A Little Update

It's been a long time since my last blog post so thought I'd let you all know what's been happening - Well I've started my new job - certainly a lot more stressful than I expected so most evenings by the time I get home and the kids have all been fed I don't have the energy to do a lot. Despite not working full time it's still a struggle to find enough hours in the day.

I'm still hoping that one day I'll get myself an agent who is going to offer me my dream illustration job but in the meantime I'm enjoying drawing all these funny little creatures. I still believe that creating all these characters has to be the best job in the world!

If you pop along to my FACEBOOK PAGE there is currently a giveaway for prints as well as a funny caption competition!

A New Chapter

Lots of big changes happening here at the moment - When I started down the illustration route I knew that I only had a limited time to be able to earn a living from it before I would have to give up and get a job that paid regular wages and as no agents or publishers are banging on my door  I have now reached that point - a while ago I applied for a job teaching kids that have been excluded from mainstream schools and I found out yesterday that I got the job and start on Monday - I must admit I'm rather looking forward to it and it will certainly be a challenge! But this means that much of the art and illustration will take a back burner for now - I am now frantically trying to get all my commissions completed before Monday! - I will still be taking on a few illustration jobs if I get any and I have a couple of pet portraits to do but my days of drawing and doodling will be limited. I will also be teaching a few art classes for Straightcurves Crafts in Chesterfield - I will link those here as soon as I know the details!

A few pictures that I've done this week

Bobbin Winner and Other Stuff

I drew out the winners for the Bobbin competition at the weekend and had a very excited winner who requested a Bobbin in a witches hat with a cauldron so this was her prize

I'm going to be doing my next prize draw when my facebook page reaches 500 likes so pop along and press that button! Not far to go now 

MY FACEBOOK PAGE!! 

I've also been working on a comic strip this week - this is something new to me - I've been doing them as part of the Crazy Cartoon Experiment - lots of comic artists are given a theme and then we see what they all come up with - The theme I've been working on is 'Helium Filled Dog Approaches A Cactus' 

These are a couple of pictures I've done for it so far - they are still more like illustrations than a comic strip but I can play around with them in photoshop when they are all done and make them more comic-strip-like. 

Check out Jon's blog for more details CRAZY CARTOON EXPERIMENT

and I'll leave you with a couple of cute critters that have appeared from my pencil this week!!

A Funny Old Week

Had a busy week of doing nothing really - I've managed to turn out lots of new drawings - I'm having so much fun doing my latest style of pictures and there is always a queue of them waiting to escape from my pencil so it's never really 'hard' work I suppose - but my full time illustrating days are nearly over - another few weeks and I'll be working full time again either supply teaching or doing the other job I've applied for (fingers crossed please) - It's going to be a big change to my life - I've not worked in a proper job for years and it's like giving up on my dream - but the reality is that bills have to be paid and unless you are very good or very lucky then to make a living out of illustrating as well as raising a large family all by yourself is never really going to happen - So soon my drawing will take place at weekends only (if I'm not too busy recovering from a week of working with kids) Hopefully I'll still keep trying to  find a way to live my dream (either find a very nice agent or a very rich husband) - In the meantime though  I'm going to turn out as many creations as possible while I can - Here's a few to be going on with :)

A Change of Direction

I have decided it's finally time to change the way I work - over the last 30 years or so I have done animal portraits as commissions and it's always been pretty successful so I tried to apply the same rules to illustration - I would do illustrated commissions on the same basis i.e. you tell me what you want - I paint it - if you don't like it you don't buy it - this worked well with the pet portraits - the clients knew pretty much what they would be getting (an accurate painting of their dog's head) and were happy. However more and more I've found that this isn't possible with illustrations - to reproduce exactly what is in someone elses head with what is often a quite abstract or quirky concept just leaves the client disappointed and me frustrated. And because it's often a whimsical picture rather than a 'real painting' it's difficult to justify my prices despite it often taking as much work and a lot more thought.

So I am no longer taking commissions for individual illustrations - all my illustrations will be available to buy either through me or my Society6 page HERE - I will happily take suggestions for illustrations that, if done, I will put on my FACEBOOK PAGE and offer for sale - this way no one feels an obligation to buy them and I can do them in such a way that suits my style.

Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? Possibly - I may lose a bit of work this way but out of the last 10 commissions - 4 or 5 have wanted major changes and 2 totally rejected them - whereas 30 years of painting pet portraits I have never had a rejection.

Customer satisfaction is of extreme importance to me and if I think someone isn't happy with what I've done for them then I feel bad as well as demoralised.

