Between Illustration Projects Studio Week

Personal projects I'm playing with before my next commissioned work begins

Dear Reader,

has it been raining a lot where you are too? Did your washing machine also break down and the rats also get through into a new part of your cellar? I’ve had the DIY tools out as much as the textile collage tools this week. But hey, nobody is dropping bombs on us and we are warm and have enough to eat. Onwards and Upwards.

I have no more news yet for you on my recently finished book project except to say that my train tickets are booked for the launch event, hopefully more about that next week! How exciting, a trip! Any suggestions on lightweight and transportable pop-up illustration display boards? I’m hoping to take some original art with me to show but could do with a way of throwing up a tiny one-day exhibition. Hmm. Ideas greatly appreciated.

When I’m working on the last few days of projects with final art submissions, changes and print deadlines, I tend to put my own projects down for a little while. Once everything is submitted and signed off, I really enjoy the pause before the next project when I can pick something I fancy developing and play around with it for a while. This week, as well as submitting work for various competitions and feedback sessions, I’ve been continuing work on the handmade illustration series with the AOI that I talked about last week. Do you remember this rough I wanted to make into a finished illustration?

I hadn’t known how challenging those column perspectives were going to prove. I decided that I wanted to highlight the contrast between the darker, cooler, shady area in the foreground and the brighter, hotter background beside the water. I’ve swum here many times and am deeply grateful for that shade. I strongly remember the difference even just in the temperature of the concrete underfoot when you walk out of that shade, so I wanted to bring some of that across in the illustration. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. I adapted the clothes and figures a little bit and really enjoyed stitching the wooly character outlines. It’s a little different from my picture book work and I’m hoping it will be part of a future portfolio of work for editorial/advertising/design type projects. But I finished it, here’s the final work.

I’ve also been working towards the little festive dressing-up children sketches I showed you last week. Those I think will be a while in coming because I decided that I only had one (unfinished) doll in my collection that would suit the project, so I need to finish her and then make a second doll. Making actual dolls to photograph is a really slow way of creating illustrations, but once made I can use the dolls for several images and also little animations. This week, alongside the DIY distractions, I worked on first little doll’s hair and made her some pants. Everyone deserves pants in their life.

Little cloth doll awaiting hair, mid-operation with the sketch, and with hair finished.

Here she is standing freely (thanks to the wire armature inside her body) on my worktable. This little doll has already appeared here in animations, before she had any hair and was more accompanied by guinea-pigs. You can watch one of those animations in my previous post here.

Lastly, here’s another rough sketch I made of some Brown Trout; a brief for a third Handmade Illustration workshop I’ll attend with the AOI. This one will be about the gorgeous paper collage work by nature illustrator Kate Slater and I’m really looking forward to it.

Have a great week everyone,

Hannah

P.S.

If you missed my exhibition in Trieste, I have a video tour of my exhibition free to view up on Youtube, you can view it here.

Many thanks to Michael Munnik for allowing me to use his beautiful music in the background of my tour video and also alongside my time-lapse video here, go and listen to his songs on Bandcamp here.