19th December

I've spent most of today sending out Christmas cards, so not much time for drawing. Here's todays illustration of a Robin, with mail under his wing. Not long til Christmas now!

_{(Original Sketch)}

18th December: Christmas Chicken!

...Ok. So the drawing everyday didn't go quite as planned, but I'll try my best to keep up with it. Today I fancied drawing some chickens! So instead of a Christmas Goose, I give you Christmas Chicken. (And a sketch compilation)

14th December: New Sample!

Has it really been a week since my last sample? Gosh. This sample has gone through a lot of changes with both colour scheme and characters. I think the scene may have turned out better if I had spent longer focusing on characters, rather than diving straight into it. As mentioned last time, they were originally going to be bees... then cats, then pandas, then mice, before eventually settling on rabbits. The colour scheme is certainly new to me, and I'm not sure it entirely works- but I did enjoy drawing all the little cakes!(Do the ones on the stand need to be a bit bigger?). It's come out better than some of my samples while at Uni, but still doesn't feel quite there.
I'm also thinking about revisiting 'The Cornershop Mice' in a christmas theme, but we'll see what happens!

13th December: Sneak Peak

Oops, forgot to blog! I'm working on a new sample idea, which again is Christmas themed. The original illustration was of a group of bees; but the bees really weren't working...so they've changed to rabbits. Should be uploaded tomorrow- I just need to tweak a few bits.

10th: quick update

A little short of ideas today, as everything I have in mind is a large, multi-character design. And sometimes it's nice to have really simple characters. Seeing as this took next to no time at all, I might do a few more faces like this...and a home-made wrapping paper it is!

9th December

...And today something a little different: it's Vintage Badger!
I wanted to do my own version of a scene from Mr Willowby's christmas tree (1963) by Robert Barry . I love the etching style, which is something I want to further develop into my own work. Pencil sketch coloured with Photoshop.
I found out about Mr Willowby's Christmas tree, and lots of other vintage childrens books from the wonderful blog 'Vintage Childrens Books My Kid Loves', which is worth checking out if you like old picture books-->[Link]
Will do something completely different tomorrow, though I'm not sure what yet

8th December

Not as exciting as yesterdays piece, but here's a little dragon deciding which chocolate to have. (Because Christmas isn't complete without a tin of Quality Streets!)

7th December: New Sample!

This weeks gone by too fast. So here's my new sample using the monsters I've been drawing the past few days. I'm really pleased with the outcome of this, as my past few samples haven't quite gone as planned. It's been fun to focus on lots of different characters, rather than getting bogged down in a scene. Working quicker certainly helps. (It reminds me a little of the Social Gathering Project from Uni)

Personally, I like the purple monster best- so who knows, later in the month he might make a come-back! I've no idea what I'll draw tomorrow, but I'll see how the day goes. New sample next week if all goes well.

6th December

Day 6! No illustration yesterday as my eyes were strained, and I kept getting a black blur in my vision- which seems to happen when I spend too much time looking at my laptop screen. So I've spent today drawing more monsters for my scene. There's a slim chance the big picture might be finished tomorrow, as I've only two more monsters to go.
Above is a design for a Christmas present tag, which I might use on my sisters pressies or adapt into a card of some sort. There's been a few flutters of snow in Scotland- here's hoping for more closer to Christmas.

...sneaky peak at another monster!

4th December

Day 4! Ok, so I'm still working on the 'big picture' but here's one character from the scene. All digital this time, apart from the swirl. I've also solved yesterdays Blogger problem, it seems Google automatically 'enhances' uploaded images, so if you want to alter that go to your google+ settings, and you'll find a tab to change it.

3rd December

Day three has been rather slow, but on the plus side I have some characters scanned in for tomorrows illustration- that will have several new characters in it! So for today have a sketch of a bear, and a small collection of various sketches I've completed recently.
Is anyone else having problems with Blogger making images dark when they are uploaded...when they are fine on screen otherwise? I'll try and replace the sketch sheet later, my file has a white background, but for some reason looks grey on here...

2nd December

Happy 2nd December!
Todays illustration is inspired by Kate Hindley's work,as I felt the need to try and get more textures into my work. Hopefully tomorrows illustration will be a bit more ambitious.

1st December

It's the first day of December, which means ADVENT CALENDARS! Although I don't have a chocolate-bearing one yet, I've decided to try and do a new character illustration every day for 24 days. Every day is a new character in different styles. I hope to try out some typography too.

Today is the return of Badger- some of you may remember him- excited to find his Christmas stocking again. This is based off today's Christmas activity of hunting out the decorations. Oh, and I'll also upload a collection of sketches too!