Snake & Flower

Because snakes have mastered the art of being creepy and beautiful all at the same time. 

5 weeks until we leave for the US! Eep - excited and nervous at the same time. 

I know that I will definitely miss home. 

But looking forward to hanging with some American peeps. :)

Yellow birdy

Been crazy busy again trying to create a bunch of artwork for this kind of market opportunity that is coming up tomorrow! I think that I am on track (hopefully). Getting prints made of my artwork for the first time which is quite exciting and finally getting on to setting up an Etsy store but it is quite a learning experience!

Here is a little fat yellow bird that I drew as one of the originals that will be for sale tomorrow night. :)

Chugging along...

Well things have been crazy busy to the point that I have neglected this poor wee blog. 

We are in the process of sorting out a move to the US, so all of the stress that comes with an overseas move as well as catching up with people before we go and trying to get artwork complete for events has me run off my feet! 

However it is all really enjoyable and fun stuff to do, so I just have to keep on reminding myself of that. :)

Lately I have been working on a whole pile of artwork that I will be selling at an event in Pukekohe (just south of Auckland) in a couple of weeks and have been enjoying having a lot of creative freedom with what I produce. Things just always take a lot longer than I ever anticipate. 

Here's a little WIP of one that I just finished this morning. 

So I started with my rough pencil sketch...

 Then using my rough draft, redrew onto a new piece of paper really lightly tracing the basic outline and proportions of the animals - then started colouring...

And after a bit of time (always more than I anticipate!) it's done! 

Hopefully will be selling this at the event in a couple of weeks, however whatever doesn't sell I will be popping onto my Etsy store, and will also be starting to create some more work for that too, so artwork will be available for everyone! Huzzah!

In the meantime, you can see more day-to-day updates on my Facebook page, but I will try and keep this more up-to-date I promise. :)

The Deep South

It has been a joy over the past 4 days to spend some time in Queenstown (in the South Island of New Zealand) at a really gorgeous primary school. My good friend works as a teacher at the school, so I came down to help out with teaching the kids some drawing skills and talk to them about illustrating books!

It's been a lot of fun. :) Below are some of the drawings by the Junior students (ages 5-6) who I worked with on the first day. They did such a great job! We have here a Princess and a giraffe.

Below are some pictures of character stories that the Seniors wrote based on my drawings! I didn't know that they had done this so it was a really cool surprise when I arrived, and the stories that they wrote were so cool!

Hopefully by the end of the day today I'll have some of their drawings that I can share with you. They are a really imaginative group of kids. The Seniors are aged from 10-11.

Queenstown is beautiful - it has been pretty cold, and for the first couple of days that I was here it was really cloudy and overcast, but yesterday afternoon the sun came out in all it's glory and I got to experience a more trademark Queenstown day - crisp but gorgeous and clear. Sooooo pretty, I can see why people would want to live here surrounded by the mountains. Hopefully I'll get a better photo of it today to share with you!

Bear Cubs and the Beach

I had a commission I was doing for some friends in Christchurch, and decided it was about time I drew some bear cubs! I have been wanting to draw some for awhile - they are so cute and such cool shapes. So I think that bear cubs will be another animal featuring in my Etsy shop once I get it set up! Below you can see the rough, close-up and then the final! Done with watercolors and a little bit of color pencil and pen.

I had ordered these really cool watercolor brushes online and they arrived today! So it was another reason to do something cool with watercolors. The brushes are fantastic - well worth the purchase. 

Also managed to spend a morning at the beach with a friend the other day. It was a great opportunity to gather reference for the forest and bush scenes for the book I am working on at the moment, and also a nice opportunity to spend time with a friend and enjoy creation!

Forest

Trying to do some digital painting and background practice at the same time. :P 

It was supposed to be a speed paint - but I'm not too sure if 1.5 hours counts as speedy exactly. 

Still have a lot to work on, I need to practice using colors more to create depth, and thinking about leading the eye through the image more. In the meantime, it was just a good practice run at slapping something out in Photoshop and not stressing over blending things (which is what I usually do :P).

More practice from fashion photography

Some art updates...

Just a few things I have been working on recently - quite exciting times! 

These character designs below are for a book project I am privileged to be working on at the moment. They are done mostly digitally (roughly and still a bit of tweaking to be done).

And this little mouse is from a card that I made for a friend who was feeling a little 'under the weather'. Watercolor paints and pencils used on this one. 

More practice

More sketching from fashion photography reference.

Portrait Practice

Decided to practice my relatively traditional portraiture last night to make sure I keep my hand in the game. So found this awesome photo reference (another fashion photo) and gave it a go. Aside from the bad photo quality - I was pretty pleased with how it came out. I need to scan a version of it, and might update in a couple of days. :)

Girl Sketch

Enjoying practicing anatomy and figure drawing using fashion photography reference. You not only get interesting poses but you also get cool clothing to practice a lot of the time!

This one was an evening sketch that I did after spotting this cool fashion pic on Pinterest. I couldn't find the original image to give credit to it - but you can find the original pic on my Pinterest board.

Hoping to keep up a few more of these - we'll see how things go. 

Bubbles

Practicing painting some coloured bubbles. It's not quite looking right at the moment, they are looking more like mini planets than bubbles. 

But I'm getting there and having a bunch of fun in the meantime! :) Will keep practicing and hopefully keep you updated!

Little Fox

I love giving artwork away - as much as I have heard that as an artist you have to be careful with how liberally you just give your art away, however I just really enjoy doing it and can't really help myself!

So I'm doing another giveaway over at my Han Drawn Facebook page - giving this little guy away. I drew him the other day as a practice pic. It's A5 sized in colour pencils.

This pic is a little more saturated than the original coz I tweaked it in Photoshop, and I added the texture to the background too, the original is on smooth paper (hehe yay for Photoshop cheats) :)

So if you are keen on winning a little piece of original artwork, come on over to my Facebook page and comment on the pic (that's all it takes to go in the draw) - and maybe even like the page while you are at it! :D

Practicing Digital Painting

Well it's been my first week at home not working full time in probably about 10 years. It's been really nice just getting stuck into illustration work. I've hit a few road blocks, but I just keep telling myself one picture at a time, and it doesn't matter if not all of the drawings come out perfect! 

(Well for the ones that I'm just doing for myself anyway - it's a different story if it's for paid work!)

So here is a little sketch that I did this afternoon on my 'lunch break' and decided to use as a practice for digital painting. 

Lady face & Blob Monster

Coz those two topics are highly related. 

He's so happy. :)