Oriel Art Exhibition

My 'Chocolate Monster' piece was accepted to be part of the Oriel Art Exhibition in Wrexham, which was open to all types of art work and to professional, amateur and students. The exhibition looks great and has lots of variety of work which I'm really happy to be part of. It went up last weekend and is on until 10th January 2009, so go and have a good look if you can and see the work from lots of talented people!! :-D

1st Award

"Arte y Pico" Award"Arte y Pico" is a phrase that roughly translates as,"The Maximum, The Peak!"

I hope I haven't reached my "Maximum" or my "Peak" just yet, but my thanks go to Yoon See for thinking my work deserves this award!

Here are 'the rules' for The ARTE y PICO Award:
1. Show the award.
2. The name of the person who gave it to you and a link back to their blog.
3. Pick 5 blogs you think deserve this award for: creativity, design, interesting material and their contribution/participation to the blog community.
4. List the author's name and link to their blog.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of those you've selected.Link back to the original Arte y Pico BLOG, so all will know the origin of the award.

AWARDS GO TO THE FOLLOWING BLOGS:

1. Mary Harris at createdbythestar.blogspot.com for her dedication to her work and continual improvements with her lovely designs.

2. Megan Hindley at stedhead-megan.blogspot.com for her utterly unique style and crazy images!

3. Alex Willmore at elxkidd.deviantart.com for his awesome character designs and overall talent.

4. Lauren Sharp at diddydumdiddydoo.deviantart.com for her great artists skills in whatever style she chooses to use!

5. Terri C at painteddaisies.blogspot.com for her lovely paintings, and of course being the leader of the greatest cactus related group in the world....Cactus Monday!!

Keep up the good work guys, will be looking at your work again very soon!

Chocolate Shop Exhibition

Chocolate Milk Comes From Brown Cows
There's A Thin Person Inside Of Me Screaming To Get Out, But I Keep Her Sedated With Chocolate
Be An Angel, Share Your Chocolate
If There Is Melted Chocolate On Your Hands You're Eating It Too Slowly
Chocolate In Any Language Spells Love




I have been very busy over the last month working on images to submit for a new chocolate shop that has opened in the town of Wrexham, who have had the idea of using some extra wall space in the shop as a chance for artists to exhibit their work. I was very happy to be given the first opportunity to display my work, so fingers crossed people like it too! If anyone wants to view it first hand (and pick up some of the lovely chocolates on sale there too, yum yum!!) it is on at the Really Nice Chocolate shop www.reallynicechocolate.co.uk until january time. Prints of the images can also be purchased there too as poster size or postcards.

Xmas Card Ideas

These are some images I came up with for xmas card ideas. They still need some tweaking but I think some will end up as a set, and the Penguin Bee card will be transfered into a xmas book as well as an interactive online book using Flash.

Illustration Friday- Strings

This weeks Illustration Friday word is Strings, and the Elf here is using them in a Mission Impossible style to either put the star safely on to the Xmas tree or steal it......you can decide!!!

I am working on various Xmas card designs at the moment and this is a version of one I have done. I will try and have the better finished images up here soon. Right, better get crackin' with the other ones now- have a nice weekend.

Illustration Friday- Sugary

For this weeks Illustration Friday word- Sugary, features cactus's in my studio space enjoying lovely sugary ice creams, and as we all know.....cactus's LOVE ice cream, mmmmmmm :-D

I cheated a little bit for this weeks image. I did a version of this for my first image on the new group I joined- Cactus Monday, and for the rest of the week have been mega busy sorting out uni stuff, so tweaked the original image to fit this weeks word. Will hope to do better for this weeks word. Enjoy the weekend!!

Illustration Friday- Packed

Packed and ready for the beach.....but which way is it!!?

This is for my cousin Becky who has recently moved to Australia and is enjoying lots of sunshine down under, in the land of the kangaroo!!

enjoy

Googly Eyed Cactus

For one of the presents I received for my birthday last week was this cactus plant (now with extra Googles!!) from my brilliant little nephew Ashley. It will be taking pride of place on my desk at uni once I return back next week!! :-D

Illustration Friday- Clique

Very busy this week, but just about managed to get this weeks word 'Clique' finished........that pesky Wolf had better watch its back with this Clique around!!!

Start back at uni for my final year on tuesday, so will be busier than usual really soon. Will attempt to keep the weekly word going- actually quite enjoying it. Wish me luck though!! :-S

Illustration Friday- Island

This weeks word is Island, and I had six sketches done for a series of 'things to do when you are stuck on a desert Island'. I created two of these this afternoon, then realized how busy the next week is, so have left it at that.

