2012 so far - Anteaters, Birthdays, and Weddings

My blog has been sadly neglected for most of 2012, primarily due to my choice to become a librarian! Illustration is in no way an easy career choice, and after a series of soul-destroying day jobs, I decided to get serious about library work. My artwork may be on the back-burner for the moment, but in the future, I think I'll be able to find a happy balance between library work and illustration.

Since my last post, I was accepted on postgraduate library/information science course here in London, which I began at the end of September. In early spring, I started volunteering with Westminster Libraries, which was a great opportunity. I think everyone who enjoys books, reading and encouraging kids to read books, especially aspiring children's book illustrators should volunteer for their local library's Summer Reading Challenge. In July, I quit my depressing job to spend a few weeks in Denmark, France, and back in the U.S., where I showed my European boyfriend the wonders of Chicago's Superdawg, National Mustard Day at the Mustard Museum in Middleton, WI, and the Historic Auto Attractions Museum in Roscoe, IL (okay, that last one he actually discovered). Upon returning to London, I was lucky enough to get a job in an academic library, and now I'm well on my way to being a librarian/illustrator.

While recovering from all the soul destruction that had been caused by spending too long working in catering, illustration wasn't my main priority. Here's a quick update on the (few) illustrations I did since my last post.

This anteater made his way on to a custom t-shirt I made for my boyfriend's birthday in January. He looks very pensive. 

Below is the front and inside of a mix tape sleeve/birthday card I made for my mom in July. If it's not obvious, the cake is decorated like a record. The slice is probably the most delicious-looking thing I've ever drawn, I think it's probably strawberry cake with strawberry jam layers and purple-coloured chocolate icing. The contrast of purple and orange really make this pop. 

My little sister turned 21 in July, and having recently visited the ring-tailed lemurs in London Zoo, I drew some of them partying. The lemurs form "21" with their tales on the front of the card ...

... and the lemur inside the card drinks his margarita and offers a birthday cupcake.

My most recent illustration project was for my cousin's upcoming wedding in New Mexico. I created some maps of the region and the resort where the wedding is being held (see below), and some illustrations for their wedding program, including a connect-the-dots and colouring-in page.

Like in my Eli the sloth illustrations, I used layers of digital colour and watercolour scans to create some subtle texture. The drawings of the buildings were probably the most time-consuming part, but I like the effect.

So that's really all the news for 2012 so far! Here's hoping it doesn't take another 10 months for me to post again.

Christmas Elves

Here are some recent illustrations I did of mischievous Christmas house elves. As mentioned in my last post, this project got me back into using watercolours. The original images look even better, but I had a lot of limitations because of my scanner's quality. These have been tweaked in Photoshop to restore some of the subtle colour variations.

I like to think the girl has an unintentional likeness to Bjork.

... and the Dad-Elf.

A lot of my elf and gnome research was provided by a German-language copy of 'The Big Book of Gnomes' by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. If you ever come across this strange Dutch tome, it's worth a look. It's an in-depth study of everything related to gnomes, from their mating practices to diagrams of their houses. Poortvliet's paintings are amazingly realistic, like a lovely old bird-watcher's guide ... except all about gnomes.

Eli in colour!

I added colour to this image of Eli a few weeks back, but I'm only getting around to putting it up now. It's not perfect, this was my first foray into watercolours in a long time, so some of the washes are a bit uneven. I've since become really excited about the medium. Every time I tried to paint with watercolours in the past, I was way too impatient and it all became a total mess. This isn't the best example of my new-found watercolour prowess, hopefully my latest images will be up soon as evidence. It wasn't the case with this image, but I found during my recent painting process that good watercolours really aren't done justice by my cheap printer/scanner. This bummed me out for a few days, but I finally came around to the sad realisation that it takes a few more hours of Photoshop tweaking to get the scan looking like the original, at least with my technique.

Either way, I'm fairly happy my pen lines and watercolours combination.