The Snow Queen

Well this was going to be my entry for Illustration Friday last week, the subject was polar and I have always wanted to try my hand at a fairy tale so it had to be the snow queen, but I entered another picture as I ran out of time with this one. I have been having a great time experimenting with acrylics and background texture, I think it gives a nice frostyness to the picture but its hard painting in any fine detail as its so knobbly.

Design for Daily Planet

This is a design I have done for the new single from Daily Planet and I am very excited because it will be on iTunes! Its called Reuben's train and the song is about a ghostly train with a headless driver 100 carriages long and being driven to the lord knows where! I was so pleased to do this illustration project as they had very clear ideas of the image wanted and they are a truly fantastic band.

Illustration Friday- Polar

I found this weeks subject a really tough one! I have been working on an illustration for the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson but it won't be done in time, so I came up with this, a Dandelion clock frozen in a lump of ice. There is something magical about dandelion heads like a frozen explosion, and I liked the idea of an Image of captured time, which came from thinking about wooly Mammoths frozen in the Siberian tundra.

Tea cups

Children at the fair on the tea cup ride. I thought of putting this one up for Illustration Friday this week as people use tea cups to tell fortunes, and it could be said that children are our fortune.
I have been spending a couple of late afternoons hanging out in the park sketching, after a couple of hours yesterday I ended up surounded by children from the fairground families all keen for me to draw their dads waltzers or their aunties dodgems. I ended up doing a sort of tag team uber-fast sketch of them on the teacup ride, as one posed to be drawn the others would clamour round saying "me next" or " stay still Billy, she's drawing you!"

Illustration Friday- Fortune

A scetch done at the fairground- I liked the combination of mechanical claw and cute fluffy cartoon characters. You put your money in and watch as the claw completely misses the prize- or will fortune smile on you, so you can trundle home with yet more kipple.

Drawing of Fatima

A quick sketch of a friend called Fatima done with a charcoal pencil on a hot day outside the pub. I do many quick sketches but not all work out this well. I'm always looking to keep the marks and lines I make as loose and free as I can whilst conveying a sense of the substance of what I'm trying to draw.

Illustration Friday- Snap

Softly softly gently creeping then SNAP! a flurry of feathers, petals, and in a moment the story changes.

I have been going crazy drawing and painting trees and blossom this spring, this is based on a real tree branch from the Magnolia in my parents garden, the shape of it is so amazing I dont think you could make it up.

Illustration Friday- Green

Sharing sweets with my little brother we always argued over who got the green ones as they were the least favourite, we both wanted the purple blackcurrant ones. This is me being big bad sister.

Green bird Red bird

Jumping Cow

Mad as a bicycle and bouncy as a box of frogs. I did this cow jumping over the moon for a project, I felt it was imprtant to get as high a level of idiocy in its expression as I could to reflect It's crazy acrobatics. I think now I'm looking at it I could probably get the expression more idiotic than this.