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)