Chinese New year- year of the tiger

Happy Chinese New year to all those celebrating this week!! Here is a little tiger illustration to the festive season this year as it is the year of the tiger. I was born in the year of the rabbit but was jealous of all my friends who were born in the year of the dragon as dragons are so much cooler than rabbits. I always love the story of the Chinese zodiac, its so fun. 

What animal was it the year you were born? 

 

Happy new year!!!

Hope you all survived the best you could throughout 2021. 2021 was the year where I feel like I became an adult. I finished university with a first class degree which I'm very proud of. I also got a job so I am managing to adult ok. I stayed very creative throughout the year and created a lot I've very proud of. The picture above is the best 9 of the year according to my Instagram likes. I would say there are probably better and pieces I like more and are more proud of but hey ho I don’t control what becomes my most liked on Instagram. 

Hope you all have an good 2022 and heres to a great and creative year for me! 

 

Hello again!!

Heya!!! Wanted to reintroduce myself to my readers so hi! Here is a self portrait i did of myself to help reintroduce myself to people. I'm a Yorkshire born and breed lass who is always cheerful and smiley. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone. Here is the drawing I made for this Easter season. I thought I hadn't drawn one of my koala characters in a long time for I thought I would let little kerry go on a big Easter egg hunt in the garden. 

Lets help kerry, How many Easter eggs can you see?

And can you spot the magical bunny that put them there?

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend. 

the girl and the bear

This piece is a fun little cute piece with a little girl and a brown bear with lots of pink flowers.

Peter Pan and Wendy

Peter pan is one of my favourite disney films and I love the sequel return to Neverland even more. I rarely draw multiple character pieces but its something I want to carry on improving with so here is Peter and Wendy flying over London on their way to Neverland . 

Question of the day- what is your favourite disney film? 

Sunday Football

After I did the little ballet dancer, I wanted to do another illustration of a character moving so I drew a footballer. This scene captures a young boy at his Sunday morning football game with all the parents watching on in the background. I often feel like a gravitate towards drawing girls as I am female myself so I like to mix it up by drawing a male character every now and again. 

Question of the day- do you like football? If so, who do you support? 

Taskmaster's New Years Treat

Taskmaster ( on channel 4, previously on Dave and UK Tv Play) is one of my all time favourite tv shows. I've watched every episode about 4 times, its a big comfort watch for me and rewatching helped me a lot through the first lockdown last April. This new year, there was a new year special with a more celebrity cast compared to the normal comedian stand up and actor cast. Rylan Clark is a British presenter and his performance on the show was absolutely brilliant. This drawing shows him in his funny Greg Davis outfit with the cow from the doughnut task, the gloves from the sculpture task and the classic Taskmaster bath.  I would have loved a full series with Rylan and not just one episode but I'm glad he got a chance to go on the show. 

Question of the day- what is your favourite tv show or shows? 

Happy New Year

Happy New Year
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Here is my top nine of the year. It's clear the animal week drawings from June was a very popular series with 5 of them making the top 9. Even though this year has been hard and it's been strange, I've enjoyed creating and drawing a lot. I got my galaxy tablet in December 2019 and over the year I've practiced and improved my digital drawing skills lots. One of my highlights of the year was completing my first children's book i made for my second year of uni and I'm still so proud of it and can't wait to create more children's stories in the future. I'm very grateful for all the support everyone has shown this year and it has really helped keep me sane and motivated. Let's hope the world gets better in 2021 and I continue to improve my skills even further.
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tortoise

This one is on the same lines of the previous duck but this time its a tortoise. I love working with so much colour and find it so much fun. With inktober coming up, I'm going to struggle using a lot less colour for a month so I'll use lots of colour until then I guess. 

peacock

Was watching telly and saw a peacock and just wanted to draw one so I did. This is probably the realistic digital drawing I've done and I love this piece. Some of the textured brushes on autodesk sketchbook looked so fluffy and feathery so they worked so well. Peacocks are very interesting animals and very pretty. However I am pretty scared of them as they tend to get very close to you which I really don't like. Peacocks don't know how to social distance..... A few years back me and my family were at Nunnington Hall near York and having a picnic and this peacock was getting very cocky and trying to eat my cheese sandwich from me. Now I'm like joey from friends and CHARLOTTE DOESNT SHARE FOOD!!!! so I wasn't having any of this nonsense from the peacock and have disliked them ever since and have tried avoided them. I hope I'm not alone on the peacock disliking but they are pretty so can appreciate them from a distance...

marshmallows by the campfire

Its been a funny old summer this year. Since flying and going abroad is almost out of the question for most of us this year. Lots of people have opted to go camping this year especially since they can't do festival camping. Sadly I haven't had chance to go camping myself this year but sitting by the fire with marshmallows and smores while singing campfire songs. And yes when I say campfire song my mind goes to one of two songs- 1 the campfire song from spongebob Squarepants and 2 this song we sang that the last girlguiding camp I went one and when sitting round the campfire we sang the song 'da moose da moose' which me and my sister sing whenever I eat a chocolate moose (is that even how you spell moose as in the fluffy chocolate pudding? Who knows, I can't really be bothered googling it right now....)

 I really tried to make the fire glow along with the stars to show the darkness in the air. Hope you enjoy this post.

