experiments printed

These 3 portraits came about while I was playing around digitally with limited colour palettes. I wanted to do something more painterly and a little rougher around the edges. Something a bit more serious looking. I picked some of my favourite colours to frame them - their details pop out at you. What started as a completely random drawing has inspired me to develop the style and take it further. Perhaps I'll crack out the inks and watercolours and have a go at painting one of these faces in the flesh, so to speak. I'll keep you posted, I'm sure there will be many clumsy splodgy outtakes over on instagram, ha!

I'm so pleased with how they look printed. The colours are stunning. I've just popped them in the shop in case you're interested. They're available as A3 ad A4 prints and come signed on the back. Here's a link!

sketchbook video number 1!

As promised, here's a little video I made taking you on a tour around my messy sketchbook (ignore the cheesy radio drama in the background, ha! busted....). I call it my "messy" sketchbook, even though it doesn't look all that messy, because I try to be less precious with the drawings I do in it. I scribble ideas down and play around with patterns, styles and colours. I sometimes take pages I'm pleased with and develop those ideas in neater sketchbooks I have or just dive in and start painting them up bigger! A few of the pages have half finished drawings on them, I probably fell out of love with whatever I was drawing at the time, but guaranteed I'll go back to it with a fresh brain and finish it another day. Some of my favourite pieces have come about like that. 

Anyway, enjoy! Next week I'll show you one of my neater sketchbooks!

ABC

I'm surrounded by incredibly talented people and earlier this year my studio buddy, Cam, churned out a beautiful illustrated alphabet #36daysoftype - go take a peek over on her instagram (@camille_fleur) 

Here's my go at an alphabet. I haven't yet braved doing a different style for each letter BUT maybe I'll give it a go (some day)!  I've never found drawing text an easy process, the style tends to drift and the "font" at the end doesn't look very consistent. I'm not sure I have enough patience left to finish the task by the time I hit 'H'. Anyway I had a go... The shape of these letters are pretty much my default whenever I attempt lettering but to spruce things up I thought I'd add a few decorative touches and some shadows. What do you think?

Definitely work in progress! 

COMIC time

Hello lovely humans!  

'Want to know a fun* fact about me? (*Debatable) I'm a diary keeper. It's nothing fancy and most definitely not a number one best seller but I started writing a few things down last October and I've managed to keep it up to this day - which is less than a year so it's not saying much! But it speaks volumes to me, ha! It started out as one of those 'line a day' journals and now it's turning into a 'line and a bit a day' journal. I try to pick out little moments in the day that either made me laugh, cry, think, pause or simply pat myself on the back. Some of the entries can literally be as dull as 'I hung up the washing', but sometimes that's exactly the kind of action that needs to be recognised because not every day can fill you with that sense of accomplishment. And also I figured in years to come (possibly) it might be actually quite interesting to look back and read about all those little moments...

ANYWAY! I thought it'd be fun to try and put a few of these little memories into pictures - I've always wanted to have a go at scribbling down some little autobiographical comics and thought what better place to begin. Who knows it might be a new little side project that takes off, no pressure, but for now it's refreshing to try something completely new. 

Happy Accidents

Sometimes it just doesn't matter how prepared or organised or inspired you are. Simple bodge-ups on the computer can result in some seriously fun visual treats!

I finished an abstract portrait I'd been working on (the original one, with the red background, is available to buy in the shop) and while I was cleaning up the scan on the computer I mashed all the wrong buttons and voila!

So smitten with these colours! I decided to do a super limited run of A3+ prints (13" x 19") and they're now in the shop too! Mind you, once they're gone they're gone! Here's a link!