Just a Jester Illustration

It's Sunday, it's raining... What do you do? Do some doodling whilst watching 'The Mysterious Cities of Gold' of course. My boyfriend suggested a jester character. I decided to stick to pencil and watercolours. It's a very soft image, I wonder if I should start using a black pen to do my outlines? I've totally lost the plot when it comes to using real paints, I've been using the computer to do my day to day artwork for so long, I finding welding a paintbrush a bit baffling!

Tattooed Lady Embroidery

This is an embroidery of a tattooed lady, I imagine her as a performer at the circus. She may be a contortionist or a magician's assistant. I drew the line illustration as I was thinking of characters for the circus themed illustration exhibition we are planning on hosting in Bedford later this year. She ended up looking good enough to stitch.

100 followers: Thank you!

Today I have discovered that I have 100 fellow bloggers following this blog. Thank you so much for your support! It's great to know that there are people out there who are reading my rambles!
I've photographed some more embroidered illustrations. I'm still experimenting and not everything is a success, but I'm enjoying the process.

Illustration Friday: POPULARITY

The bear mayor was re-elected due to overwhelming popularity. His policy on keeping honey tax low and increasing spending on the picnic basket budget was very popular with the voters.
This was a quick illustration I did specifically for illustration friday in photoshop.

Circus coming to Bedford

The Bedfordian illustrators team who created the We Are Bedford: Monster Event for the Big Draw back in October, have decided to create another themed illustration event for Bedford in the summer. We are still finalising details, but I am so exciting about doing another doodle day in my home town I've started doing some homework. These are drawings I did in watercolour and ink, but the characters are from one of my favourite books: The Great Alphabet Race illustrated by Tom O' Sullivan. There's plenty of inspiration in there as the next theme will be based on the circus.

Machine Embroidery: Tween designs

I was asked to do some mini machine embroidery design for Ashlea at Bunnycup. I made them a bit gothy, but as cute as I could! It's the sort of thing I liked when I was eleven years old. They are little, only 1.5 inches by 1.5 inches, but if you are a machine embroidery enthusiast, you can get larger applique versions of these designs to use for your craft projects too.

February Issue of The Bedford Clanger

The Bedford Clanger is now published and can be picked up for free in independent cafes, shops, pubs and businesses in Bedford. I do all the design work for the paper. It's the monthly cultural bulletin for Bedford. In March we aim to increase the paper to 12 pages, so I'll be busy, but it's worth doing as small towns like Bedford actually have more creatives here than you think and they deserve to be celebrated. You can read it online here too!

Illustration Friday: FORWARD

This is a sketch I eventually worked up into a birthday card a few weeks ago for work. It's a centre-forward soccer bear being whistled at by the mouse referee. Not sure why he's been yellow carded! Most of the work I do during the day are cute characters and I love my job so much! At the moment I'm working on cute Christmas designs.

More Crewel Embroidery

Here is my latest hand stitched crewel work with my original sketch so you can see my starting point. I basted some soluble fabric onto the material, with my sketch traced on in washable fabric marker. It took flippin' ages to finish!

Illustration Friday: GROUNDED

I have never been grounded, but if I had grades like this whilst I was at school I think my parents would have grounded me. This little digital sketch took me about 45 minutes to do and hopefully Illustration Friday will help me throughout the new year to keep me doodling and updating my blog.