Wednesday 22 November 2017

magical mystery tour

I'm having a significant birthday on Saturday...in case I hadn't already mentioned...
And in a rather exciting twist the other half is whisking me away for the weekend ...to a mystery location!! I have no idea where we are going! All I know is it requires a passport! 
We have been together for 19 years and this is the first time he has ever done anything like this....so fingers crossed he turns out to be really good at it...

Sunday 19 November 2017

party party

My BirthdayMonthOfFun continued yesterday. I went out for tapas and drinks with the girls. A lot of drinks. And a fair amount of tapas. Found some old mates in the pub afterwards. Much fun was had by all. 
I'm a little bit tired today...

Wednesday 15 November 2017

men at work

British Gas are changing all the pipes in our area from copper to plastic. This involves digging all the roads up, leaving them in a right bloody state for 4 weeks then getting someone else to come and patch them up. They have now reached the bottom of our street. I have to do a lot of face to face interaction with the workmen and a few nifty driving manoeuvres just to get my car out. I am practically a prisoner in my own cul de sac. But it's my turn to do girls night tonight. And the girls will be hungry. So I'm gonna have to turn on the charm with the high viz brigade...

Friday 10 November 2017

MAKE ART THAT SELLS illustrating children's books

Last week I finished the 5 week long Illustrating Children's Books course with Lilla Rogers and Zoe Tucker. 
I signed up because I felt like I was drifting a bit and needed a kick up the arse and an injection of fresh ideas (and enthusiasm)
And I got it.
Yay!
It was a struggle to fit it in with my normal work but I loved it so much I just worked stupid hours. And abandoned my children. And the cleaning. 
So here I am, just beginning to recover...and writing this in order to put the cleaning off a while longer...

Week 1 We got to choose from 3 texts that Zoe wrote. (I'll be honest... I only read one. It was perfect for me so I didn't bother with the other two. I'm soo profesh. 😬) It was called Pet Problems ... about a kid who lives in a tiny high rise flat but really wants a pet. I drew a zillion character ideas. I even did some real life cutting-and-sticking-collage and painted some bits too. With an actual paintbrush! I enjoyed the old school methods for about a day before having to admit to myself that I'm a computer sorta chick. I can't do with the length of time the real life methods take... and the total lack of an undo button stressed me out.
So I used some of the real life bits but put them together in illustrator.
Week 2 was all about expressions...
and Week 3 was about poses...
with a BobbyBonus if we wanted to submit secondary characters...which of course I did. Why make things easy for yourself...
In Week 4 we looked at environments. By this point I was feeling a bit like my usual flat style was just not cutting it. Everyone else's work was so full of depth and texture. I do like the flat and simple look but I started to feel a little inferior next to all the photoshop brushes and actual real life painting going on. So I scanned in a few textures I created with pastels and I had a go at photoshop brushes. 
Then I moved them all into illustrator cos my total rubbishness in photoshop was making me want to kick my screen.
We had to illustrate a double page spread. I'm not kidding, the hardest part was deciding which one to do. It took a few days of total faffery before I settled on this one.
In real life you get to illustrate every page so it doesn't really matter where you start. And in real life when I work on books I keep going back and forth on all the spreads and kind of do them all together. Obvs I couldn't do that with this 15 spreader...in one week.
Finally we got to week 5 ...this was the cover design week... I had to finish it super early cos I went to London for the weekend with my Dotty Wren design besties.
I have to admit I've been a bit sad this week with no new brief and no classroom posts. Back to the normal jobs where people want everything like yesterday and there's no money in the budget for pastel pencil faffery.
I loved the course and would recommend it to anyone. It's made me  determined to go get myself the proper picture book deal I've always wanted....watch this space people x








polar bear week

Apparently it's #polarbearweek. So I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Under no circumstances should this be viewed as a Christmas post. Just saying.

Thursday 9 November 2017

hi de hi

I'm gonna stop going near shops. Nipped out with the eldest cos she needed MAC foundation and came home with a cushion, a top, an enormous tupperware box, 4 pairs of white ankle socks, 4 yellow bags, a daisy trimmed headband, chocolate and 5 rolls of Christmas wrap (cos Lizzie designed it)
The socks and bags are for Saturday night. We are dressing up as hi de hi yellowcoats for a charity 80's bash. (young people and non UK residents should google) Yellow polyester all the way...

Thursday 2 November 2017

october 17

This was october.....well..some of it....