Patterns

One of the things I've always been interested in is patterns and surface design. Unfortunately we never covered this in our illustration course ... This was not going to stop me having a go myself though ...

Ships! Based on this...

Toys and dancing based on this...

Paper Anniversary

I love you Mr Sunshine ... last year you made me the happiest woman alive ... and you keep doing so on a regular basis ... lets go build some sofa forts! ;)

Uncle Albert

This was one of my favourite-est self directed projects. I wanted to do something science-based for the degree show ... and this was it. Done in the last few weeks of my degree, these were cover re-designs (and endpapers/title pages) for a set of children's books by Russell Stannard called the "Uncle Albert" series. They are fictional, but use storytelling to teach kids the principles of quantum physics. The books revolve around Uncle Albert (Einstein) teaching his niece Gedanken all about the wonders of the universe by magically being transported into his thought bubbles; and I loved them from my very first read.

I read them initially when I was doing my Post Graduate Diploma in Science Communication (yes, I have too many qualifications), where my dissertation was on "science writing for children"; and have always wanted to put my own slant on the covers. Here's each of the three covers with accompanying endpapers and title pages (they are animated gifs - so some of you might have browsers that don't allow it!)




Some sketchy images...

La Mer, Le Ciel (The Sea, the Sky)

This was my entry for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards with the theme of "Travelers Tales". I went with the idea of 'the grass is always greener on the other side' - with a fish who wants to travel the skies, and a bird who wants to travel the seas ... Details and development sketches below:


Hmmm.... quite like the octopus .....

Launch

This little boy ended up on my final postcards and some of my business cards. He was originally done as part of my proposed design for our London show invites - to "launch" all our new careers as illustrators. I really like these long composition versions and that's how they were printed up for the degree show (at about 200% of their original size). Here's them in context of the invite (front and back) and some closeups:



Last but not least some development sketches:

Royal Cycling

This year's AOI/TFL competition was on the theme of "Cycling in London". I entered the two images above. This is what the multitude of Queens were about. Here's some more sketchbook work.


Although the image of the Queen and her corgi is my favourite, the horseguard on a tandem made the cut and is one of the 50 chosen to be exhibited at London Transport Museum till 22nd August 2010 :)

Trotting with Mr Fox ... revisited

Remember this from last year? Well, it did get revisited again this Easter - improved and submitted for Macmillan. Above are the final 6 spreads I entered. And here's a selection of sketchbook develomental work.


Although it didn't get anywhere with Macmillan, I've had a lot of my friends - especially the dancers - be really interested for themsleves (and the young people in their lives...). The bulk of the storyline and drawings are done so hopefully I'll finish off the other 10 or so spreads (and cover) over summer and maybe self publish it. Watch this space for news!

Alice's Adventures on Planetmithi

Finally ... its all over. Although "the end" was a few weeks ago, we've had a couple more shows in London, which meant that I have still been preoccupied with college life - till last Friday that is. At 5:50pm Friday I started taking down my work from the walls at the Coningsby Gallery; wrapped up books/portfolio/chair; Sunshine then proceeded to come pick me up and we stuffed everything in the car; I said my goodbyes; and we headed back to Bristol. Apart from the graduation ceremony in November - I will not need to have to do anything with the university ever again! Blimey! What a quick three years this has been ... Anyways, now I can finally sit down and spend the rest of the week updating the blog with all of this last few months worth of work.

This was my entry for the Puffin Cover Design competition to re-design Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.


I did a sneak peak of some sketchbook work earlier, but here's some more:


Over the next week I'll be putting up more stuff that was in the degree show ...