Mats Bootcamp February Mini - Magnolia's

I have always adored Chinoiserie, so much so that I would love to create my own. Imagine how utterly elated I was then, when I discovered that for this months mini exercise in Bootcamp my mission was to paint magnolia’s.

I decided for that reason that I’d like to keep my flowers for this assignment relatively representational and I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my watercolour paints, after several months of learning new processes in the textile print room at college. I also decided to try two new colours that have been sitting in my palette all this time and yet I never use them!

Admittedly, I probably don’t have time to develop this into a Chinese style wallpaper design just yet, but most certainly have visions of coming back to it in future months.

MATS Children's Book Illustration - Ada Lovelace

Over the past few weeks, I've been completely absorbed in the latest https://makeartthatsells.com class: Illustrating Children's Books.

The course is utterly jam-packed with fantastic content to work through and each week there is a deadline for submitting your assignment.  It's taught by the magical Lilla Rogers and Children's Book Art Director, Zoe Tucker.  I must admit, I've found it very hard to keep up with the pace, partly due to my own time restrictions and the talent in the group is quite extraordinary.  It's wonderful having my news feed full of such utterly inspiring art everyday.

At the beginning, we had a choice of 3 texts and to start with, I have chosen Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and a most inspiration woman, attributed to developing the first ever computer in 1842.  I was excited to research Ada, partly because I simply love history and partly because I know I need to work on developing my people drawing skills.

The first few weeks have been all about character design and development, I have discovered a new-found respect for children's book illustrators, my goodness it's so hard!

Business Cards, Greetings Cards & Magnets

African Animals in historical clothes original artists cards

Original Artists Paintings Greetings Cards

Original Art on Bottle Opener Magnets

Small Magnets with Unique and Original Artwork

Susie Batsfords Business Cards with Original Art

Well, it’s finally here, this evening is the Opening Night of our exhibition ‘Metamorphosis’. I remember watching in awe as all the student work went up on the walls this time last year, and thinking that I could never imagine being ready to exhibit anything. If I’m totally honest, I still don’t feel ready but I wonder how many artists really do when they are at this stage of their career.

 So, with the exhibition hung, I began to turn my attention to promotional material and here is what I’ve designed fresh from the printers today… just in time. Blank greetings cards, small round magnets, bottle opener magnets and of course my double sided business cards from https://www.moo.com/uk/

 When the magnets arrived I popped them into little bags and attached a cardboard label I’ve also designed and printed, there’s a matching logo design on the back of my greetings cards. You might recognise the icons from my previous post http://www.illustratorsimaginarium.co.uk/the-emperors-new-crown/

I’ve also just begun another course in photography with the Makelight community, this time I'm studying 'Makelight Essentials' which teaches some basics in photography:  https://makelight.com

So hopefully, I’ll start getting to grips with my new birthday camera. Photographs of tonight’s exhibition will follow so for now… wish me luck!