Friday 12 August 2011

Life and Death

New drawing in stages. Yes I know; another skull - how gloomy.. I thought maybe the butterflies would make a nice contrast though.













Monday 8 August 2011

Butterfly Drawing Progression

 A drawing in stages...











The final image still needs some work, but to be honest I'm slightly bored with butterflies now so maybe I will come back to it later!

Thursday 4 August 2011

New Doodles

I must admit I've been neglecting the old blog of late, busy busy busy and all that.. however I have been drawing as and when I get the time (usually in the middle of the night - the insomnia occasionally comes in useful!). Anyway here are a couple of things I have done recently - no particular theme, just random odds and sods...




This is a developed version of a picture I did for my sister when she had her new baby boy (he's gorgeous by the way!)




With this one I set out to do quite a simple image as a birthday present for my very good friend but managed to get all obsessive with it and it ended up taking me nearly a week! It turned out fine though I think, and she seemed to like it!






These two were just random ideas; I'm really interested in anatomy and bone structure at the moment, and after I drew the wing image I thought it might look quite cool if I combined it with a figure (the figures are actually from an older project).


Anyway that's about it for now, I'm really trying to draw every day at the moment so hopefully it won't be too long before I have some new stuff to post again. Ciao for now...

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Some old stuff...

Life has been a bit hectic recently and I haven't had much time to update so I thought I'd post a couple of old images for now... I did these images for a project at Uni a couple of years ago for a Natural History Illustration module, and I've always been quite fond of them.









Wednesday 6 July 2011

Damaged

These images are from a project I did a while ago at Uni, and was really my first attempt at a narrative-based series of illustrations. The idea of the project was to take random fragments of text from different sources, both fiction and non-fiction books, and stitch them together to create a loose narrative to base the images on. Initially I found this method of working quite daunting - not having a structured brief to use as a starting point, but as I got more involved with the project I found that it was in fact very liberating, especially as I'm not particularly confident about writing my own narratives. The form of the 'story' was naturally quite surreal so I could allow my illustrations to be really loose, working with inkblots, paint splashes and random doodles and just adding detail here and there. This was quite a therapeutic project for me, although what some of the images might say about my state of mind is possibly slightly disturbing...













Friday 1 July 2011

The Fall of the House of Usher

These are some images from my final Degree project, an illustrated version of the Edgar Allen Poe story. The images were created using ink and fineliner.














"Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne."

Sunday 26 June 2011

Master of Illustration

I completed my MA in Illustration and Design in September last year, carrying straight on after 3 years of doing the degree course. I was talking recently with a couple of friends who are currently slogging away at their various MA courses about the trials and tribulations of it all, and whether ultimately it was worth all the stress, heartbreak and being financially crippled. In my opinion it was worth every moment (although if you had told me a year ago I would say that I would probably have laughed/cried/screamed in your face/hit you) but then again I think I had a good experience overall, lots of support from family and friends and good guidance from my tutors. In terms of career? Well I don't know about that personally, though I assume it always looks good to have an extra qualification on your CV. But in terms of the confidence in my own work it gave me, completing the course was invaluable. The only real issue I had was the loneliness of not having the group of people who I did the degree with around - I made some of the best friends I've ever had on that course and met some truly talented individuals, and I missed their input, support and just general banter every single day. So to my friends and anyone else who is battling their MA - although it is emotionally and physically exhausting, it will all be worth it in the end. You will be glad you did it. 


I still am... 




















In no particular order, a selection of images from my MA project - an illustrated version of Angela Carter's short story 'The Company of Wolves'. I worked by making various stencils and cutouts and flicking ink or acrylic at them with a toothbrush (so high-tech!) then used ink and fineliners for the details, and finally cobbled everything together using photoshop.