Rey

I finally watched the new Star Wars film and it was amazing, I loved it so much. As always after watching a film I really like I have to do some fan art, so here is my drawing of Rey:

I used watercolours and coloured pencils for this illustration and I had a lot of fun playing around with the lines in her costume and experimenting with their colour. Overall, I am really pleased with this one!

Thanks for reading!

The Royal Armouries Museum

Recently my family and I visited the Royal Armouries in Leeds which is a free museum specialising in arms and armour. Obviously I took my sketchbook because museum sketching is one of my favourite things to do. Ever. I did a few pages of quick sketches and notes while we were there to use as reference and inspiration for future illustrations and drawings.

Visiting the museum left me feeling super inspired so I went home and drew some more (these are the more detailed sketches towards the end). I really wanted to focus on the clothes that the characters were wearing in these drawings and I enjoyed it so much, it is definitely something I will be doing more of in the future. For the minute these are just conceptual sketches, but I am sure I will incorporate them into some illustrations in the future.

Thanks for reading!

Amy and Rory

One of my goals for this year was to start drawing full-body portraits more often in order to improve at drawing the human figure. This digital painting is just a bit of Doctor Who fan art, but I made an effort to draw Amy and Rory's full bodies.

As usual, I began by drawing some thumb nails so I could figure out the positions that I wanted them to be in and the composition of the piece.

Once I had drawn one I was happy with I then developed it into a bigger, more detailed sketch.

Here's the final illustration:

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this illustration, especially as an early attempt at illustrating the whole body. I think Amy worked better than Rory because she seems more relaxed and natural and my favourite detail from the painting is Amy's shirt, so I know to include more details in future paintings.

Thanks for reading!

Character Design

Lately I have really been enjoying coming up with characters. I find that when I invent and draw somebody I start to get a feel for what their personality might be. I'm sure it would be interesting to develop these ideas into a detailed back story so maybe I will try that soon.

Anyway, here is my latest:

I really enjoyed doing this drawing as I wanted to give her a really individual style so I had a lot of fun choosing her clothes and hair. I am probably most pleased with the glasses because I LOVE playing around with opacity, I also tried to introduce a lot of texture into this one.

Hope you like it, thanks for reading!

Othello Book Cover

I recently read a very helpful article where a group of illustrators shared their tips for illustrating and designing book covers (you can read it here). It really inspired me to try designing a cover myself and made the whole thing seem a lot less daunting.

I spent a while trying to decide which book I would like to design a cover for and in the end I went for a play, I chose 'Othello' by William Shakespeare. This seemed like a good choice to me because I am currently studying it at college on my English Literature course so I know the story in quite a lot of depth, but I am also familiar with a lot of the imagery used in the play and I thought this would make it much easier for me to design a cover, especially for my first ever attempt.

Before I did anything, I went straight to Pinterest and started collecting images relating to 17th Century Venice. This included things like architecture and costume. I also looked at past performances of Othello and the posters that accompanied them to help me start visualising ideas. I began by sketching a bunch of thumbnails to map out the main elements of the cover and also to try out different compositions. I knew I wanted a cover that either suggested the conflict between Othello and Iago or used the symbol of the handkerchief.

Once I had done this I then asked for opinions from my sister and friend, who are also studying the play, about which designs they thought were strongest. There were a few designs that we liked, but in the end I wanted more of a subtle, symbolic cover with hidden meaning and I thought the following design was most successful at this. So, with a thumbnail chosen I then started to develop the idea, think more about the details and how I would complete the final illustration.

 Once I was happy with my plan I started drawing it in Photoshop. I began with the background for which I used a deep red colour layered over a textural image from Lost and Taken. I played around with the drawing a lot in the process and I was constantly adding and removing elements until I felt I had a good balance between detail and simplicity. This was the design I ended up with:

I was pretty happy with this design, but there was still something about it that I felt didn't really work-  besides the obvious spelling mistake in the top right corner! I couldn't work out which part of the cover I wasn't happy with so I left it and came back to it the next day. I decided that the eyes weren't quite right, I wanted them to be slightly smaller, closer together and lower. I also felt that the final tendril that crosses Othello's chest was too much and obscured the text so I removed this.

Here's the final illustration:

Overall, I am pleased with the cover and I think it gets across the atmosphere and the tension of the play well. I think the  colours and symbolism are effective too,  with the white tendrils representing Iago's lies and their disastrous effects, hence the coil around Othello's neck. Also, I think Othello's plain white eyes represent his blindness to Iago's duplicity quite well.

