Butterfly

It's getting colder! so good bye summer.

But that's ok, Autumn and Winter are nice months, Halloween and Christmas! plus the trees always look nice :)

My first project in my final year of uni is called Escalating Tales, I have twelve panels to tell a fairy tale, but without words!

I'm working hard on it so I thought today I'd just share a present I made for my friend Liz, its a hand cut butterfly, and painstaking placed tiny bits of tissue paper, in regards to the size its no bigger than my hand! so it was pretty intricate :)

Have a good week everyone!

Working hard

So uni has started again, and I have received my big project of the year as well as my dissertation! I'm looking forward to it, but I'm a little nervous at the same time!! It's all been a bit hectic lately, and I've finally found the time to update my blog :)

This is quite an intricate cutting I did of a robin, it was purely done to see how far and detailed I could push myself with my cuttings out! I did it over the summer with a few other pieces:

I wanted to see how well I could cut out a humanoid figure, so I had a go at Neytiri from Avatar as well, its a little off but I'm pleased with the results as it was very hard to do, I also wanted to define certain points, so I used tissue paper to create a Stain glass effect, a method I want to expand and develop using as I like the result.

Well have a good week and I will be sure to upload more soon!

Sleeping Ducks

We've moved into our new house now! it's been a nightmare but everything is slowly sorting itself out, the internet is working and so is the wireless finally! with a few hiccups, but we'll get it sorted. University starts at the end of the month, so prep for that is under way :)

Here is just one of the cut outs I made over the summer, it's a sleeping duck I took a photo of when we where on holiday in Buxton :)

Summer fun

This is just a little up date and its not cut-out related, I just wanted to share some crafts I did with my Mum, well, my mum made the pillow and the long bag for my paint brushes and I made the little draw string bag... in the same time it took my mum to make both haha. I quite like Scooby Doo so I bought this fabric a while a go and this is what we made :)

just a side note, we didn't make the stuffed animals :P they were added for effect :D!

Well I'm back to uni on Sunday, lessons don't start until the end of the month, but I want to get all settled into my new house and stuff, hope you all had a great summer!

Projects

So since I got back from holiday a week ago, I've been working on a few new cut-outs, been pushing myself and I'm pleased with the results, I'll do a bigger upload next time once I've found the best way to scan/photograph them :)

My holiday was really nice, I'd love one day to finally be able to live somewhere like that, so peaceful and beautiful. My family and I did some fun things! we went down 300ft in an amazing cave, went for some walks and visited some interesting houses, my favourite was Hardwick Hall, there was a massive ruin next to the hall as well, and you could go right to the top, it was a bit scary but so worth it! an amazing view (minus the motorway you could just see between the trees!) I took lots of photos and videos some of which I've used to help with my artwork

So here is my last of the Trilogy by Philip Pullman, "The Amber Spyglass" this is the simplest one, but I wanted to portray a quiet within the mayhem of the book, as its the last its full of action, and there is a particular scene in a meadow that I was trying to get the feel of, the animals I've used aren't randomly picked and definitely have a part to play in the books :) (note the bottom one is supposed to be a Pine Martin, but its pretty impossible to capture the subtle differences in a cut out!)

Hope you're all having a great week x

To the Country

Tomorrow my family and I (minus my brother :(!) are heading off on holiday, we're going to the Peak District and have rented a little cottage, it should be really fun. I'm taking a small toolbox of art equipment with me so I can paint and sketch some landscapes, and hopefully some wild animals if, A. I'm luck enough to spot some, and B. they stay still long enough! typically I had to go and injure my drawing hand two days before we go, but I will endure as I'm really looking forward to this :)

Above is my second book cover of the trilogy "His Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman, This is the one I am most proud of, and I feel is the strongest, I really wanted to show the way the book made me feel when I was younger, sort of all creepy and alone. For inspiration I watched the old film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari a silent German expressionist film, and it really aided with the final outcome of this piece, I rendered these a little differently, as its not one whole piece, each section I did individually and place together on Photoshop and I also made all the textures on the card by sponging paint (it was messy :P)!

Well, have a great week!

Summer Time

Gosh I haven't posted here in forever, apologise. It's summer holidays now but soon enough I will be entering my last year on university! the only thing that worries me is my dissertation :S

My summer so far has consisted of me having my nose stuck in a book, I can't really remember how many I've read so far but it's probably round nine or ten. My artwork has been lacking recently, but I'm kicking myself for it and I'm making myself do more! I have this whole book I bought especially for summer so I don't get rusty, and so far only a few of the pages are full, tut tut.

