Mermaid 'Alagaesia'

Sometimes you feel inspired...and other times you feel dispassionate and are just existing, rather than living...

Sooooo the other week I was feeling more of the latter. Just pacing through the predictable motions of my day. Then, I started looking through images of artists whom I love and for some reason, unbeknown to me, this illustration by Sara Butcher was so beautiful and struck a creative chord that I stopped browsing then and there and got to work on the idea which revealed itself in my mind!

The result was Alagaesia, (a name I only devised for her this very morning, as I've been reading the 'Inheritance Cycle' by Christopher Paolini. If you enjoy fantasy novels, you should try these as the stories are as intricate and real as the world created by Tolkien).

Original dodgy sketch of the idea.

Final design in golden brown pencil.

Further polish final design with blue pencil.

The majority of the piece I finished that day, but the final touches and tweaks took me a few more days to complete as I never know when enough is enough! I hope that you like her, as I am really pleased with how it is different from my norm, with the use of blue pencil, the colour palette and filled background. But not so different as to remove the presence of my style :) What also makes me stoked is that I took a risk (of wasting watercolour paper) and drew the final design straight on the paper, as opposed to polishing it and then transferring it onto the good paper! Yay, progress!

What inspires you, and what does it inspire you to do?

Happy Fairy Dusting your life!

Alphabet Series - "L"

So Valentine’s Day has come and gone once again, and yet I’m still thinking about throwing a “sweet hearts” soiree, where everything is pink, red and white including the food, which is also cut into heart shapes where practicable =D

However, posting this illustration has to suffice for the time being to fulfil the ‘pink’ component. :) This piece used the same process as my other illustrations, but I particularly love how the hair turned out, and the fresh dance-like pose being captured. She is quite doll-esque, but it makes me smile to look at her :)

On a different note, the tertiary academic year is upon me, and I’m reluctant to let go of my current lifestyle, which is filled with exploring and enjoying all of my favourite cultural pursuits…I have appreciated it though, utilised it well, and achieved much, which is more than I can say of holidays past where the time flew past yet I had little to show for it!  

So as I go back to school, I'm conscious about how we all have to ensure that we stay balanced, and not neglect doing those things we love! So if you tend to lose track of the little things in life which bring you joy, schedule them into your diary, as you would any other appointment. As the most important appointment you can make, is the one where you give yourself time to you! :D

Happy Fairy Dusting Your Life! =D 

Alphabet Series - "K"

Valentine's day will soon be upon us, and whilst the societal focus of the day seems to have shifted towards dating-status, I have adopted a different approach. I use it as a reminder to take the time to let those who are integral in my life, know that I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to know them...Celebrating those who are special to me has re-ignited my art-making, as I loving giving to others, and bringing joy, and luckily my hobbies have the ability to bring joy to most people :)

This alphabet illustration is a lot more simple than the others I have been making, it was however the first one I had drafted back in July, before I dove into the project in November with more developed characters. Nevertheless, I still love it, as it is such cute character and the look is quite sweet and perfectly suited to the recipient, a most genuine and lovely young lady :)

There are many ways to give, with words and acts often being much more meaningful than other forms of gifts. So embrace the day as an opportunity to acknowledge the special people in your life...

Happy Giving :D

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

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

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

Sm'opcorn

Having a movie-night is one of those things in life which brings me great joy :) Nothing beats chilling on the couch with a succession of good ol' DVD's. My family has never been big into the whole snacking during the movie thing, but when they do it's usually chips, and chips don't really do it for me... So here's something which did do it for me, and it only took 10 minutes or so to make! It's "s'mores" crossed with popcorn, thus the moniker "sm'opcorn"!

The beauty with sm'opcorn is that you can make it however you like, and using whatever you have available in your pantry, as there are no rules! Below is what I did, but feel free to use any type of chocolate you like, any type of cereal, use rainbow marshmallows if you want to make it look pretty, and you could even butter the popcorn first (I know you thought about it!) =D

Ingredients

- Popcorn
- Cereal (I used gluten-free nutri-grain, but you can use any cereal you like, such as branflakes, weetbix or milo cereal)
- White marshmallows (chopped in half)
- Dark chocolate (I used 100g, use more if you want it more like rocky road)

Method

Line a large tray with some aluminium foil.

Make up the popcorn (I use a popcorn machine), and place a decent layer of it over the entire tray.

Sprinkle with the desired amount of cereal.

Place marshmallows on top, and grill for a couple of minutes until 'mallows are nice and toasted.

Meanwhile, melt desired amount of chocolate, and drizzle all over the mix when it has finished being grilled.

Place tray in the fridge until the chocolate is set.

Then you can break off chunks of sm'opcorn and consume as desired!

Happy Baking and Movie-nighting :D