Happy Spooky Season | Watercolour Halloween Pumpkin

 I doodled some spoopy pumpkins recently and here's one I painted for a bit of practice and fun. Happy Hallowe'en, and a happy a blessed Samhain :)

Artwork © Amy Holliday 2022

www.amyholliday.co.uk

British Birds - Bullfinch

 The first to be finished in a series of "British birds" - more to come!
This bullfinch took me about 6 hours to do altogether, which was longer than I anticipated, the rowan berries ate up lots of that time.

Chickens! - The Hens

 I've been working on some chicken designs lately - here are the hens. I have a rooster in the works too but its taking a while to get right! I think I'll be adding a bit more to these before I will be happy to call them finished, but here they are for now!

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

Bird Nests!

The summer holidays are the perfect opportunity to further develop illustration skills as well as work on something I am truly interested in at the same time. I needed a subject that could be viewed first-hand in which I could properly investigate and really get to know. Luckily when I arrived home from Carlisle I found that there was two(!) abandoned chaffinch nests in the garden, and so, I set myself a personal project to study bird's nests. I set out to explore these lovely creations and as many ways possible. 

Initial pencil studies

Acrylic study of light on dark

white on brown

I began to become influenced by the art nouveau movement in this one: 

Painting with twigs and using leaves for stencil effect:

 Bringing techniques together; watercolours on top of an initial pencil drawing:

 Ink pen studies 

 More watercolour on pencil with fine liners and gel pens to add detail:

 

Ink with watercolour and pen for up-view studies:

 

Blended watercolours for a more abstract approach:

Pencil and pencil crayons with watercolours: I found this created a softer, much more natural look.

 

 More white on brown:

 A few sketchbook spread scans to show how they are in the flesh:

Peacock Feather Design and Pattern

Peacock feathers are just.. one of many obsessions! I played around with the initial design before trying to capture some of the amazing colours with my watercolours. I hope to find a use for this design in the future!