Covers

The project I've been working on for the past few months has took a different direction so it's not going ahead with me as the illustrator. I'm disappointed (more than you know) but in this industry these things happen. It doesn't normally take quite as long as that but the project has been very drawn out. Anyway, since I'm no longer apart of the project, I can show the work I did for it. The project was for a couple of girly activity books.

A project or brief always starts out with roughs...

This isn't even my first rough for the first cover (lots of tweaks were made). My roughs are very rough usually. This one was to be all about fairies, mermaids and princesses.

And the rough for the second cover, which was to be about ballerinas, pop stars, ice skaters and all things girls like to do.

After the initial roughs I made more changes and did more roughs until it was agreed I could go to colour. And here are the coloured versions:

As you can see there is a lot more going on in this version! I added in a lot more characters and details of things 'to spot'. Also remembering to leave enough space for text.

Same goes with this one. Although it looks a lot more crowded as none of the characters are flying.

I had a lot of fun with this project and it was very challenging in parts. Having to draw lots of characters and also drawing small was a definite challenge for me. It's not something I usually do. And the fact it's very girly! I was very much out of my comfort zone a lot of the time. And although it didn't work out, I'm glad to have been involved. And you never know, something similar might just be on the horizon :)

Drawings from 1994

So as promised here are some scans of some VERY old work. The first few drawings (in biro) are from an old 1994 diary. A lot of them were done when I was around 7 so that's going on 19 years! I started drawing at around 4 years old and never stopped. Scrap pieces of paper, envelopes, anything I could get my hands on and I was doodling all over them. As you'll see from this post I don't throw much away and still have a file full of old stuff. So thought I would share some of them with you.

 

I seemed to like drawing girls and there are a few of this one in particular. This makes a change from what I normally draw now! 

 Some creepy faces!

I had a thing about drawing babies and girls with babies in their bellies. I think this might be because I had a Barbie doll where you could pop the baby from her belly.

I liked drawing mermaids too!

 

Aww, it's a teddy bear.

I was terrible at drawing horses and they're still something I am not so good at.

There are a few things I notice from looking through the diary, one of them is I struggled to draw hands (I still do) and the other is that is there are no drawings of monkeys! The diary is full of badly drawn horses, drawings of girls, mermaids, clowns, faces and stories with bad spelling about magic queens and magic rings.

 As I got older the one thing I started to draw more than anything else was The Simpsons. I became obsessed with them at around 8 years old and it inspired me to carry on drawing. Matt Groening was my idol! I collected everything with them on and still have a lot of it (hoarder alert!).

Hope you enjoyed seeing some terrible drawings from my childhood. And if you have any, I'd love to see them :)