Another editorial illustration for 31-81 magazine. I was asked to illustrate three stunning species of butterflies local to Jekyll island, that can bee spotted during the fall season. Fittingly, their wings are beautiful autumnal colours!
Over the summer I worked away on a collection of illustrations inspired by a traditional garden potting shed, and all the gardening items and tools that are common in such a quaint little setting.
I was commissioned by small British puzzle business, “Bloom Puzzles” to create a series of illustrations that evoke a warm summer's day spent pottering about in an English country garden, enjoying the scents of the garden in full bloom and listening to the gentle buzz of the bees.
There was over 50 individual elements to illustrate, including a larger “potting shed” centrepiece illustration, lettering for the title and hand-drawn annotations for the flowers.
As usual I worked in graphite and watercolour (and a little bit of mixed media) before scanning the designs to create clean digital files.
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| an early potting shed sketch |
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| a more polished drawing |
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| a basic rough colour test |
I illustrated each element individually before digitally assembling a lively design centred around the garden shed. The contrast between larger objects like the garden gate and beehive to the smaller creepy crawlies hopefully makes for a fun and challenging puzzle with some surprises to be found along the way.
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| layout wip - the layout design was assembled using pencil sketches |
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| layout wip - coloured elements were gradually added in |
It even has its own Spotify playlist to help set the mood as you puzzle over the pieces. Bloom Puzzles is a business that gives back - 5% of sales from this puzzle goes to Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
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| the finished design |
To view more work from this project please visit my portfolio website.
“The Honey Book” by Andrea Kirk Assaf, illustrated by yours truly, is out now in all good book shops!
I also have illustrator signed copies in my shop!
Its a beautiful day to celebrate our beautiful planet. Happy Earth day!
I was lucky enough to work with the wonderful HarperCollins publishers again to illustrate a second non-fiction book - this time all about HONEY! To celebrate, I put together a collection of some of my older honey illustrations - I’ve done a few!
The Honey Book is out 29th April 2021 in all good bookstores and online
I also have illustrator signed copies in my shop!
www.amyholliday.co.uk
I’m excited to share BumbleBlooms’ new packaging now features one of my bumblebee illustrations. BumbleBlooms are a small business based in Edinburgh, who make mindfully-produced wildflower seed balls which grow flowers that bees absolutely love. This simple product makes it easy to help bees and other pollinators.
“As the world faces a climate crisis and mass extinction of the critical insects that most plants rely on for survival, there has never been a greater need for products that make a real difference. BumbleBlooms does just that!”
They are also proudly vegan and their packaging is fantastically plastic free. I am overjoyed to support and help promote such a wonderful business.
A spring themed wildlife illustration created for 31-81 magazine last year. Marsh rabbits are lovely, cute little critters with shorter ears than the average wild rabbit. This was a treat to work on and I hope I can work on more wildlife themed illustrations soon.
A series of illustrations I absolutely loved working on, focussing on extinct animals and plants. This was for a currently secret project but the client very kindly granted permission for me to share them online.
My Manuka flower illustration (completed in 2013) was used on this year's (2020-2021) Global Commission on Drugs' annual greeting card. I granted permission and a licence for the use of the illustration within the design. I think it came out lovely.
Below: a digital mock-up for how the card looked.
In the latter half of 2020 I worked with a lovely start-up business owner who asked me to visualise his idea for a horticulture / landscaping company.
The bold design was inspired by pagan “Tree of Life” symbols, sacred geometry, and the architectural shapes of church vaults.
The tree’s abundant fruits and full crown symbolise a regenerative circular ecosystem, and evokes the sense of nature as a temple. The client really wanted to put across the idea that the interconnected roots to other adjacent trees symbolise unity and collaboration through nature and community. Beautiful.
Development: initial inspiration was drawn from a variety of contemporary logos that also represent tree-like shapes, as well as my own previous work of the pomegranate tree, created in 2013. I also looked at structural things such as church vaults, and artists such as Roger Dean, but it was easy to get carried away from the simplicity of the idea.
I recently had the pleasure of working with drinks company Urban Beverages who are based in Norway, to create an illustration for the label of a new Chilean wine. For this particular wine, the designers wanted to pay homage to Chile's native critically-endangered giant bumblebee, Bombus Dahlbomii, and hoped to show a traditional style illustration of the bee on the label.
I was asked to supply two versions; in faded vintage-style colours and black and white. I really enjoyed researching old scientific art for this, as one of my top inspirations is old botanical art.
Also called the Patagonian Bumblebee, or "flying mouse", Chile's beloved native bumblebee is said to carry the spirits of the dead. Sadly its numbers are dwindling due to diseases from imported non-native bee species, so scientists are now working hard to save them.
I'm excited to share photos of the printed label on the new wine when it is released!
Below: initial pencil sketch, colour version, black and white version.
