Just a little message to let you know that my blog has moved to tumblr. I like the interface better and see myself updating it more often. If you would still like to follow my work, please renew your feeds to the one on tumblr. ^_^ Thank you!

Hopefully you’ll be hearing from me more often from there!

I’ve been wanting to practice my painting technique a little more before I do any proper final pieces lately. I don’t feel like I’m improving much so I wanted to push myself out of boundaries and so on.

I had a little browse around some blogs and DA and found something that looked quite cool to try.

I was highly inspired by Yumedust on DeviantART who tried to paint a colouring book page like a classical painting. You can find her piece here.

After seeing that amazing piece, I decided to try it myself with this page.

It took quite a while but I’m really pleased with how it turned out! Here are my steps first… (please click if you would like to see it bigger.)

And what I ended up with!

Happy New Year, first of all! I hope you’ve all had a lovely time over the holidays!

I wanted to try something a little different today. Something that would maybe take me out of a comfort zone etc. I’ve always admired people who can draw humans! They’re so hard!! I guess it would get easier with more practice but argh!  Anyway… I decided to not only try and draw something different but also stylise it differently too!

I got this book today…http://www.amazon.co.uk/Classic-Human-Anatomy-Function-Movement/dp/0823024156/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294284869&sr=8-1

It’s pretty cool. I looked through a lot of anatomy books but I found this one to be more useful than the others. (Hehe, Hobbycraft had a lovely big after christmas sale! )

I find myself to be more of a visual learner so this book was great! It’s packed full of lots of info about how to draw specific areas like eyes, noses etc to full body figures. Like most anatomy books, it also has an in-depth explanation of how the muscles and bones all link into drawing.

So after having a little look into it… I started working through some stages, only using a brown palate…

I started with the shadows, building them up gradually to form the different areas…

I eventually finished all that with this… Obviously, it’s still not quite right…. Maybe I should have made the eyes smaller? She looks FAR too much like E.T’s wife, cousin or something…

After all the shading was down, I added a new layer on top to play around with what colours I wanted. I did originally want to go for a nicer kind of brown with yellows etc so it looked like it was on paper… but because of her bug eyes, this suited her better. I also added two texture layers to make it look like it was a little more traditional.

Can’t believe she looks like E.T.! Hmmmm…… Oh well… still working on it! Hehe!

Hope you’re all well! Thank you for reading even though this this is often useless and barely ever updated! I’m working on that too!

Just a little message to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! I’m really sorry I haven’t had the time to do any wintery pieces this year, but I hope you all enjoy your holidays! <3

Hey guys!! I’m having a Black Friday Sale over at my shop on ALL items!  :D

Here are the details! 

♥♥♥BLACK FRIDAY SALE!!♥♥♥ – From now until Sunday 28th November at 12pm GMT you can receive 10% off your purchases! Just use the coupon code ‘BLACKFRIDAY10′ to get your discount! ♥ Happy Shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

I was having a little browse through my complicated filing system and found that I’d forgotten to finish something that I had started at the beginning of September. I’d done screen caps so decided to actually finish it while I had some time. The last step was done today but the rest was all done on the 1st September. I’d originally just done it for a little bit of painting practice. The reference is a photo I took in May.

I started with the main structure and tried to get the lighting in the correct areas.

The next step was to try to define the main features of the face and concentrate on the left eye. (actually my right) The skin was also smoothed out a little.

Moved on to working on the other eye but as you might be able to see… there was something not quite right. I decided it was the lighting and the shape of the nose. Hair also got a little bit more shape on this step.

Fixed the lighting and nose. The left side of the nostril was too far over to the right and was rounded wrong. Also fixed slight shape problems with the lips and added final details such as eyelashes/hair/creases etc and drew in the edge of the blouse.

Hopefully it turned out alright? The final details took me about an hour.

Hope you like it!

Heeeeeey!!

Just a mini post to let you know I’m still alive (and drawing!)

Just about to open up a new sketchbook! Still a few things I need to finish before I can show you guys!! Hehe! Hope you’re all doing well!

Hehe, I thought I would do this after seeing it around several Deviants pages.

The biggest image is probably the one that influences me most…

But from left to right…

1. Beatrix Potter – I grew up with A LOT of Peter Rabbit and all of his little friends! I like little critters, what can I say?

2. Disney – Probably the biggest influence in my work! I love how they do pretty much everything! Again, another one I grew up around. I chose the picture of Simba as ‘The Lion King’ is probably the one that got me drawing first. I’m really interested in watching all the process steps that come with the ‘special features’ on the Disney DVD’s. The whole idea of having the animals in front of you so you can ‘characterise’ them is just too cool for me! I would honestly love to work for Disney.

3. `gorjuss – I love how Suzanne does all of her girls. She manages to bring a lot of emotion into her pieces, which is something I really admire. Plus… They’re so cute!

4. *DreamsOfALostSpirit – I love the little grey bunny character Jeanette has brought to life and really love the way she uses traditional media to colour them.

5. *yumedust – One of the first artists I discovered here on DeviantART. Katie never fails to impress me with her flawless painting technique.

6. *imaginism – I love the creativity Bobby & Kei manage to bring to their pieces. They all have such amazing detail and I really hope I can manage to perfect my work in such a way eventually.

7. *jermilex – Jeremy has really inspired me to focus more on my backgrounds so I can give the pieces a more finished and illustrative look and feel.

8. *Kamirah – I love the sweet, innocent and whimsical personalities Anna manages to give her characters. They will all make you melt!

9. Panda – Okay… One of my favourite animals! The way they naturally behave inspire me on so may levels! I would really love to visit the Wolong Panda Reserve someday so I can watch them closer.

10. ~faboarts – Another one of the first artists I discovered here. Fabo has such a crisp way of working with traditional media!

11. *balaa – I love the way Anastasia mixes the animal kingdom with fantasy and all in such a beautiful way! Her paintings are just so realistic and breathtaking!

12. ^Norke – I have to thank Yannick for his amazing tutorials and walkthroughs! They have all really helped me learn what I know today and I hope to still learn more each time I look at them. I originally found him through his Pixar fanart.

13. *anry – I fell in love with Anry’s character ‘Snow’ from the first time I saw it! It’s one of the cutest things I have ever seen! The details in his pieces are truly amazing!

So that’s a little bit of who and what inspires me. (I ran out of boxes!)

Here’s another commission for the lovely Melody from DeviantART.

These two yummy characters are half giant panda and half red panda!! Kaienne is the apricot girl holding the ice cream and Skootyr is the turquoise boy on the Scooter!

They are twins! I had a lot of fun doing this piece even though the colour scheme proved to be a little tricky! I think it worked out okay though? I would love to know what you guys think!

Here are a few detail shots…

This is a closeup of Skootyr. He’s lovingly looking after his twin sister while playing on his skooter. He prefers to have bear ears on his very colourful hat while his sister prefers bunnies!

And here is his sister! She absolutely adores ice cream. As you can see, she has a very yummy cone in her possession all ready to get gobbled up! She just loves the Strawberry, Spearmint and Chocolate combination!

3 for 2 SALE on all medium prints in my Etsy Shop right now!!

*Please write the name of the free print you would like in the notes section during purchase*