Fleur De Lys - Rococo Inspired Design

I realised that although I’ve shared the visualisation boards I created for my last BA submission, I haven’t actually shared many of the designs here. This one was inspired by a popular highly ornamental trend of the 18th and 19th centuries; Rococo. I adore all those swirls and elaborate embellishments and I imagine I’ll be creating more inspired by the same theme. You can view this one in the ‘Pattern’ gallery on my homepage.

I experimented with this design using various processes in the textile print room at college. I’ll share more of those in a future post.

My Mats Prep for Bootcamp 2019

Hooray! It’s here again, the inevitable anticipation is over and our first ‘mini’ assignment has been released. Bootcamp with Lilla Rogers has to be one of the creative highlights of my year!

We get a week to work on a little warm up exercise before we’re given the main assignment. We then have 2 weeks until sharing our work in an online public gallery. Then a weeks rest before the cycle starts all over again and so it continues for four marvellous months of incredible inspiration with a group of kind, talented and wonderful artists, many of whom like me, come back year after year. There’s always a fabulous mixture of old and new faces alike and a buzz of excitement which is quite contagious.

Before the class begins, Lilla always posts a little preparation exercise or two. This time we had to collect a variety of objects from around our homes to create a colour palette from. That’s a photo of mine below. I’ll be sharing updates of my work from the assignments over the next few months so feel free to follow along.

MATS Children's Book Illustration - Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace MATS Childrens Book Illustration Emotions

Ada Lovelace Child MATS Childrens Book Illustration

Over the past few weeks, I've been completely absorbed in the latest https://makeartthatsells.com class: Illustrating Children's Books.

The course is utterly jam-packed with fantastic content to work through and each week there is a deadline for submitting your assignment.  It's taught by the magical Lilla Rogers and Children's Book Art Director, Zoe Tucker.  I must admit, I've found it very hard to keep up with the pace, partly due to my own time restrictions and the talent in the group is quite extraordinary.  It's wonderful having my news feed full of such utterly inspiring art everyday.

At the beginning, we had a choice of 3 texts and to start with, I have chosen Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and a most inspiration woman, attributed to developing the first ever computer in 1842.  I was excited to research Ada, partly because I simply love history and partly because I know I need to work on developing my people drawing skills.

The first few weeks have been all about character design and development, I have discovered a new-found respect for children's book illustrators, my goodness it's so hard!

Business Cards, Greetings Cards & Magnets

African Animals in historical clothes original artists cards

Original Artists Paintings Greetings Cards

Original Art on Bottle Opener Magnets

Small Magnets with Unique and Original Artwork

Susie Batsfords Business Cards with Original Art

Well, it’s finally here, this evening is the Opening Night of our exhibition ‘Metamorphosis’. I remember watching in awe as all the student work went up on the walls this time last year, and thinking that I could never imagine being ready to exhibit anything. If I’m totally honest, I still don’t feel ready but I wonder how many artists really do when they are at this stage of their career.

 So, with the exhibition hung, I began to turn my attention to promotional material and here is what I’ve designed fresh from the printers today… just in time. Blank greetings cards, small round magnets, bottle opener magnets and of course my double sided business cards from https://www.moo.com/uk/

 When the magnets arrived I popped them into little bags and attached a cardboard label I’ve also designed and printed, there’s a matching logo design on the back of my greetings cards. You might recognise the icons from my previous post http://www.illustratorsimaginarium.co.uk/the-emperors-new-crown/

I’ve also just begun another course in photography with the Makelight community, this time I'm studying 'Makelight Essentials' which teaches some basics in photography:  https://makelight.com

So hopefully, I’ll start getting to grips with my new birthday camera. Photographs of tonight’s exhibition will follow so for now… wish me luck!

The Emperor's New Crown

It's been a somewhat auspicious day for Lord Lionheart, since today was his rather grand Coronation and he now assumes the title of Emperor.

'The Emperor' is the IV card in the Major Arcana of the Tarot.  He is the embodiment of great leadership, new beginnings, adventure, authority and creative wisdom (symbolised by the owl in my painting). His ruling planet is Mars and his astrological sign is Aries.  His message is: 'To trust in your own power and rule by serving others'.

This is my latest submission for MATS Bootcamp.  You can see it in the online gallery along with all the other artists amazing and diverse submissions here: http://makeartthatsells.com/galleries/mats-bootcamp-2016/may/page/11?imagesPerPage=18

Exhibition Postcards

Medieval Womans Costume Drawing

Contemporary Medieval Manuscript Painting

In preparation for our exhibition, I've found myself confronted with a personally formidable challenge... Photoshop!!  It's something I've been meaning to explore for years, but somehow, my good old pencil and trusty brushes always seem infinitely more appealing.  I always knew Photoshop was an amazingly powerful tool, I just developed a strong aversion to it and found it quite baffling.  At last however, I've been slowly discovering its wonders for myself by breathing fresh life into old (and new) work.  These first 3 images are studies from my sketch book that I made towards my 'Anthropomorphic Tudor Court' series towards the end of last year, you can see the post here: http://www.illustratorsimaginarium.co.uk/things-to-come/

There's more to come since I shall be using them as postcard sized images in my exhibition.  This week, I've also created a new 'Sketchbook' page http://www.illustratorsimaginarium.co.uk/sketchbook/  feel free to check it out if you want.