interview

I recently had a visit at my studio from Karen Jinks and Mandy Knapp who are the creative force behind Cambridge Creative Network. Karen and Mandy have been doing a series of artist interviews in advance of Cambridge Open Studios and they chose me! It was fantastic to meet artists who are so dedicated to helping people in the creative arts link up as well as promote what they do. Have a look at their website to see my interview and to find out more about Cambridge Creative Network and other Cambridge artists.

July 7, 2015 0

cats and dogs

I’m rather enjoying playing with putting patterns and drawings together at the moment. Here are a couple of creatures who have come into being of late who definitely need to find homes…

July 3, 2015 0

Meet the Mermaid

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…

June 22, 2015 0

Maisie Hitchins – The Case of the Weeping Mermaid

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!

Here is the sketch for the cover ready to be transferred onto watercolour paper, as you can probably see I changed my mind about how the clouds were going to look!

Here is the cover all drawn out on watercolour paper and I've just begun painting with the most important bit - Maisie! — Here is the cover all drawn out on watercolour paper and I’ve just begun painting the most important bit – Maisie! As you can see the sketch is to hand and I’m working in acrylic ink. There is a lot of empty space here which is to allow for the title and Holly’s name which will come later.

Here you can see the monotone background is beginning to appear, everything is still quite pale.

I've kept on working into the background to boost the colour and tone and to strengthen the shadows, and Maisie is getting more vibrant too. — I’ve kept on working into the background to boost the colour and tone and to strengthen the shadows, clouds are beginning to appear and Maisie is getting more vibrant.

Now the cover is nearly finished; I've added highlights to give the feel of moonlight and everything has an outline to bring it all into sharp focus. — Now the cover is nearly finished; I’ve added highlights to give the feel of moonlight and everything has an outline to bring it all into sharp focus.

Here is the finished image, scanned this time. The tendrils of mist were the last thing to arrive, they were made by painting dilute white acrylic ink over the top of the painting.

Here is the finished cover as it looks with all the text in place - what a difference! — Here is the finished cover as it looks with all the text in place – what a difference!

June 5, 2015 0

St Ives Bookjam

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…

May 14, 2015 0

Portfolio covers

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!

May 5, 2015 2

52 Stories

This weekend it was my turn to take part in 52 Stories which is a fantastic project thought up by Cherry Hinton’s Spinney Primary School together with the surrounding libraries. The idea is that each and every Saturday for a whole year a different reader comes into libraries and reads stories to children. The readers can be anyone with a love of books and this Saturday it was my turn. I had great fun reading Ready, Steady, Ghost! by Elizabeth Baguley and Ping! by Chae Strathie and showing the children my original illustrations for the books. Afterwards the children did some drawing and created a character who was naughty, stripy and had red hair and wings – you can see a few of their brilliant drawings below. It was a lovely morning and I’d like to thank all those from Cherry Hinton Library and Spinney Primary who organised everything and made me feel so welcome!

This is a drawing I did after the session was finished, the idea was to leave something behind for the library to put up on the wall - it was rather fun collecting characters from different books and putting them together in one drawing, though I'm not sure if they'd really get on very well together... — This is a drawing I did after the session was finished, the idea was to leave something behind for the library to put up on the wall – it was rather fun collecting characters from different books and putting them together in one drawing, though I’m not sure if they’d really get on very well together…

April 20, 2015 0

Watercolour and FW ink love

I have been away from my studio recently and travelling light with just my tiny water colour set to keep me company. I had forgotten how lovely water colour is and how different it is to acrylic ink, which is what I use most of the time for illustrations. I love both mediums in different ways; FW inks are incredibly vivid and very versatile, but water colour has a beautiful quality to it. The colours are subtle and each one seems to settle on the page in a slightly different way. I am by no means an expert but I do like to play – here are some patterns I’ve been working on, the first three were painted with water colour and the ones beneath that are FW ink.

April 2, 2015 0

Woof!

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.

March 25, 2015 0

Open Studios 2015

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:

February 12, 2015 2