The Gold Lady

Last week I was asked to produce an illustration that would run alongside a beer and curry night, the brief was fairly open giving me a lot of creative wiggle room, the criteria to fill; Indian and decorative.
Armed with the excuse of 'researching' I was happily absorbed for the next hour or so in a whirlwind of embroidered saris, sequinned bindis and pretty Asian ladies.

Composition wise I needed to leave enough blank space to accommodate the text that would explain the event but this would luckily balance out any heavy detail, allowing me to get trigger happy with henna inspired patterns!

I also had to bear in mind that I was going to need to turn my illustration into a life sized version for the accompanying wall mural.

 

This was the outcome and unknown to me at the time, the easy part. 

Next came the wall painting/drawing, not having actually drawn on walls before I was in the dark as to what the effect might be.. 

Despite a few misplaced smudges and smears needing to be fixed a face did emerge from the wall, a bit of a ghostly face to begin with, but a face none the less!

 

 

The picture above shows the organised mess that helped create her including; pens, pencils, paint, paint pens, paint brushes, gold ink and various unhealthy snacks.

And not to forget a final sprinkle of hand glued gems hidden amongst her jewellery and bodice to give her an extra bit of sparkle.

It's alive!

All right on time for Halloween my spooky lady drawings have been birthed into the world of illustration, not quite kicking and screaming, but definitely with the odd hiccup along the way!

The final outcome is pictured below along with my initial rough sketches for the full 'here's one I did earlier' effect.

It's been a challenge getting the right balance of creepy vs pretty and also trying out loads of things I haven't drawn much of before such as glass, light reflections and water (I owe thanks to the saviours of Youtube for the extensive amount of  'how to' videos I got through for that last one..)

Hopefully I've managed to pull it off though, Happy Halloween!

Season of the Witch

With the spirit of Halloween firmly lodged in the brain, I’ve been designing a couple of illustrations to help celebrate the ‘feastivities’! In the meantime, here are some smaller cropped previews to eyeball over before the final images are fully revealed.    

The ‘Elixir of Immortal Life’ provides eternal beauty. Sadly enough for this pretty lady, upsetting the delicate balance of nature meant that she was forever cursed to have sinister forces prey on her unnatural youth, in an attempt to steal it from her and take it for their own.

 

Sirens may look all kittens and rainbows from first glance but their unearthly song is used to lure sailors and their ships to a gruesome demise. This particular set of ladies like to claim a souvenir from each of their unfortunate victims..

Finalised versions of these to come soon!