Illustration Friday-Backwards

Well what can I say - This robin has managed to get things totally backwards!
The printing process means you have to make the image and lettering backwards to get the print the right way round which is somthing that caught me out, but after much swearing and gouging of lino and fingers here we are
Merry christmas all !

Illustration Friday Cars

This is something from my sketchbook that seemed to fit the theme of this weeks challenge, the piece I did specifically for illustration Friday is posted below and couldn't be more different. I seem to be coming up with quite a wierd concoction of images and styles, but I hope eventually through trial and error and experimentation some unity of style will come through, or at least a direction!

Illustration Friday Cars

Inspired by the birthday party of a friends son for which cardboard boxes were used to create pirate ships and racing cars. I am still playing with acrylics on bristol board at the moment and enjoying it very much, though I would like my painting to be a bit looser and more expressive still.

Illustration Friday Signs

At Last server is working and I can post this just in the nick of time! Signs could mean so many different things but I felt compelled to do this as a homage to a recent trip to London I made with my frend Esme. It felt such an adventure and quite daunting trying to find our way around as there were so many signs everywhere yet hardly a street name to be found. This was done with acrylic on bristol board and I'm not sure it has worked out as I wanted it, the paint isn't as fresh and painterly as I would like but the composition was so hard to balance that it couldn't help but become a bit laboured. I definately plan to try something with a looser style next.

Illustration Friday Citrus

I did this piece for last weeks challenge and then couldn't get it onto my blog as I had server problems sooooooooo frustrating!

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!"