After helping create the underwater themed mural with children at the St Ives Bookjam recently, I decided to make my own underwater picture! It started life as a simple black and white ink drawing which I then scanned and coloured in photoshop. It’s unusual for me to work in the computer as I usually like to slosh as much paint around as I can, but it just seemed like the best way to do those beams of light… 
May saw the launch of the last story in Holly Webb‘s wonderful mystery series Maisie Hitchins. This book is called The Case of the Weeping Mermaid and its action centres around dark and mysterious London docks which were the perfect setting for a front cover. I took photos as I was painting the cover so that I would later remember the different stages and here they all are below from the sketchiest beginnings to the final scan. I always find it challenging painting covers, they seem to go through a lot of different stages and look fairly awful for most of the time until suddenly at the end it all comes together – always a bit of a relief!
Last Saturday I helped out at the St Ives Bookjam which is a fantastic children’s event held every year to celebrate the love of books and reading. Together with an awful lot of small but enthusiastic artists I helped terrifically talented illustrator Pam Smy in her mission to create two huge murals. The Bookjam was attended by many wonderful illustrators and authors and I was especially delighted to meet Ruth Symes for the first time ever – Ruth is the author of the Bella Donna books which are illustrated by yours truly! Below are the Bella Donna covers as well as some highlights from the murals which featured pirates, aliens, mermaids, a recycling war and many more fantastical goings on…
I recently wanted to create some new work for my portfolio and since I love book covers so much, I thought I’d do some of my own. The books don’t actually exist yet but that may change!
It’s high time I redressed the balance and showed that I DO like dogs every bit as much as cats. Well, almost every bit as much… Here are a couple of new pictures for my portfolio featuring friendly hounds painted in watercolour.
I know it’s only February but it’s time to start thinking about Open Studios again! We’ll be opening our studio here in Derby Road for the last two weeks in July but the deadline for the image to put in the OS guide is this Saturday. So I am getting my skates on and trying to produce a picture for the guide which will look good tiny. I’m not quite there yet, but here is my first attempt:
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A new Maisie Hitchins book has hit the shelves, this one is the 7th in the series and a special favourite of mine because it is so very yellow! This book has an Egyptian theme so I got to draw mummies, sphinxes and burial chambers which I can tell you is a first. Holly Webb has excelled herself this time and Maisie gets into more trouble than ever – it’s a good one! Here are some pictures:
I was given a brush pen the other day and here is a little cat from my first round of experimentations. I rather like the brush pen though I haven’t really figured out how to use it properly yet. It seems to make me want to do wet-in-wet drawings though it’s probably most useful for sketching outdoors in combination with watercolour pencils. I shall have to keep experimenting.
I do love a bit of Halloween. Here is a fairly hideous pumpkin brooch I made the other day out of Fimo – it has copper powder around the amazing glow-in-the-dark eyes! I was actually aiming for scary but everything I do tends to end up looking quite cute so I had to work quite hard to make this guy look like bad news. I think I sort-of succeeded. Happy Halloween!
I was recently asked to do an illustration of a shopfront to advertise a pop-up shop which is coming to London in December. The shop in question is Anatomy Boutique, brainchild of anatomy expert and artist Emily Evans who has created a range of anatomy-based designs for a wide and gorgeous range of homeware and accessories. Anatomy Boutique will be popping up in Dalston from the 12th to the 22nd December so do go and have a look at the wonderful skull and cardiac wallpapers, the digestion plates and the histology scarves to mention just a few. My drawing was made with pen and ink and as to whether or not there will be a cat with a diamond collar in attendance when the shop opens I can’t be sure, but I’m hoping!
marion lindsay 