Rockpool crab fishing at the beach illustration

Crab fishing in the rock pools at the beach were one of my favourite things to do as a kid. The rock pools are always so interesting to look into to see the creatures and plants that live in them. I've not been crab fishing in many years since the frightful day, probably aboutn10+ years now, where the hook got caught into my knee. I was OK, don't worry! It was more of a shock to get stabbed by a little hook meant to hold on to the shell bait to catch the crabs. But after a thornton's mint crumble and a lemonade I was back to my usual happy self on holiday in the rainy East Coast of Yorkshire, our favourite holiday spot as a family when I was younger. I hope you like this scene drawing of a character with full landscape and scenery. I like the texture I made in the sand and the white foamy-ness of the end of waves in the sea. Sadly haven't been able to go to the beach in over a year but its a bit  far away to get to at the moment with the world being a bit... well you know... I want to do more drawings like these with full scenery so I can continue to improve and trust me I have and I will never stop improving as long as I practice so look forward seeing them and watch as I improve. 

2 little cats

This pet portrait was a very belated birthday present for my big sister. After doing my previous painting of Tizzy and loving how it turned out, I wanted to do another. Since I owed my sister a late present, I wanted to give her something special and from the heart. This one is of Tizzy who is our current cat and the other cat is Kiri who was our previous cat who we sadly lost to heaven in 2017. These cats are so different in look and personality but i think that is what makes having a pet so wonderful as each one is so special and they all have their quirks like every human. This again was done on watercolour paper and its pretty much A3 but a little smaller. It was done with watercolours and pastel pencils. I used a green watercolour wash in the background as both their eyes are quite greeny so I feel like the green background makes their eyes pop. Luckily my sister loves the piece and that made me very happy and it is making me feel more confident with more realistic work and I  really should do much more as it definitely does make my stylised work better and I hope you all can see that too. 

A Cat called Tizzy

My cat, Tizzy, really doesn't like cameras being put in her face but one day when she was hiding from the scary vacuum cleaner in the bathroom, I got a brilliant full body photo of her. With this photo I decided to work on watercolour skills and my detailed realistic skills since I tend to focus on very fun stylised work especially since finishing alevel art in 2018. I love working with watercolours and always have so it was my obvious choice to work with for this pet portrait. The painting is on A3 watercolour paper. Since she is a very white furred cat it's tricky to get her to look really fluffy so I used grey watercolour and grey pastel pencils to lightly make her look as fluffy as possible and I think it turned out well. The blue watercolour wash in the background represents her favourite toy which is a blue flamingo with catnip inside and a little bell. Tizzy doesn't look the happiest in the drawing as she gives this grumpy judgy look when there is no room for her on the sofa. She really is the sweetest little cat and we love her very much. This painting is up on my parents wall in their landing and replaced a tardis crayon art I did back in 2016. I really enjoyed doing this pet portrait and would love to try lots more in the future (the next post is also a pet portrait so watch out for that) but i would love to practice more and maybe evem do pet portrait commissions if that is anything that interests you or anyone you know. 

sending some happiness

Even in the darkest times, there will always some ray of sunshine poking though. So never give up. Look on the brighter side. Put on a smile. Talk about your worries. But never give up   :) 

Summer Strawberries

Happy summer! its not felt too summery much this year, it seemed warmer in April when we could leave the house than in June and July when England as been more open. Strawberries remind me of Wimbledon and those fun summer days of sitting in the house watching tennis all day and having Strawberries and ice cream for pudding each evening, so good. I was feeling summery and wanted to do a fun, bright and colourful pattern design for summer time. Wow I've types summer a lot, does it still sound like a real word? 

I didn't used to eat a lot of fruit but I am getting better now and a lot less fussy. I used to only have apples and Strawberries ( but only in season) but recently I've been trying a lot more fruit and its quite nice. Hope this increased fruit consumption continues when I'm back at university living away from home but I'm not sure it will. Whys fruit so expensive?!?? Seriously Lidl I won't pay £2 for like 10 raspberries. Might just be my thriftiness shining through again.....

What is your favourite fruit? 

Queens of Cards

This is the complete queen of cards mini series with all the queens together. I've really enjoyed this series and improving my portrait skills. I would love to do portrait commissions in this style or any of my styles so if they is something you would be interested message me and we can talk about style, finish and price.

All these queen of cards drawings are available in redbubble available to buy so if you want you can!!! 

I hope you've enjoyed this little series and would love to see more similar types of drawing in the future. 

Queen of Diamonds

Last one of the mini series.

 As you have probably noticed all the queens have their eyes closed. This is because I didn't want the main focus to be the eyes which normally does become the main focus of a portrait since the eyes are the portal to the soul and all that jazz. 

Also the colour pallette isn't massive throughout the mini series with the main focus on the 2 main colours of playing cards of red and black. I used a dark green on the black suits as green complements red and black well. 

I choice a variety of different women to use as references to show diversity and practice drawing lots of different women and people with different skin tones and hair types and styles. It was fun drawing lots of different people. 

Queen of Clubs

Second drawing of the queen of cards mini series is clubs. To find references for all the drawings in this mini series,  I found photographs of women on Pinterest so they are all based of real women. Using good reference photos from Pinterest helped me get proportions correct so they are well balanced and look like real people which some times I've struggled with for more realistic drawings. Using references is probably one of the best ways to do good portraits so I will always try and find good before trying to do a portrait. Thats a good little artist tip!  And Pinterest is probably the best place to find reference photos as you can easily save the photos you want to use to draw from. 

Maybe I should try give more art tips? If you want any comment on any post and I will try my best to answer your questions.