double bass at a garden party. I thought maybe he was too ridiculous to actually make it onto my final piece. But I showed it to my classmates, and they all encouraged me to keep him. So the donkey got a reprieve. If I’d had a bit more time it would have been fun to have drawn more musical animals, I could have had a whole string quartet. Maybe I will, in the coming weeks.

I really had fun doing this piece, and I hope it shows through.

This week was all about Scrapbooking! I have not really done any scrapbooking before, so this market is a little bit of a mystery to me. But as usual Lilla guided us through with tons of inspiration and tips on how the market works.

We had to draw vintage ink bottles and pens, and everything else was up to us. So I went with the theme of  a summer romance – love letters and letter boxes, stamps and some of those Love Hearts sweets that I used to adore so much when I was little. And there is also a little bird that works for the postal service, delivering some letters too. I did manage to have a bit of fun doing this assignment!

What I love so much about MATS is that it pushes and stretches you to do stuff that you would never think to do on your own. Sometimes when I see the weeks theme, it disappoints me. I think that I don’t really feel like drawing that stuff that week, or that it doesn’t really inspire me. But then when I start, I try to think about it from an angle that could interest me, I realise that there are lots of different ways to approach any theme. It just needs you to start drawing. I have found that just to keep on drawing as much as you can think of is the answer for me!

That and plenty of cups of tea and chocolate. Oh yes, there was a lot of that this weekend!