Kyle McQueen

The other day I saw this illustration by Kyle McQueen pop up on my Pinterest.

I love it. I love how massive the whale looks compared to the tiny boat. What a great use of scale and layout.

I went to his website and have a good ol' nosey and really love his work. I like his textured backgrounds and is use of light is very thoughtful. 

I like that he sometimes includes his work in progress on his website along side the final piece. I find it really interesting to see how people work and get from an initial thought to a final illustration compared to my own process of working.

1973 Grafika Collaboration

A few weeks ago now 1973 sent a call out for collage artists to collaborate with them for a project to promote their lovely new paper collection : Grafika. This sounded right up my street so jumped at the chance. We were allowed to create anything we want with the collection of papers they sent in the post (what a lovely parcel that was!)


I got them straight up on my wall and just gazed at them for a couple of days. Then I realised that some of the papers reminded me of the patterns and colours you find in nature and on animals skin/fur....


The scales on a crocodile:

The lines and creases and armour like skin of a rhino:

The spots and colours of a giraffes fur:

And the bright colours found in plants and flowers:

I brought all my animals and flower together to create this sweet little scene.

I really enjoyed this project as I LOVE working with papers and patterns! 

What I also love about this project was the variety of different ideas and end results people came up with even though we all had the same paper collection. Just shows how you shouldn't and cant really compare yourself to other artists and illustrators, because we all work in different ways and come up with completely different ideas. 

Inspiration: Andrea D'Aquino.

I have just stumbled upon the work of Andrea D'Aquino. I feel like I should have known about her work before now?

Anyway, I love how she works. Her process is similar to mine, in the fact that she uses lots of found paper and different textures and then cuts it up and arranges it into a layout. Her work is brilliant though, and this is because she pushed a lot further than I do. 

My work is always better when I take risks and push things a bit further than I find comfortable. Of course, a lot of the time this creates something which is quickly rearranged or forgotten about completely, but sometimes it ends up as something I'm proud of. 

I think coming across Andreas work has inspired me to push myself further and take more risks within my work.

I also love her use of colour. I love the muted browns and creams with the deep reds and greens, and occasional bright highlight. 

Elizabeth Lau Illustration for Amelia's Magazine

Last week I contributed an illustration to Amelia's Magazine to accompany an interview with fashion designer Elizabeth Lau and her new range. I am not really into fashion, but I like to keep an eye on trends which might influence other things as well as fashion. That might be colours, patterns or themes. 
I haven't done much fashion illustration at all so thought I would challenge myself. 
I do really like this collection though. I think the clothes are fun and look like things I would like to wear.


I enjoyed making this image in my usual collage style, and seeing how a style which normally can be a bit messy and 'chunky'(?) , could also be dainty and tidy! 


Anyway, here it is and here is the interview.

Barndance

I did another illustration for Amelia's magazine last week. It was to illustrate Amelia's old band Cut A Shine who were teachin barn dancing in the big top at Larmer Tree Festival. They seem like a colourful lot!


I decided I wanted to do something a bit rougher than my last illustration for the Flower show. I think a rougher, looser drawing would suit the atmosphere of a barn dance. The triangles are representing the big top tent and also directions of the dance etc.. 


Anyway, here it is!

lots of pretty flowers

At the weekend I worked on an illustration for Amelia's Magazine. It was for an article reviewing the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2011. I was waiting for Amelia to post her article on her blog before I could post my illustration and all the other lovely images on there.


Here is the illustration I designed for the article. It was based on a photo of the Beatles Yellow submarine made of flowers, and next to it was the letters L O V E made entirely of flowers too. I liked this element, even though it wasn't the main attraction. I think you need to love plants and love your work if you are going to make such fantastic and delicate structures from flowers, so I wanted my image to have taken time and detail. It isn't my normal style, but I felt I wanted to do something that included small details and tiny flowers and be a bit obsessive with it. 


I admit that it looks much better in my sketchbook than it does on screen. 

check the article out HERE!

There's loads of great illustrations on there. I particularly liked the work of Lou Taylor.

Her paper cuts are so lovely and I love her colour combinations. 

Go check her website out as its jam packed of paper butterflies, people and even paper eyelashes.