Here’s another portrait for Movember. I just love her grin! I decided what was missing was a big monster buddy for her to hang out with. Happy days! Go check out the other pics and maybe get one for yourself at Galleryofmo.co.uk
Sneak peek at new Movember portrait
I just finished a new portrait for Gallery of Mo and thought I’d post a little teaser. Aww best hat-glasses-octopus combo ever! I had lots of fun working on this.
Fancy getting your own portrait? Head over to the website and support a great charity!
Lonely minotaur
Papercut card for Emily
Quick doodle- Maggie in socks
Wuthering Heights- creative process
As promised, here is a post about working on my Wuthering Heights illustration for the Doedemee fighting illiteracy project (go have a look, it’s a lovely project with loads of great stuff- I can’t wait to see some more of the book posters!)
With every big piece of work I do, If I have time, I like to sleep on it a bit, just to let my brain mull things over. Then I get to work researching! For this illustration I wanted to get back into the book (which I hadn’t read for years) and try to understand what it was about the book that people loved. So I re-read a good chunk of it, read some essays on the characters and asked a friend of mine who is very into books to tell me what it was about this one that made it one of her favourites. She gave me some great ideas!
After researching I usually start scribbling ideas down and trying things out- all very scruffy and untidy! Here’s some of the thumbnails.
Lots of scribbling later, I started working a bit larger to get a rough sketch together.
I scanned the rough sketch in and started drawing it in Illustrator- tidying up the lines as I went. I like to do linework in Illustrator because I can’t resist fiddling about with it for ever and ever! Here it is with just the lines. As you can see, the window changed a bit- I did some more research into the kind of windows that were common at the time! Wraith-Cathy also got more of a body. At first I thought she should just vaguely appear out of the mist but it didn’t quite work!
Colouring it up and adding texture in Photoshop (mmmm many layers!)
Here’s a close up to see some of the textures.
There was a lot of trial and error working on this illustration, which was sometimes frustrating but I learnt a lot too- so it was all good! Plus- tea and good music to listen to while working always help!
How to: make a squid shower curtain!
Here’s a little cartoon nonsense for all those out there wanting to draw their very own squidy shower curtain! Not necessarily the best way, but the way I did it. Obviously it goes without saying that I had a cuppa at every point where there is an arrow. But maybe you don’t need quite as much tea as I do…
Giant squid attack! Drawing on my shower curtain
Ever since watching 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea at an impressionable young age, I’ve been part fascinated, part repulsed by the idea of giant squids (‘the most tenacious of all sea beasts!’). They sort of freak me out but at the same time are pretty enjoyable to draw (it’s been a while though- I think this was the last time I drew anything really tentacley).
I found myself with a little time on my hands one rainy weekend and decided that drawing on my shower curtain was a great idea and not at all a stupid thing to do. Tee hee, squid curtain! Want to see it? Yeah!
Ahoy there!
Here it is up in our little bathroom.
You are rocking that monster babygrow
Remember this silly monster doodle I did a while back? Clicky click
Well look at this! Hell yeah, is my niece Emily not rocking this babygrow? I have a feeling when she grows up she’s going to be cooler than me. To be honest she is cooler than me already. Tiny high-five!
