Tweet

My next post won't be birds, I promise!

Happy Halloween!

Smews are my new favourite ducks

 Smews are my new favourite ducks.

 A Mandarin Duck.

 A preview of a much larger picture (it just needs a few tweaks).

Just a few peeks at what I've been doing lately (it's mostly sketches and experiments) - hopefully I'll have some finished things to post in the next few days.

A look at some birds

Some computery sketches. Birds are cute!

Now it's October

 

My first week back of my last year of university is over

Oh, and now I have twitter, too (but nothing to say...) Follow me at Ellastration!

Cushions!

Here's something a bit different for me - I entered into the cushion design competition over at ohhdeer.com.  Go take a look at all the lovely entries here: http://ohhdeer.com/competitions/pillow-fight :D (and if you like my designs, maybe give them a like or a tweet, or whatever the cool kids do nowadays). 

Jungle

A quick photoshop sketch; it's Jungle Book-ish :)

In other news, I have finally created a tumblr (quite literally, just now)!! It looks a bit sad and empty at the moment, but I figure I can post quick sketches and stuff there as well as here (this is still my main blog, though).

Kiki

I love Ghibli films.

Identical

Edit!!

Cool Cats

It seems I have moved on from canines to cats.

Lonely

Just a watercolour experiment this week (...I've been drawing a lot of wolf-like things recently).

Carrying something?

Just trying out some brushes. My next update should be something traditional :)

Not very summery

 Second header in two days! I've been in an indecisive mood lately...

The end of another year...

A design for Gerda from my 'Snow Queen' project

Wednesday was hand-in day, which means I've finished all my work for my second year of university (and suddenly have a bit more free time on my hands)!

In other news, on Monday I went to the private view for the Macmillan Prize, where I got to talk to lots of lovely people from Macmillan, and of course other prize winners as well. I didn't go alone - my flatmate, Emily, was highly commended for her entry, so we made the long trip up to London (and back again, the day after) together. All in all it was a great experience, and my first taste of what might happen after I finish my degree... though I've still got another year to go yet!

Fresh from the Sketchbook

So right now I'm having fun with some character design -these concepts are based off the story The Snow Queen. I'm looking at just a few characters, mainly Gerda (the heroine), the Witch of Finland (or maybe the Lapland lady), the Grandma, the Snow Queen herself (the thing that set this project off was the above photoshop doodle), and perhaps Kai (who somehow happens to be one of the only boys in the story...).

Aaaaanyway, here are some bits and pieces from my sketchbook:

 

And there's lots more where these came from...

The Macmillan Book prize!

The day before yesterday, I got a very good phone call. My children's book, 'No Such Thing' (that's the thing I posted a sneak peek of), has been awarded 3rd place in the Macmillan Book Prize for students, yay!!! :D

It's certainly a nice way to finish off my second year!

I've been busy

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a quite big project for uni, but I can now say that it is pretty much finished, yay!

Here is a sneaky peek:

It's another children's book; but this time I wrote the story as well (which took far longer than I anticipated)! A lot of experimentation went into this project, and overall I think it was a good thing for me to do.

Oh, and I've decided for my next project that I will be doing character design (it's my favourite thing to do, and I feel like I haven't done it properly in ages), so expect lots of updates over the next couple of weeks :D

This is just a squirrel

I haven't posted in far too long, so please take this squirrel as a sign of my continued existence. Ha ha.

More posts to come soon, I promise :D

Furniture

A bit of playing around for the project I'm working on at the moment.

I've thought about 'furniture' too much, now it doesn't feel like a real word anymore...

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

So, for my first self-negotiated project I designed a bookcover for one of my favourite ever books (this isn't the super-final colour adjusted version, because that is on my memory-stick, which has decided it does not want to connect to my laptop anymore...)!
A bit of a self-indulgent project, but it was lots of fun coming up with concepts and compositions :D

Infact, here are a few of the other (very) rough concepts, just to prove that I have been doing something these past two weeks!!

In the end, I can't resist a starry-sky-night-scene...

Slooowly

I've been a little bit productive, and done a small something for Illustration Friday, which I haven't done in however long. The theme is 'forward', and... well, they are moving forward... slowly.

Yeah right...

...When pugs fly.

Monkeyology

So, my information project is done and handed in, and I have 2 weeks of relative freedom, during which I have to get an idea of what projects I want to do next! This was our last set project ever (I think), from now on we'll have a lot more freedom, yay :o...

This project ended up as a set of three, double sided accordion booklets, which would come in a slipcase (the very bottom picture). I only illustrated one of the booklets, and there is a surprise mandrill in another one of the books (because I love their faces so much)! I like to imagine the monkeys on a long branch would make a nice wall decoration or something...

I feel like I developed my style quite a bit during this project as well... it's funny how drawing something different can make you look at the way you work in a shiny new way, hmmm.

Monkeys!

Sorry for the complete lack of updates lately, now Christmas break is over and I am back at uni hopefully I can get back to being productive again! 

These are some rough bits from my current project - it's information this time. As you can probably guess, I have chosen to do a project on monkeys.