The Magpies and the Muffin

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas! Here are a pair of magpies I painted for my Dad. 

Military Macaw (Parrot number three)

A green "military" macaw this time, not sure if I like this one as much as the others so far.

Sketchbook Pages: Parrots and Geese

Everything has pretty much stopped in the past couple of weeks for me...I've been physically unable to do pretty much anything at all since I sprained my knee (which stopped me from standing for long) and then somehow managed to hurt a muscle/nerve in my lower back (which has stopped me from sitting and laying down properly!) The funny thing is I have no idea how either of them happened! 

I have however, managed to set up a Facebook page...so if you are a frequent user of the book of face, feel free to "like" me to follow my updates there https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amy-Holliday-Illustration#!/pages/Amy-Holliday-Illustration/330635163618041

Anyway, here's a few studies I've collected together from some recent scribblings...it surprises me how loose my drawings have become...

My Peacock Feather as a Blog Logo at Futil e a Mae

I recently let a fashion blog use my peacock illustration in the header logo in return for features and a permanent link to my site....it looks pretty good! It was an opportunity to make a nice website button to link to my site as well! www.futileamae.com

Blue and Gold Macaw (Parrot number two)

I actually coloured the rest of my parrot drawings straight in my sketchbook, but they kind of lacked the...sparkle...the first one had, so I'm now transferring them all onto watercolour paper, like the first, before re-painting them. I have finally learned the value of decent paper!

Wild Scarlet Macaw Appeared!

The first to be completed in my series of macaws. I had a bit of a paper experiment with this one and actually printed the drawing onto better quality paper before painting it. Let me know what you think! More macaws to come soon!

The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea and Sleeping Beauty - Finished Fairytale Mug Illustrations

Here are the finished illustrations for the fairy tale mugs commission. These are for the packaging, and there are two for each; a larger one for the front of the box and a smaller one for the reverse side of the box. They have taken many weeks to do since there has been lots of idea sketching and roughs, then colour roughs before I went ahead with the final designs. I posted some of the sketches for them here.

The Ugly Duckling

 

The Princess and the Pea

Sleeping Beauty

Edit: The finished packaging prototypes

All Artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2020

Do not use without permission

www.amyholliday.co.uk

Concept Sketches for The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea and Sleeping Beauty

Following the previous fairytale initial letters, the next 5 weeks or so were spent working on the second part of that commission. I was asked to design three larger illustrations and three smaller illustrations for the front and back of the product's boxes. As with the letters, I needed some time to generate some ideas for how to best represent and tell the story of each of the three fairytales...here are a couple of the more interesting sketches!

The "ugly" duckling and his reflection:

 The Princess in her uncomfortable Pea bed:

The princess' future crown and that annoying little pea:

The Sleeping Beauty:

A fallen rose and a sinister spinning wheel:

Budgie Thank You Cards and a Bespoke Birthday Card...

Just some recent cards I have made for my own personal use, using my budgie illustrations.

Framed Poodle Portraits and Sarah's framed fish print!

My friend Sarah bought her Mum a print (from my Society 6 shop) of my three oranda fish for Mother's Day this year and she has kindly sent me some photos of it and where it hangs in her study!

   I also finally found some frames for my poodle portraits so I could finally give them to my Dad, (I was contemplating waiting until Christmas!) and he has hung them in his and my Mum's bedroom! (I gave my Dad both of them in the end, and he loves them!) You can see the full portraits of Rosie the miniature poodle here.

 The "poodle portraits" are of Rosie, my sweet, crazy little miniature poodle. She's 14 now but still bouncing off the walls like a puppy. I've had a few comments referring to whether Rosie is a grey poodle, well, here's the star of the show herself-she's black, with a lot of silver, not actually completely grey all over like my pale water colours suggest....after testing out shades of black I didn't like how muddy they looked so I went with a paler, more flattering colour scheme of greyish blue.

Fairytale Initial Letter Illustrations

Here are the final designs from the story-book style "initial letters" I have recently completed, as part of my first formal commission. Even though most rough designs I did had full colour, in the end, the decision was made for the finals to be in monochrome.
I have put together pages of some of my rough workings before each of the final illustrations so you can see how I progress. The letters will illustrate the capital letters of three short fairytale stories within a design that is to decorate a set of mugs.   

The Princess and the Pea: "O"   

Sleeping Beauty: "I"  

(You can see some more of the concepts and rough sketches for this one here)

   

The Ugly Duckling: "S"

 

The three of them together and scaled down:

All images are © Amy Holliday 2011, all rights reserved.
Please do not use or redistribute these images without asking me first!

www.amyholliday.co.uk

Owls and Parrots Sketches!

  Some of my new drawings that I hope to turn into two new bird series! 

 

I'm in my local news! (Its about the Computer Arts award and me and my illustrations!)

I have recently had an article published about me in my university's news! It even includes a photo of me, eep! Here it is as it appears on the university's website minus the illustrations, although here's the link if you'd like to see all of it: University of Cumbria Article

Following this I discovered that the article had also been published in the Cumbria Crack news, the In-Cumbria news and the Lake District Messenger news.

I was also featured in my home town's Evening Mail newspaper... (my home town is the South Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness!)

Sleeping Beauty's Tower Concepts

These were some of my initial idea sketches for some storybook-style "initial letters" I'm working on. The Sleeping Beauty story begins with an "I" and I am illustrating it with a tower. The final design is now looking very different to these, as these ones were really not that recognisable as the letter "I"!

I won the Illustration Award in Computer Arts magazine's Graduate Showcase!!!

A couple of months ago I entered my work into the Computer Arts competition for a chance to be featured in 2011's Graduate Showcase edition. I'd completely forgotten about it until yesterday when an old friend from my sixth form college messaged me on Facebook saying "Wow Amy your work is in my latest Computer Arts Magazine!!" Huh? My work? In Computer Arts? Woah..... so after getting myself a copy and being so excited to see how my illustrations look in print....

...I read that I'd actually WON the "Illustration Category Excellence Award" ...whaaat??! Here it is: