Mats Bootcamp February Mini - Magnolia's

I have always adored Chinoiserie, so much so that I would love to create my own. Imagine how utterly elated I was then, when I discovered that for this months mini exercise in Bootcamp my mission was to paint magnolia’s.

I decided for that reason that I’d like to keep my flowers for this assignment relatively representational and I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my watercolour paints, after several months of learning new processes in the textile print room at college. I also decided to try two new colours that have been sitting in my palette all this time and yet I never use them!

Admittedly, I probably don’t have time to develop this into a Chinese style wallpaper design just yet, but most certainly have visions of coming back to it in future months.

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!

Nostalgic Muse

Watercolour painting of Girl Sitting in Chair with Chinoiserie

Blue & White Pencil Drawing of Woman Seated

Blue & White Vase with Flowers & Bird Pencil Sketch

Time is passing very quickly, as our college exhibition draws ever closer.  One of the projects I've been working on lately is an editorial piece about Self Identity.  This post, shows my working process, she's the embodiment of my nostalgic muse, surrounded by some of the things I love. This was an assignment for a live review with Lilla Rogers and Janine Vangool from Uppercase Magazine on the MATS B  course that I've begun to study.  It's up in an online gallery alongside some fantastic pieces by other Illustrators: http://makeartthatsells.com/galleries/mats-b-self-paced/mats-b-live-review-april-2016/page/2

Sketchbook Drawings of Jane Austen Style Shoes

While I'm waiting for some new paint to arrive, before I can finish my 'Woodland Animal' series, I thought I'd begin work on my next project.  It's all beginning in my sketch book, with a collection of twelve Georgian Shoes.  Come back soon to see how things develop.

Woodland Animal Paintings & Experiments in Colour Palettes

Having finished my essay… at last, I can start to concentrate on getting creative again. Only a few weeks to go now, until our 2^nd Year degree exhibition, slight panic! I started developing my anthropomorphic ‘Woodland Animal’ series, by just tentatively trying out colour palettes. There are six all together and I’ve just got some finishing touches and the characters to paint now. Hopefully they will come together once I’ve finished, but I guess it’s been an amazing learning curve whatever the end result. I’ll be posting the finished paintings here, hopefully very soon.

1920’s Flapper Girls and Colouring Books

Hello Everybody and Happy March, I'm so glad spring is finally here.  I've been busy preparing for an end of year exhibition sometime in June, although we haven't decided on the exact date of it yet. It’s the final module in my FdA in Illustration and there's plenty to keep me busy. I've also started an online class with Art Agent Lilla Rogers called MATS Bootcamp.  There's one preparation mini which leads into the main assignment each month.  This is my work towards our first assignment which is  to design a colouring book cover using 1920’s iconography and portraiture.  I've decided to use it towards my FdA exhibition, the top sketch is a rough draft of my colouring book cover, I must admit it's been a lot of fun.  I'll post the finished design in the coming weeks, but meanwhile you check out some information about the course here: http://makeartthatsells.com