2NE1 New Evolution + Playful promises beauty queen tins

Currently on their 'New evolution' tour, K-pop girl group 2NE1 have had lots of recent success and are set to take the world by storm! I am a huge fan and I hope they make it to the UK one day soon.

 I made this painting of CL based on the promo image released before their tour began. CL is wearing an amazing unicorn dress by designer Jeremy Scott.

And as mentioned a while back, I did 12 paintings for Playful promises last year and they released this teaser image today on their tumblr! :D looks as if they will be out soon! I'll update again when they're out and get some more photos. I can't wait to see them in real life.

And I have been made aware of yet another tattoo based on my Alice in Wonderland drawing. (This is the 9th version I have found! See the rest here)

My art- Alice painting the roses tattoos

As I've mentioned before in this post, a painting I made back in 2010 for my final degree show somehow caught a lot of attention and many people have got various versions as tattoos based off my drawing and the collection of them is ever-growing!

Some of these people contacted me and asked if they could use it (a big thank you to those people!), others got it done and then managed to track me down, some are unaware still of it's source and I just happened to stumble across the photos on tumblr.

Seen or own a tattoo based on my Alice drawing? Please contact me/ leave a comment!

My art- tattoos

Over the past year or so, people have been contacting me regarding my drawing of 'Alice in Wonderland' back from my final major project at University in 2010. They loved the image so much they had it tattooed onto various limbs.

Below are 3 separate people who have sent me images of the outcomes:

I can't believe someone would like my drawing so much they are willing to have it permanently etched onto their skin!


I've had 2 other messages from others who asked for my permission to get it done and will be sending me their photos when its finished.


My original drawing:

Alice rebelling against the Queen and painting the roses white

In other news:

I have seen the prototypes for the products that Playful Promises are using my illustrations for and they look really amazing! They will be officially released later in 2012. I can't reveal anything else until that time. 

My blog has hit well over 10,000 views from all over the world! Hopefully I'll get the chance to do a bit of an art giveaway in the new year to celebrate. :)

I'm still very very busy with my job and studies, but hopefully, I'll have some more artwork to share with you in the new year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy new year to all of you! 

Zine

an example of the small Alice in Wonderland zine that I was selling at my end of year exhibition.

End of year exhibition

congratulations to all the University of Westminster Illustration students who worked so hard and made our final degree exhibition a great success!

The image above is of my final work which I decided to exhibit as a small installation resembling a victorian house interior with my work on Alice in Wonderland inside some ornate frames. A small table was at the front with a tiny 'drink me' bottle on it, in keeping with the Wonderland theme. My portfolio sat on a table opposite. I was very happy to sell a couple of bags and small zines (which I shall post photos of in another update)

I am happy to have completed my degree and this project. Its definitely time for me to move on. I am currently writing a list of different topics that I want to illustrate over the next few months in order to get me producing work and improving my style. I feel it is high time my work gained some more depth and content, as I am starting to feel as if my work is getting stale.

I am excited about starting to explore my ideas and begin work as an Illustration graduate.

The Queen of Hearts- Coloured

The Queen of Hearts

a portrait of my Queen of hearts design

Painting the roses.... White

This is an reworked version of a drawing I made right at the beginning of this project that I posted a while ago. I think its an improvement, and it now matches the style of the other Alice drawings I have done.
the old drawing is here: http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/4691/victorianalice2.jpg
The reason why Alice is painting the roses white is to do with the video game concept which these designs are for where Alice rebels against the Queen of hearts and paints the roses white again.

Cheshire cat

here's my finished Cheshire cat. He looks more complete now with his tail.

At the moment I've been working on my Alice in Wonderland project for our Degree show in June. i have been taking earlier ink drawings and re-drawing them in more detail.
I am going crazy re-drawing Alice all the time! I need to work on some new characters!

In this image, Alice grows to an enormous size, bigger than all the trees.

Alice drawing

A drawing of Alice that will eventually be part of a larger illustration of Alice looking at the Cheshire cat.

Alice' fashion plate'

I really wanted this image to resemble a 'Victorian fashion plate'
I think its almost there, might still need some tweaking

The cheshire cat- Work in Progress

My Cheshire cat design. (He's got a monocle) :)

Drawn in inks. Again, I wanted it to have a Victorian feel to it, hense him being rather old fashioned and gentlemen like with a monocle and some fur coloured to resemle a suit, including a bow tie. He will have a fairly natural colour scheme of Dark Brown/Black and white. I had tried out many colour combinations, but in the end, I decided that a more realistic scheme was more fitting to the victorian theme, as some of the bizarre colour schemes I tried looked too strange to match the theme of the other characters.

Sadly I couldn't fit his tail on the sheet of paper I used, so I will be drawing it on another sheet soon and adding it on in photoshop. I think it would be a little cruel to leave him tailless! I also have to add some whiskers. 

This cat design is also based on my own Cat 'Buttons' who sadly died back in 2007, who had fur colouring similar to this design and she has the same v-shape piece of ear missing, which I gave to the cheshire cat to make him a little quirky, even in the small details. 

Queen of hearts- work in progress

My Queen of hearts dress design and hair design. UNFINISHED.

The bottom strip of fabric is yet to be done, and also she has no face yet. Plus it needs to be coloured. 

This was drawn in ink. I wanted it to have the feel of a victorian woodblock print. 

so this was another business card design which I haven't actually had printed yet due to being unsure about it. I will still submit it tomorrow for my professional practice module though.

The idea behind this is that it is like a playing card, and can be read upside down too. The Queen of hearts character on this card is my OLDER design for my final project, but I think it works on the card better than my new design.

I haven't managed to find a company that will print the card with rounded edges yet though, and I don't want to have them printed and have to trim them all myself. I can't even get the edges perfect in photoshop, let alone by hand. lol

I don't have long left for my major project. At the moment I am trying so hard to make my character concept art look more 'dynamic' as my character poses are always so stiff! its very frustrating  as I have this perfect image in my head of what I want the final designs to look like, but I can't seem to get them on paper.

Ideally I want my finished character designs to be a mix between a Victorian illustration and a typical game concept art. I want them to have an essence of fashion illustration, but that means I really have to try hard to make them more dynamic.

Business Cards

(Business card designs. Images on Left are Front designs, images on the right are their corresponding Back designs, which happen to be the same for both cards)

I made the old paper illusion myself mixing a few different textures and tea stained papers that I made (the final outcome was an edit of about 4 of these), and then complied them with my traditional ink drawings. I wanted them to have an old Victorian feel to them.

I was going to send of some business card designs earlier, but to my dismay I realised I had edited them all wrong. I've been trying to fix them all evening and I think I've done it. I've sent these two designs off for print, only a small number, just to test to see how they look. If they look good I will order more before the show.

I also have some other designs that I want to use, which aren't quite done yet, I would finish them but its Easter Sunday and staring at photoshop all evening has made my eyes sting, regardless of how much chocolate egg I have eaten, so I will finish them tomorrow.

Hopefully by our show I will have another business card featuring the Red Queen, and one that is -not- Alice in Wonderland related, just to make sure people don't think thats all I like to draw. :)

Alice In Wonderland

Working on a project about an Alice in Wonderland game at the moment. The project direction keeps changing slightly. I am designing some characters, objects and interfaces that could be used in a computer game version of the story. I have been inspired by the traditional image of Alice and Victorian style illustrations.