sketchblog
If you are interested in childrens’ book illustration, a great looking exhibition will be opening in Auckland in two days time. Pictures Without Words is a showcase of a selection of New Zealand childrens book illustrators (including Nina Rycroft and Brian Lovelock!), and will be showing at Artstation gallery from 6-24 August, as part of the Storylines festival.
Will post after opening tomorrow night- come along if you can!
emma
One of my latest pet portraits- coloured pencil (FC polychromos and prismacolors) and acrylic ink (white for the whiskers) on Fabriano 5 grain paper:
And some in progress shots:
Lots of hours went into this one!
We also have a new member of the family- an Indian ringneck parakeet ‘Charlie’, adopted from the bird rescue organisation I volunteer at. Here is a drawing I did of him to add to my childrens portfolio:
Nero black pencil and watercolour
…SO just for fun, here is a funny video by the amazing James Gurney of Gurney Journey and the author of the wonderful books ‘Colour and Light’ and “Imaginative realism’, about his very own budgie artist:
I want to teach Charlie to draw…he definitely loves chewing on pencils!!
Stay tuned tomorrow for some exciting news.
emma
… one of my pet portraits on the cover of “Sunday” magazine (Fairfax NZ).
Rose Matafeo is a friend of my sisters, which is how I was asked to do this commission for her birthday. The article is a story about Burt, the cat in the portrait, and how he went missing shortly Rose was given the portrait.
You can read the whole article here.
How exciting!
emma
Just some progress shots of the commissions I am currently working on. Cats galore!
All work is coloured pencil (prismacolor and faber castell polychromos) on Fabriano 5 grain paper, my favourite!
And for those of you who like to watch illustrator videos, here is a lovely one from Erin E. Hunter, a natural science and childrens illustrator, where she is painting an image of a viper fish for the childrens’ book ‘A Day in the Deep’ by Kevin Kurtz.
Erin-2nd Draft-Vimeo Upload 720p from Brian Granbery on Vimeo.
Hope your week is off to a great start!
emma
The last few weeks have been pretty busy- working and commissions-wise (expect an update on these later in the week)- hence the lack of posts! As always when working on other things, many more ideas spring to mind for the next project…I will need to start keeping track of these ideas for the times when I am less busy!
Anyway, instead of posting stuff I’ve been working on, I thought I would write about an amazingly talented scientific illustrator, Amadeo Bachar, who I read about through this very interesting interview on Deep Sea News. I love biological illustration and one day I hope to be able to work in this field. Amadeo Bachar has a Bachelors degree in Marine Biology and a Masters Certificate in Scientific Illustration, and he now teaches at California State University in the Scientific Illustration program and is a freelance illustrator.
So- go and read the interview to find out more, and I also highly recommend watching this video on the process of creating this beautiful illustration of yellowtail fish in watercolour, if you too love scientific illustration!
Tell me- do you have any videos of illustrators working on art that you find inspiring?? I would love to know!
Enjoy the end of the week- I will hopefully not leave it too long before I post again!
emma
Just some things I’ve been working on lately…
This is the beginnings of a portrait of Sam (the german shephard x) and Tiddles (tabby cat) both pets of our family who have passed on a while ago. The image I am working from is of when Tiddles was a little kitten and had just joined us, and you can see he’s a little scared of Sam!
I have attempted this portrait before (on green coloured card) but was not very happy with the result (I cannot find the picture anywhere- will try to post it when as a comparison when I have finished this one).
So, now I’m trying it again. This time will be the first I have used acrylic paints as a background to a coloured pencil drawing, so will be interesting to see how it works. Heres where I’m up to (still very unfinished!):
This is my first time using a Canson C A grain paper, which as far as I know is not readily available in NZ- I got it on my recent trip to Melbourne. I think my favourite paper is still Fabriano 5 grain…
Then for something a bit different, I have been reading Danny Gregory’s book, ‘An illustrated life’- which is such a great book! I have decided to try and keep a journal of my own (+stick at it!). Here is my first page, which I did after a day of volunteering at a bird rehab centre. Its pretty terrible drawing, but hopefully its just a matter of practice!
On the theme of sketchbooks, here is a lovely video to watch if you have time (which was posted on Laura Wood Illustration). Its about Renata Liwska a childrens book illustrator, and how she got into childrens book illustration. Very inspiring stuff! Makes me want to get a moleskine too!
A Quiet Look – How to become a children’s book illustrator in one (not so easy) step from mike kerr on Vimeo.
Well, thats all I have for now! I hope you have a great weekend!
emma
I don’t have any of my own work to post this week- I’ve been busy doing some work experience- so I thought instead it would be a good time to post some work of the very inspiring illustrators and artists whose work fills up my pinterest board. Although pinterest does tend to take up time that could be better spent (maybe working on some of my own drawings!) it can be very inspiring to flick through the amazing work of talented illustrators.
So, without further adieu, this weeks Illustration Pinspiration theme is BIRDS.
If you are interested in seeing more (much much more) illustration inspiration and happiness, check out my pinterest Illustration board.
