Cards for TeNeues

These arrived in the post recently - samples from TeNeues of cards with my artwork that they produced as part of this summer's range. There are sixteen pink typewriter cards and envelopes in the box and the little gift cards have eight of each design. The dogs are trying to reassure an insecure cat and the bears are just standing around with balloons. The doggies are the same dogs on my banner above - they have been wandering along there for a couple of years so I'm delighted that they have a home to go to! TeNeues produce cards that have often caught my eye in the past so I'm thrilled to have my work chosen by them. 

Italy Map for Swimwear

I loved doing the artwork for this project. I was even able to incorporated a couple of photos taken - one in 1986 when InterRailing around Europe and one in the summer of 2001 on a trip to the Italian Riviera. Makes lugging my heavy photo albums around from home to home feel justified! It was for an Italian textile company and I believe it is for swimwear.

Artwork for Angelic Healing

A highly illustrated book which gave me the opportunity to draw many of the things I love to draw including women, animals, flowers and nature. I loved the space and clean design of the pages.

20 Ways to Draw a Butterfly and 44 Other Things with Wings

This was a lovely book to work on last year for Quarry Books. It's a selection of forty five different  winged things, each drawn in twenty different styles or techniques or using different marks and tools. It's a book with space for the "reader" to also draw their own versions. It was one of those projects where I felt nicely challenged, and developing my own skills as I worked my way through it which made it hugely rewarding.

Origami Farm

This is the fourth origami book by Mari Ono that I have worked on. I made and designed the paper backgrounds to create colourful environments for the origami animals. It's always fun to make these as scissors and glue are a refreshing change of tools from a pen or a mouse! I also really enjoy the days spent working with photographer Geoff Dann at his studio - it's really rewarding to work in a collaborative way and to leave home for the day!

50 Shades of Erotica

A double page illustration for Woman's Weekly on writing erotic fiction. The brief was to keep it looking pretty and not overly sexy. It was fun working to a long thin format and creating a writer's environment.

Auditory Processing Disorder Illustration

A recent illustration for Bulletin Magazine about a child with Auditory Processing Disorder. I love finding visual solutions to text that seems initially non visual and complex.

Anniversary Card for Trader Joe's

I received a few of these in the post recently - my artwork on anniversary cards for Trader Joe's. It was such a delight to see how beautifully these were designed and printed and on gorgeous paper. I did this illustration quite a while ago and seeing it being used again was a bit like discovering forgotten favourite winter clothes in the cupboard!

The Little Book of Wedding Etiquette

Just published last month by Running Press "The Little Book of Wedding Etiquette" was a lovely project to illustrate involving twelve chapter illustrations and a cover. And I managed to slip a wedding guest dog in too!

Rhode Island magazine - Spring

 This was for Rhode Island Magazine to illustrate a piece by Ann Hood. It's was a very reflective and poignant piece of writing about Spring from early childhood memories of Easter celebrations with snow still on the ground surrounded by her extended Italian family through to the loss of family members and how it affected  her ability to notice or appreciate seasonal changes through to the springtime adoption of one of her children.

I've also included how the illustrations looked in the magazine layout - I really like how the designer laid out the pages, the text and the flowers against the clean white pages.

Decorating Eggs

I illustrated this book by Deborah Schneebeli-Morrell  a few years ago but thought of it again today. 

When small in Scotland on Easter Friday - my brother and I would paint hard boiled eggs or colour them with felt tip pens and then roll them down a hill, chasing after them until they smashed, then eat them as part of a picnic  - often the whites of the egg were very stained with colour from the shell! I never really understood why I was doing it - but it was to symbolise the rock rolling from Jesus's tomb. It's been pointed out to me that my family were three days early in celebrating this!

Work for Illustrated Ape Magazine

In the autumn I was asked to contribute a double page illustration for a special issue of Illustrated Ape  - and my fourteen year younger self was super excited - I can still remember the thrill of seeing the first issue of the magazine in 1998 and feeling like it was a sign of a new emerging illustration "scene". The fact they asked me to contribute to a comic themed issue, printed in red and black and to illustrate a section of a really dark torch song seemed like a slip up - don't they know I mostly draw dogs in clothes and flowers?! However I loved the challenge as so often having a colour palette that isn't a natural choice to me or subject matter I wouldn't normally be asked to tackle are the types of things that move my work on.

Four Seasons Illustrations

This was a project I did in December - it was a commission from a friend's husband to do four illustrations of his wife and dog through the seasons as a Christmas gift from him to her.

I loved working on this and producing a set of four meant it gave me the opportunity to play around more with scale and composition and viewpoints.

Drawing New Lines in the Sand

Sometimes I love to do really detailed work but I also love it when an art director is happy for me to go with a simple drawing as the solution. Looking from the objective outside I'm totally aware the idea/message the illustration is conveying is key and the length of time to produce it is irrelevant...but I do still have a small interior "voice" that sometimes says I should be working hard and long for my fee! It must be my Scottish work ethic :-)

New Family Traditions

I loved illustrating this book so much!

It was for Running Press in the US and written by Meg Cox. It's packed full of great suggestions on  how to create personal family rituals and traditions - it has a really imaginative and cosy feeling text. I also loved working in two colours plus tints for the interior illustrations and as well as the forty illustrations I also produced a few repeat patterns that were used as backgrounds throughout the book.

This project was a bit like reading a good book because as I got near the end of it I felt a little sad it was almost over!

Dinogami - Paper Props and Styling Project

I loved making the paper props for this project. It's the third origami book by Mari Ono I've worked on for Cico Books. When I first heard it would be twenty five backgrounds all for dinosaurs I thought they might all end up being really similar but once I cleared out all the dinosaur books from the children's section of our local library and also watched "Walking with Dinosaurs" I became fascinated by the different forms of life on the planet at the time and ended up with too many different background ideas. I also thought since it would be a lot of fanatical eight year old boys making the origami dinosaurs that it was important that I got the facts right. So the dinosaurs in the third period - Cretaceous have some flowering plants in the backgrounds but the dinosaurs in the earlier periods just have ferns.

I think one of the great things about being an illustrator is that you end up researching subjects you might not otherwise go to. I remember in primary school the only things I ever received prizes for were art and projects...which is exactly what illustration is.

Isn't the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the bottom just the gentlest, sweetest looking dinosaur.