"It's the little things in life which make it magical..."

Sunday 27 January 2013

Alphabet Series - "S"


Here's another illustration from my alphabet series which I made for my Aunt's christmas gift. I really enjoyed making this one, because I was in the zone, and having fun with doing a 70's style dress, seeing as that was the time of my Aunt's youth :)

I got the pose idea from the Snow White DVD cover and used a couple of different magazine clippings to develop the wavy hair design. The hair worked out a lot quicker than previous illustrations! I used cerulean blue for the dress, using the faintest of washes and then layering countless times and slowly doing more in the shaded areas to achieve the ombre look. The hair is a reddish-brown I created using burnt umber and alizarin crimson. The skin uses faint washes of burnt umber, with tinges of rose on the elbows, hands and feet.



The letter 'S' is so much easier to work with than other letters, as you can pretty much use whatever pose you desire, whereas with others you have to be careful in the body's placement for it may be difficult to tell what the letter is!



It's currently raining cats and dogs here...so my question is what are your go-to rainy-day activities? Mine are pretty much the same as those I generally enjoy doing! But I do love bunkering down and watching a good movie with some hot chocolate too :)

Happy Fairy Dusting! :D

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Alphabet Series - "A"


Just a quick post of another one of the illustrations I made as a christmas gift. I tried a number of different things with this piece, using smooth watercolour paper (which I didn't like that much as it shows up mistakes), did a shorter dress design and tried to make it look like she was swirling it. Also, because of the different pose it took me ages to develop the final layout as the hair, dress, limb and head positions needed a lot of tweaking to sit 'right'.






I still have plenty of illustrations to keep showing you, but I've been having a break from drawing and instead been reading and researching quite a bit. This has been great for my imagination, developing new ideas and getting enthused about being creative again!

Enjoy, and happy fairy-dusting your day! :D

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Young Jack Skellington




Well Hel-looo 2013!

Albeit a couple of lull periods, I continued to blog throughout 2012, and I'm so glad that I didn't neglect it too badly... It's been incredibly nice to have something to work on and nurture, so thanks for being supportive of this for me :)

I intend to keep going with this venture, firstly for myself, because you will struggle to maintain doing something if your sole priority is to please others and not stay true to enjoying it for you...and secondly for you guys, my readers, to bring you more ways to add fairy dust to your day, and thus make your life sparkle :D



Here is an illustration made for my sister's friend, whom loves all things Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I created the layout of the piece surprisingly quickly, despite never having drawn him before. I started by doing a couple of practice studies of Jack from internet images, before deciding on the final look, and then created a polished final layout. I was so pleased with the end result, and I hope you like it to :) It was such fun to do, especially because it was quite different to my typical illustration style, and also because I enjoyed doing the background, which I normally don't do :)

I recently created a facebook page for this blog, so feel free to "like" it, so to get notifications of new posts, and also for the links and ideas I find for other great ways to add magic to your day!

Happy Fairy-Dusting Your Life :D