Say hello to Petunia!

In my last update I briefly talked about a book that I was asked to illustrate. As of today, I'm excited to announce that it has officially been released! It's called 'Petunia, The Girl who was NOT a Princess' by M.R. Nelson. The author's blog can be found here. It was quite a long process completing the illustrations, made harder by having a full-time job alongside, but I'm excited to see it finally published and to have my name on the cover of a book.

The book is about a girl called Petunia. She isn't into all things pink and frilly and would much rather spend her time making mud pies and playing football than dancing at pretend balls. But she feels lonely and desperately wants to make friends. Penelope, a girl who moves next door to Petunia, loves all

things pink and frilly but also loves to make mud pies, play football and catch lizards. Penelope makes Petunia question what she originally thought about girly girls and they soon bond over their shared love of dirt and adventure. 

Here's a little sneak peak of what to expect inside the book...

If you fancy grabbing yourself a copy, you can buy it from a number of retailers linked below. It's available as a hardcover or an eBook - the choice is yours!

Amazon

iBooks on iTunes

Waterstones Marketplace

Barnes and Noble

EPIC Subscription Service 

If you like what you see, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads as it'll help the book enormously and I'll be super duper grateful! 

Update

So just a little update - I'm officially a graduate! I popped back down to Plymouth for a few days on Thursday for the ceremony and to celebrate with my fellow illustrator friends. The ceremony was really lovely and it was amazing to see everyone again. So proud of everyone and I miss them lots. 

In other news, two weeks ago I signed the contract for my first children's picture book with an American publishers. So exciting! I feel so lucky and grateful for the opportunity and still can't quite believe it's real. It will primarily be an e-Book for iPad's, Kindles etc, but printed copies will also be available to buy online and should hopefully be released Autumn/Fall next year. I can't give too much away yet, but I'll keep you updated on the release date once it's finished. It's a great story by M. R. Nelson and I'm really excited to get cracking on the artwork! 

Watch this space!

Design Juices

I've been super busy with assessments and degree show stuff recently, I'll be posting pictures of my show shortly. If you're in Plymouth from the 15th - 26th June go check it out in Roland Levinsky, first floor. But today I wanted to share an awesome website Design Juices, where some of my work was featured last week thanks to Jared Thompson, founder of Design Juices. Design Juices is 'an online creative blog which showcases the best inspirational designers, artists, photographers & more'. Have a look at the feature of my work here. Thanks Jared!

To follow Design Juices or Jared on Twitter:
@JThompsondesign
@designjuices

Little Taster

Here's a little something I'm working on that the moment, for a children's recipe project. It's only a tiny bit of an illustration, she will have something in her hands. Ooooh I wonder what? 

Oh the mystery. 

Stuart Road Primary School Library Mural

At the start of January, 4 course friends and I started a project to design and paint a mural for Stuart Road Primary School, Plymouth, and we finally finished last week! The mural is a combination of our interpretations of famous children's book characters, as well some children's drawings from a competition that we held and judged. A child from each class won the opportunity to have their work featured in the mural (don't worry, the children didn't climb ladders and scaffolding, we projected the drawings onto the walls).

Hopefully we'll be getting some more professional photos taken once the library is completely finished. 

Thanks Stuart Road Primary School, it was a pleasure.

Blogs of the 4 other illustrators that I worked with:

Abby Regler: http://spindle-sticks.blogspot.co.uk

Ben Morgan: http://benmorganillustrations.tumblr.com

Mark Paul-Sobral: http://markpaulsobral.blogspot.co.uk

Lynette Jordan: http://lynettejordanillustration.tumblr.com

A couple of recent things

Glen Park Family

Another painting for a friend.

Christmas cards!

Here are some Christmas Cards I recently designed. I'm going to be selling them at few events in the next few weeks. Tomorrow they'll be sold alongside work from others on my course at a Craft Fair in Plymouth University. If you're near by come along! - Ground Floor Roland Levinsky 10.30am - 3.30pm. On the 23rd they'll also be sold at a Pop Up Art shop in Plymouth City Centre until the 30th, and then hopefully at another Craft Fair in Exeter! Exciting times :)

Moon Cheese

Some things

Some recent paintings for friends. 

My Mum's a Chef

A painting for a friend of mine.

The New Girl

This was supposed to be a piece for Short Fiction 6 magazine for a story called 'The New Girl' by Zoe Lambert but unfortunately due to some mix ups at the magazines end, it won't be published which is disappointing but hey ho. It was nice trying out some different techniques.

Pippi Makes Pancakes

Collagraph Pippi

Character design workshop

So as part of my current module me and 3 others are going to Hele's School to run a project on adapting and reworking fairytales with 2 year 9 art classes of 30 kids. Next session we are going to be doing a character design workshop (courtesy of Viviane Schwarz). We decided to give it a go ourselves first to come up with examples for the kids to see. We began by chopping up loads of coloured card and making little figures from the scraps before drawing them into characters. Here are some of mine... :)

The Girl and the Monkey Accordion Book

These are the pages of a short wordless narrative accordion book that I made. The photos of the book at the end are quite crap due to terrible lighting and a not so great camera but hey ho, you get the idea. Enjoy :)

:)

Bits and Bobs

This is just a selection of drawings from my current module. My project is all about using observational drawing to build characters so some are just observations, some are characters. They're all super quick but some are simply unedited sketches straight from my sketchbook, and some are slightly more finished illustrations. I've discovered from this project that I actually draw better using colouring pencil - perhaps because I can't rub stuff out so I draw with more conviction? Who knows!

Grump

The Two Brothers

These are my finished spreads for a story I wrote for the Macmillan Children's Picture Book competition. It's about two brothers and a magic puddle. These pages aren't in a sequence, they're just random points within the story. They are however in order of appearance. But anyway... here they are!