Please note, none of this work is my own, all artists are credited below.
On winter morning by AnkaS
Robin by Matt Sewell
Vladimir Savitsch
Spring is coming by Anna Lisk
Pet Peacock by Aurelius Battaglia
from ‘Songs We Sing’ illustrated by William Dugan
bird sketch by Jake Panian
Swans by Ella Bailey
Please follow the links to these illustrators websites to check out more of their work. I hope you all have a great weekend. I will be hopefully getting some work done on one of my own pet portraits and will post some WIP pics soon!
emma
Hope you had a great weekend. A special hello to all of the 15 people now following my blog– I think that’s very exciting- thank you for reading along! If you are reading this and would like to be updated when I post something new, just click here, or on RSS widget to the left.
I thought I would post these fun videos for the beginning of the week. The first is about a day in the life of author/illustrator Oliver Jeffers of The Great Paper Caper fame. I saw this video on SwissMiss a little while ago- its a lovely video:
Oliver Jeffers Author Film 2013 from Oliver Jeffers on Vimeo.
The next is a video by Danny Gregory, an author and illustrator of a number of books about sketching everyday life and more. I was just recently introduced to his book “An Illustrated Life” by Nancy from http://nancydrewit.wordpress.com/. I have not yet read the book (its on its way here as we speak) but since then I have done lots of reading of his fascinating blog, and discovered this beautiful and inspiring video called “The Art of Breakfast”. I can’t wait to read ALL of his books – thanks for the suggestion Nancy!
I hope you enjoy!
Do you have any suggestions of videos (or books) about illustrators that really inspired you? I would love to know.
emma
I mentioned last time that I had been lucky enough to develop a logo for a new company that is starting up here in New Zealand. Goldfish Productions is a production company that will be producing web (as well as film and photo) content to promote undiscovered overseas festivals to New Zealanders’. The clients wanted a goldfish to be incorporated into the logo in some way. So here are some pictures of the development of the logo. I have also included some online resources that I found very useful at the end of this post.
After finding out what the client wanted, I started to come up with some different sketched logo ideas…tried to think of as many as possible!
Then I further developed a few of my favourite ideas so I could send them off to the client.
The clients then decided that they liked the centre logo idea, as it had quite a hand-drawn look. I developed both a logo version with a black background and one with a transparent background.
I created the finished designs in Illustrator (vector images are best for logos with multiple uses as they are rescaleable). Here they are:
(these are low res images so as to not make this post too big! I will post the larger images on my portfolio page too).
I sent these off in a variety of file sizes and types (.psd file, .ai file, jpg low and high res, png low and high and as a pdf)- I can’t wait to see them in use!
For anyone else interested in doing some logo design, I found these resources really useful:
* Design Instruct- Create a Logo Design from start to finish
* Just Creative- The Logo Design Process from start to finish, The logo design process of top designers, and How to design a logo (this site also provides a great questionnaire to get ideas of what you should be asking your client to get a brief of what they would like).
* Spoongraphics Blog- Question Time: What should you supply with your logo designs?
Plus, something to read if you are just getting into digital illustration, like me- this is a wonderful tutorial about inking illustrations in Adobe Illustrator: from Beats Digging Ditches, the Ultimate Digital Ink and Color Tutorial for Adobe Illustrator CS5
I hope you are having a great weekend- its getting cold over here in NZ as we head into winter!
emma
Its been a little bit since I last posted (hope you had a great easter!)- I have been a bit busy working on some different projects- including an awesome logo design project with a new local company- which I will post about a bit more in the next few days.
For now, I wanted to share an idea I have been thinking about for a while- but only really just started working on. Its a series of educational resources for biology students. This is my first attempt at a sort of ‘comic’ style of illustration, so there are quite a bit of improvements to be made.
I haven’t been asked to do them, they are just something I thought might be fun, as I get to use things I have learnt through my own degree (in biology) and practice some drawing (as well as digital editing)! The first one I have been working on is on Mitosis. I am thinking of doing a series on cell biology, but we’ll see how it goes.
Here is the first page (I haven’t added any colour yet- don’t know if I will):
I did all the drawing by hand, using artline+rapidograph technical pens, then scanned it in at 600dpi, and used photoshop to clean up some of the images and add in the text. The little amoeba guy’s name is Alfred.
I found this information on Garen Ewing’s website very useful for information on digital editing of comics, if anyone else is interested.
I am also trying to get more digital practice in- even though I don’t really like it as much as traditional techniques. Now I have set up an old digital tablet I had and that makes things a lot easier, even if its just for editing purposes!
I have also updated my portfolio pages a bit more, and uploaded some older work as well as made a proper photography page (check them out here) and also the inspiration page.
That’s all from me! If you have a bit of time on your hands, I can’t recommend enough checking out this interview from BBC Desert Discs with Judith Kerr– author and illustrator of the Mog books.
Its a really worth a listen!
If there’s anyone out there reading this– tell me, do you do any digital illustration, or do you stick to traditional materials?
emma
emma scheltema illustration 