Was looking through one of my J. Otto Seibold books earlier and this inspired me to try using the gradient tool in Illustrator (as i've never tried it before). Was a bit fiddly to start with but think it has turned out ok, will think about using it again! Enjoy, and have a great week :-D

#1. Do some "light reading"


#2. Enjoy some music

Illustration Friday- Clutter

For this weeks Illustration Friday word - Clutter - I decide to do an image of the cactus part of my mind, where there is all sorts of Cluttered mess piling up and driving me mad!! Left it quite late again this week, but will attempt to be more swift from now on. Have a good weekend!

Illustration Friday- Memories

This weeks Illustration Friday word was Memories, and as I don't have a very good memory myself, I had a peek through an old photo album for inspiration and decided to base my images on my long-time friendship with a well known character......Morph!! I used to carry him everywhere with me, so we have shared lots of memories together.

I had no plans to do any more than one image (like usual), but the idea kept on growing and I ended up working on 5 different images. This ended up being 4 when it came to the final drawing stage, and then had to cut one of the illustrations as it didn't fit in as well as the 3 I have used (will dig it out for a future I.F word im sure!!). I enjoyed working on these images, and I hope you enjoy looking at them. Click on pictures below to view them separately. :-D

Illustration Friday- Routine

For this weeks image, we have some Chinese pandas giving you a special Routine to mark the end of the Beijing Olympics. Hope you all managed to see some of the games while they were on and enjoyed what you saw. Off to do some dissertation work now, have a good week!!

Illustration Friday- Detach

Mr Lego decided to do his 'head-detaching' trick to help liven up the party!!

Running a bit late on this weeks image, but just about got there! Trying to lay down the foundations to my dissertation writing has taken up most of my week, but glad I managed to get this done today. Decided to start the colouring process again during the middle of my first attempt as it wasn't standing out as much as I wanted, so in turn missed dinner, so will head off for a mid-night snack now to keep my rumbling belly happy!! Hope it was worth it....enjoy :-D

illustration Friday- Sail

For this weeks Illustration Friday word- Sail, I decided to continue from last weeks image. Once the bunny was magically pulled from the hat, he thought he was going to be eaten, so he quickly stole the magic hat and stick and created a sail from the coloured hankies and paddled away as fast as he could.....Phew!!! Also tried some texture this week to see how it looks....unsure what I think yet, hmmmm. :-P

Illustration Friday- Poof

This is Poof the magic dragon (Puffs brother), practicing some mind blowing magic tricks....ABRACADABRA!!!

Illustration Friday- Canned

Once when me and my sister were a lot younger, she decided to do the Can-Can all around the house. Without knowing she was doing this, i walked into her path and got kicked right in the nether regions (accidently so she says!!). Luckily no lasting damage was done, but this is now called getting "Can-Canned"......Ouch!! :-S

Illustration Friday- Enough

This weeks word was Enough. I feel you can never have enough ice cream.....even if you live in a world made from the lovely stuff!! Right, i'm off to have a big bowl of toffee covered ice cream.....but will one bowl be enough???? :-S

Illustration Friday- Sour

This weeks Illustration Friday word was Sour, and there is certainly some 'sour grapes' in this fruit bowl.

Illustration Friday- Fierce

Fierce is this weeks word for Illustration Friday. I have recently seen the new Incredible Hulk movie at the cinema, and found this as my inspiration for this weeks piece, which is my cactus character "Hulking up"......Cactus Smash!!!!

Illustration Friday- Hoard

This is my first piece for Illustration Friday, which is a site that gives you a new word every friday to illustrate from. This weeks word was Hoard. My image represents a childs birthday, where they get given a Hoard of presents (usually expensive ones too) and they find its more fun playing in the cardboard box that the present came in!!

Macmillan Book Prize

The last major work I did before the end of the second year was to write and illustrate a book for the Macmillan Book Prize. I wrote my story around something I remember my little nephew constantly doing, which was always asking for milkshake!! This was a tough project. We didn't have to write our own story, but I thought it might make things more interesting if I did. But I didn't expect it to take as long as it would to get the story finalised, which then took a huge chunk out of my time I needed to illustrate the story. But after putting in the extra hours, I managed to finish the images the way I liked. It wasn't at a standard to enter the competition, but I may re-do parts of it for next years competition, or write a brand new story, will have to see nearer the time.

Flying Project

This project started as a summer brief before the second year started, where we were given the word 'flying', and just had to brainstorm, research, and draw anything connected to that word. When we then started the year, it was a case of choosing an image/ character from our sketches to then create a story from. I had some drawings of a squirrel getting flown away by some balloons and decided to work from that. We also had to incorporate 3D elements into the work, which I did, using photos, metal, and making my own soft toy version of the character to use in the images. This ended up being a long project which I kept coming back to now and again while working on other projects.