Merry Christmas!

Only 5 days till Christmas! Drew this for a woman last year as a gift for her friend who loves dogs.

Hans Revisited

I've been working on these illustrations for the past few weeks, choosing 4 different scenes I felt were important to the story. I decided to go back to traditional media, as I feel I focus too much on digital formats these days. I've always enjoyed when other children's illustrators work in water colour paints, such as E. H. Shepard, Anita Jeram and Mick Inkpen.

Hans father rejecting him at birth.

Hans leaving his family to live alone in the forest where he raises donkeys and pigs.

Ripping his skin off revealing a black form underneath. 

Hans as a man with his new princess wife.

Sibling Gift

My sister and her boyfriend are massive Doctor Who fans and she asked if I could doodle them both as the Doctor and Clara in the impossible dress. She also asked if they could be drawn in a disney style similar to the character design in the Pixar film "Up".

Hans My Hedgehog

In the future I would like to be an illustrator for children's books and television. A friend linked me to this years "Macmillan Prize" a yearly competition for children's illustrators. It's a good way to get your artwork out in the public eye as well as a chance to have your work published.

http://www.panmacmillan.com/macmillanprize

I had missed this years deadline, but decided to use the brief for one of my projects, choosing an existing children's story and illustrating various scenes in my own style.

After skimming through some children's books my tutor provided me with, I came across the brothers Grimm story "Hans My Hedgehog". It's one of their lesser known stories and quite a twisted tale.

http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/story067.pdf

Here are selection of different design I ideas I had for Hans.

For a Friend

A while ago a friend asked me to drew their new chocolate Doberman puppy in my own style. Here is the completed picture.

Book Cover

This is a book cover I designed for last years book project. We were given an existing book and asked to redesign the cover in our own style, I was given the book "Ludmila's Broken English" by DBC Pierre. As the project went on I started to develop a style I liked working in, using silhouettes that show features of the story without giving too much detail away.

"New" Software

Most of my work is produced digitally using a graphics tablet and photoshop, a few years ago I bought a new drawing program called "Corel Painter 12" I never really got around to using it being busy with course work, I recently had a play around to see what I could come up with. Here are few random images I doodled up, some complete and others in still in progress.