The image I'm sharing with you here is the first piece of my final project from last semester. It's a reworking of Philip Pullmans' "Northern Lights" cover, as I have vivid memories of reading them when I was younger, I was never a big fan of the original covers, so I wanted to have a go at putting it through my style to see what happened, I'm very pleased (and I must admit a little proud) of the outcome. I shall post the others soon enough! have a good Summer x

Tea Time

I haven't posted in a while! life has been pretty busy recently, it's getting towards the end of my second year at uni so I have final projects and essays to write. But finally I think I'm nearly finished, I have a final meeting for my project tomorrow, but I've done it all, hopefully my tutor will like it and not make me change anything for the hand in on Tuesday!
So now I am free to do my own things and finally relax a bit, as a treat I went out and spent some more of my birthday money on a load of DVDs and I also got some of the how to train your dragon books :)
The cut out I am sharing with you guys today was just a quick one day project, on "mealtimes" so I chose to go with a child imaginary tea party with teddy bears because I remember doing it when I was little.

I'm going to go put my pasta bake in the oven and watch my new Avatar DVD! have a good week everyone

How to Train Your Dragon

In between Essay proposals and final projects, I've finally managed to post something again and have a day or two to myself!
Yesterday my sister and mum came to visit me and we went out shopping, we also saw How to Train Your Dragon, which I can confirm was absolutely amazing! I sat there for the whole duration laughing and smiling from ear to ear. Best movie of the year, even better than Avatar.

So to keep with a dragony theme, I've shared with you today the front cover I made for my print making project, I hand cut the dragon out of thin paper and mono printed him with the red, and then I use stamp letters to produce the typography, I'm really pleased with the outcome,all loose and rugged, this was one of my final prints and also my favourite. I will be showing you guys my final project soon aswell, they're some book covers I have recreated, and I'm really proud of them. Anyway, Hope you're all having a good week!

Got My Prints

So I got my prints back ! :D this is just one of them its really simple but it is still one of my favourites, i bought the patterned paper in the background and drew and cut out a panda, the black boarder was a mistake, but I think it adds a good effect!, I'll post more later, at the moment I am recreating Philip Pullmans' series of books "His Dark Materials" and I am having some good fun designing them. Oh yea, my printmaking project was themed on the country China :)

Busy busy!

I've been so busy recently, with work and then all my uni work on top of it, so I haven't had much of a chance to post anything or scan anything up! so here today I'm sharing with you my very first big cut out I tried out,(its a photograph, thats why its all bendy at the corners!) I discovered my "style" back at the start of second year whilst doing a project on London, mine was a path that lead from street performance, which inspired this piece, as I really like the weird shapes people can make with their bodies and they make great silhouettes! I don't really like calling it a style, as I really love drawing and painting too, I'd rather just say this is my preferred way of working. I find it a bit of a shame that you have to make different professional persona's to sell your other ways of working in the illustration business, but on that note I can also see why you have to as well.
I did say I'd show you my print making images, but I went to collect them and they where all still wet! so hopefully they've had the weekend to dry out, and I can start sharing them with you soon :)
have a great week!

Printmaking

I've just come back from a long day of printmaking, it was really fun, and I enjoyed it far more than i did the first time. Preparation is vital.
I themed my printmaking workshop on China, and hope to produce a little book :) I will definitely share my images with you guys once they are all dry, which will hopefully be tomorrow! I also took along some of the "roughs" of my other cut outs to mono print with, as they where just lying around i thought "why not?" and i got some really nice prints from them too!
I am really tired now though ha ha, it was really worth it! if you guys haven't tried printmaking before i really recommend it, its a little costly to start out with, but the inks and tools last ages and you can get some really great imagery from it :)

Today im sharing with you a book cover I recreated for a project, its one of my all time favourite books, and I really tried to push myself this time! in total it took 7 hours to cut out, and I went through about 8 knife blades! worth it though and I really had fun doing this :) so you can compare, here is the original book cover

A beautiful day

The weather has been so nice! Spring has finally come. Today in class we had a presentation from Catell Ronca who is one of our visiting lecturers at our uni, it was interesting to hear about how she got to where she is in the illustration business. We also went on a trip to a gallery in St Albans to see Charade II and IV by Clemens Steche it was a bit strange but interesting at the same time, I enjoyed the lithographic and Indian ink pictures the most.
So today I'm just sharing with you a nature inspired post card I cut out for a piece of self promotion, it was a small intricate piece which I'm rather proud of! I hope everyone is enjoying the nice weather :)

The Little Bunny bookmark

so this is my first entry on my blog. I just want to share some of my artwork and a little bit about my life as and illustrator/student :)
Hopefully I can find others interested in similar styles and swap/share/create ideas together!
Here on the left is just a little bookmark I made the other day for a project about self promotion,(if you click the image you can see it much bigger!) I sent it in a pack to my tutor with a hole punched and some ribbon to tie in as the receiver wished!
I guess this brings me to explain a bit about my method of working! Recently I have discovered the wonders of paper cut, I find immense joy in designing and then hand cutting each image. I love the effect each cutting gives when a strong light casts the shadows onto the walls. With each new attempt I try to make my designs a little more complex just to see how far I can go.

I hope everyone will enjoy looking at my work as much as I have had creating them, and I hope to share with you the joys and undoubted some of the hardships I have along the way. It might even be a little bit interesting!!