I really enjoyed the whole process of designing this cover and it is definitely something I will be doing again in the future. Next time I would like to try illustrating for a completely different genre so I can practice interpreting other texts and representing them through illustration. Another thing I would love to do is to complete a book cover illustration using mainly traditional media.

Thanks for reading!

A Study in Purple

Recently, I think I have been going through a bit of an art block. I have just been struggling to find the inspiration and motivation to draw. So, I figured the best thing to do would be to get rid of the pressure that I have to make something amazing and different and just experiment.

The main idea for this drawing was to be more adventurous and careful in my colour choices. I started off with the lilac skin and then looked at a colour wheel to determine what colours would be best to use along side this. I chose to use a harmonious colour for the hair, hence the red, and then a complementary colour for the eyes, hence the yellow. Overall, I think the colours work well together.

One thing I found with this drawing was, perhaps because it is pretty different to what I would usually do, I was more willing to try different techniques for the shading and line work and I think that the outcome is quite nice, I especially like how the face and hair turned out.

I did struggle with drawing the body because I used no reference photographs. The plan was to draw to the hips, but I reverted back to my usual and stopped just below the shoulders, so this is something I definitely need to work on.

Overall, I think this was a successful little painting as I am pretty pleased with the outcome and it left me slightly more inspired - a feeling I have been missing.

Thanks for reading!

Lancaster Drawings

Once again during half term we headed to Lancaster to see my brother. Before we set off I treated myself to the graphic novel 'Jane the Fox and Me', by Fanny Britt and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, to read while we were there and it left me feeling so inspired - I would really recommend it! I love Isabelle Arsenault's work so much, it is so beautiful for all of its tone and texture, aahhh it's amazing!!! Anyway, it was reading this that really motivated me to try and include more texture in my work and to draw more in general.

While we were there we visited the red squirrel sanctuary in Formby which was really lovely. I saw loads of squirrels and took lots of reference photographs of the scenery to inspire future drawings. One of the photographs that I took was of a wooden fence that are often seen at beaches and I decided to draw it when I got back.

For this, I really wanted to experiment with drawing the negative space so the fence itself was left as the background colour. I found it a bit confusing to do at first, but it is something that I will definitely try again in the future. I started with a gouache background and then I drew straight over the top with a black coloured crayon - I have really been enjoying this technique recently.

On the way back from the sanctuary we went to Crosby beach to see Anthony Gormly's 'Another Place' which consists of 100 life size figures made of cast-iron spread along the shore and out to sea. It was amazing to see them because I had researched them for my GCSE Art way back in Year 8. I think it is such a wonderful idea and there is something very beautiful about them. I was left feeling very tempted to try my hand at sculpting.

The next day we went to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool which was also incredibly inspiring and it was a fantastic day out! We went especially to see the Pre-Raphaelite exhibition which was beautiful but there was so much else to see too, we actually ran out of time.

One painting which was amazing to see was a HUGE portrait of  Henry VIII by Hans Holbein. It is such an iconic image and a very well known representation of him so it was amazing to see in person and we were all very impressed. There was also a perfectly placed bench in front of him so I decided to do a really quick sketch while I was there.

I was extremely happy because I got to see a Hockney painting which was so cool because I really admire his work and have looked at it a lot for my AS Fine Art course. What inspired me most however were the sculptures! I loved them! There was a spectacular room filled with them and there were a few busts dotted around the gallery too, I especially liked one of Queen Victoria which I decided to sketch while I was there.

While I was sketching I began trying to draw it quite realistically, but then I stopped and started again because I knew that that was not what I was really interested in achieving. For my second attempt I simplified the shape and the tone and exaggerated certain parts, I also made an effort to make her look especially grumpy. I wanted the bust to be recognisable from my sketch, but I really wanted to add more character to it and make a striking image.

I was really pleased with the sketch because of the character and humour that I had managed to capture so when I got home that evening I then made a painting from it. The painting was simplified further because this time I was working from the sketch and not the bust and I tried very hard to refine the features of the face so they were more noticeable and clean. I worked in black crayon over gouache again and I think that the final image is very striking and I am so pleased with it. It is so different from anything that I normally do and the face is so much more specific and clear than what I can normally achieve so I am thrilled with the result. Finally I am pleased that I did not simply reproduce the bust but added my own changes and style to make a different image.

Overall, it was a great little holiday filled with art that has left me feeling very inspired.

Thanks for reading!