Well that was a rather serious blog post and to cheer us all up I will end with a jolly picture and a reminder to enter my competition HERE

Bobbins Competition

I'm running a competition through Facebook to win your very own Bobbins Picture - It will be totally original and you get to choose what your Bobbin is getting up to - I usually run all my competitions on Facebook and people just do a like and a share and then I use a Random Picker to pick out a winner - I've been advised that it's a bit risky doing this and Facebook aren't too keen and can close down the page so I'm doing it through here this time - so if you would like to enter to win then all you have to do is leave a comment on here - I would still appreciate you liking my page or sharing this competition (the more this happens the more likely I am to run loads more giveaways)

1st Prize - An original Bobbin picture doing whatever mischief you can think of (nothing rude)

2 x Runners-up A Bobbins print 

Just comment below with what you would have your Bobbin doing - the winner will be drawn out on 18th August 2013 at 8pm

my facebook page is HERE 

Bobbins

Bobbins are my latest creation. They came about after a discussion with a family member, she always calls her children Bobbins and it's always made me smile. She then asked if I could turn a Bobbin into a creature as she always wondered what they would look like. Now I love a challenge so set about drawing them - as I was working it occurred to me that although they should be cute it would be fun to have them as a bit mischievous and that maybe they should be the ones that do all the bad things that happen around the home - the broken electrical items or the broken eggs in the egg box and also from that there were other suggestions that maybe these were the ones that hid all the socks! Well I'm on a roll now and can't stop thinking about the little mites that are hiding under our beds and behind our wardrobes. These are the first few....I suspect there will be many many more!

What I did to do it

I've been asked a lot lately about how I do my digital drawings and some are majorly impressed by my mouse skills so I thought I'd do a blog about how I do them

All my drawings are done in Photoshop using a Wacom Bamboo Tablet (about as basic as they come) - I've done a series of screenshots to show the basic processes I use

my first rough drawing of a vulture - at this point it's totally from my head with no reference - I like to work this way so that I'm not overly influenced by the references and then I can make any corrections after if there is anything obviously not right 

As you can see I just had to change the shape of his head slightly as they are all pretty much bald 

When I'm happy with the initial sketch I turn down the opacity of it and then trace it onto another layer

This just irons out any creases 

Once he's all drawn out I'll remove the lower layer and I should have the finished outline 

I add shading using the same colour but with the opacity turned right down so I can build up the shadows

I use the smudge tool to smooth out all the shadows and make them blend a little better 

I then add the background - I like to use a brown paper texture as it's great for adding highlights as well as giving it a warm feel to it

This is my favourite bit of the drawing - adding the highlights - this is what brings it to life 

The finished picture!!

Birds, birds and more birds!

For some reason I've had a bit of a bird theme going on this week, not sure why but they have been great fun to draw. It all started with this little chap, I did when I was waiting while the kids played on a huge indoor play area (I take my sketchbook everywhere with me now and panic if I forget it)

So when I got home I thought I'd draw him out on the computer - I love being able to add textures and backgrounds to improve the initial drawings. So in the end, this is how he ended up looking 

These are the others I did this week but I'll be adding more to my Facebook page *CLICK HERE* so pop along and take a look 

Teacher's Pressies

Well it's the end of another school year and time for the younger ones to say goodbye to their teachers - Lou's teacher and TA have made such a difference to him - he started the year as an unconfident, reluctant reader after a bad experience at his last school - he's now caught up and loves books as well as having so much more confidence with his other school work. For Harry it was his last year in primary - he did fantastic and is now more than ready to move on to 'big school' Teachers play such an important part in our kids lives and get so much stick for when things go wrong so it's definitely important that we show them our appreciation and support - so I did some pictures for Harry and Lou's teachers and TA's - I had so much fun doing them and I hope they like them :)

My First Published Illustrations

Amelia and the Elf has finally been published! These are my first illustrations to be published so it's a little exciting. It's been a long slog - I had no experience of illustrating before this so it's been a very steep learning curve - I still feel very much in the dark and this is where I think that having an agent would help - I look back on the pictures and still feel they aren't good enough and should have done this or that better or done it in a totally different way - but I was lucky to have a great story to work from thanks to author Si Wall and this helped with fuelling my imagination. My art has definitely improved from doing this too and it's made me more determined to stick with my dream and be a real illustrator. I just need a proper job to finance my dream ;) 

Here's a link to the book on Amazon if you fancy treating yourself Amelia and the Elf and a few taster pictures!!

The Misunderstood Dragon

The Misunderstood Dragon is a new picture book I'm working on at the moment - the idea started when I suddenly woke up at 4am one morning and then couldn't sleep again because I was busy working it all out in my head. The big mistake I made was to not write it all down at the time - thinking I had no pen and paper and that I'd remember by morning anyway (never thought to use my ipad which was next to me) Well as it turned out I did forget most of the story but luckily had enough still in my head to come up with something similar (maybe) and better (possibly). I'm not going to tell you what it's about yet but will show you some sketches that I've been working on to develop some characters.

These (along with the Colin the Sheep ideas) will be my project for the summer - I'm aiming to get the ideas ready to show publishers by the end of the Summer in the hope that at some point they make it into print.

I still don't have a date for when Amelia and the Elf is due out but I as soon as I know I'll be shouting out the date to you all - should be really soon though (really excited to see my first published illustrations)

As promised here are some new pictures for The Misunderstood Dragon - (don't judge me too harshly they are only sketches so may contain a few errors)