Happy Halloween! Old Art: Pretty Pumpkins

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween! I was just browsing through some old work and I came across this old pumpkin study. It's rough, loose, sketchy and...whimsical.

Urban Pup: Mock Advertisement illustrations

This is a follow-up from my last post about my personal, pretend "UrbanPup.com" advertisement illustrations. The reason for choosing such a modern, fresh brand was so I could set myself the challenge of creating something a bit more contemporary and bold than my usual style. With these I aimed to step out of my comfort zone a little and I really aimed to be more bold, brash and strong with the brush strokes and colour.

 

I experimented with creating mock advertisements such as the full-page ones seen in magazines. The "bold" brush strokes are a subtle nod to very urgently done graffiti tags, showing how creative you can get when you personalise your own pet hoody/t-shirt/accessory. I also included some real paw-prints which I scanned in and layered onto my paintings digitally.

(I used a different/new kind of paper for these, which has appeared to make the paint appear more smooth in some areas - something I am not happy with, as fur NEEDS texture!! However it has given me more to think about for future paintings)

These are still a bit of a work in progress, but this is what I have so far. 

Comments/opinions/feedback are very much welcome! I would love to hear your thoughts.

All images are (C) Amy Holliday and are not to be used without permission.

Sketchbook: Dogs! Breed heads/drawings/sketches

Firstly, apologies! For I have been very quiet (again)! I realised today that lately, I have been very lazy with updating my blog, making very irregular and few updates...I have actually forgotten all about it at times. I have been updating my facebook page with works in progress, however I think it is time I returned to creating full, slightly more interesting posts here once again.

I am quite a quiet and reserved person and it takes a lot for me to speak out and be open about things including my work, so a lot of the time I do find it quite difficult to keep up with my blogs and networking sites because it is not something that comes naturally to me! Although, if I do it more often, perhaps it can help me become better at talking about my work?

I have some bits of news, some thoughts, and some new projects to share, so hopefully all of this will help keep me from being too quiet for a while!

~

Sketchbook: Dogs! 

As I might have explained in previous posts, I have been working on expanding my portfolio with new and quite different work. I have lists of ideas and subjects that I would like to illustrate, one of which is dogs! So loveable and expressive; every dog I have met has had such a wonderfully distinctive personality. Also, dogs are everywhere!

To give my illustrations context, I decided to aim to create images for a clothing brand - a dog clothing brand that is - an online store called Urban Pup. (I love that you can have things personalised!) Here are some of my initial drawings of studies for head and shoulder illusts of the individual but equally lovable dog breeds, modelling some (urban) fashion styles inspired by the Urban Pup range.

 

A first idea for a possible layout for a mock print-advertisement:

 

After these initial drawings, it was clear the dog models needed to be much more "cute" and so this time I draw a lot more whilst really trying to emphasise the cute and loveable-ness but still keep a realistic style.

 

More progression on the Urban Pup project to follow very soon :)

More Fruits: Lemons and Blackberries

I set myself a challenge to re-illustrate the graphic for the Twinings' tea "Green tea with lemon". I also wanted to experiment with various styles and approaches to a subject, and lemons seemed like a good, simple subject to do.

As well as some quite detailed and highly textured studies, I also tried some simpler versions, using less colours and for others, minimal brush strokes.

 My final design:

I also painted some juicy and very ripe blackberries. They were fun to do but it was difficult to select the best colours to use, as I found that I wanted to highlight the rich shades in order to really emphasise their juicyness, but I had to do so without making them appear unnaturally colourful!

New Fruits: Red & Green Grapes and Wine labels

I have been so wrapped up in trying to get things done lately that I have been forgetting to blog! Here are some more portfolio images I have been working on. I have been wanting to create some more food illustrations, in particular for packaging, and where is a better place to start than some mock wine labels?

I aimed to paint big juicy bunches of grapes in a similar way to the vegetables (link) by drawing them from life and then focusing on capturing their rich colours. I have also added a background with these, something that I do not do often enough.

I attempted a much looser effect with some red grape vines, and have experimented with using them as a design for a mock Welch's juice design.