It is a truth universally acknowledged...

... that every girl in Britain is obsessed with the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.  Such romance! Such agonising awkwardness! Such bonnets!

Whilst I was watching the last installment (being very pleased that I had enough self control not to watch them ALL at once...) I did some sketches of the characters.

Drawing from the television is more enjoyable than I thought it would be - moving figures allow you to examine the characters from all sides and through a variety of expressions.  Ultimately you get a better drawing as you are forced to capture the essence of the character rather than get hung up on the details.

Now I just need to find something else to get addicted to!

Sophie's Choice

Final artwork for the blog header at 'Sophie's Choice' - go get a cup of tea, head over there and be entertained! It's well worth the visit ;)

A little portrait to be part of a blog header for my sister's blog 'Sophie's Choice' - full artwork to come! 

I'm trying a slightly more detailed colouring style in order to add more life and warmth to my work... if anyone has tips on good Photoshop brushes, I would be glad to hear them!

The Black Rose

Exciting news! 

Last weekend I was delivered a copy of a book that I did some illustrations for months ago... here it is!
'The Black Rose' is the second part in the Seven Stars Trilogy by very talented (and young!) author James Bartholomeusz.  The books follow the adventures of teenagers Jack and Lucy as they are sucked into an inter-worldly war involving all manner of evil creatures and some Welsh sounding fairies... 

'The Black Rose' is published by Medallion Press and is the first of the trilogy that I illustrated.  This book and the first instalment 'The White Fox' can both be purchased on Amazon.

Below are some of the other images I created for the book:

Nimue and the frozen girl

The end of Faustus

The Goblin Priest

Sparkly!

A little Photoshop experiment at creating a glitter texture using filters - why haven't I done this before?? I used this tutorial as a starting point, then messed around with the lightness/ saturation of the different layers until I had something with more depth.  After that I used a paintbrush to pick out the sparkles! 

I might turn this into a gif at some point, it would be nice to have a shimmering effect. 

Use the Force...

The drawing challenges have recommenced! Nothing like a bit of pressure to put an end to all of those excuses... This one particularly suited the geeky mood I've been in of late :)

I'm also aiming on catching up with the challenges you may have noticed I missed at the end of last November... *wrist slap*! So keep your eyes peeled!

In full swing!

Here's the final, full swing animation of my fox tail - took a while, but I'm pretty pleased with it! 

IT'S ALIVE!!

After Brendan Kearney's GIF experiment, I thought 'How hard can it be?'  It turns out it was quite hard.  Not to make the actual GIF itself, but I found myself drawing out 10 separate frames for the TINY piece of animation you see here!  A great process though, and really fun! 

Next time, you might get to see the tail swing to the other side... haha.

Check out the family portrait I did for my mum's 50th birthday! It almost killed me, but I think I got good likenesses in the end...

Click for a proper view!