The lovely Harpercollins publishers asked me to provide some new and updated beehive illustrations for their "Types of Hive" page in the Collin's Beekeeper's Bible.
I used the original illustrations from the book as reference for the first four hives, which were to remain the same, and added two new types, which replaced the out-of-date designs. Only two needed updating but to keep the page consistent, all six needed to be redone. It was a pleasure! I loved painting the woodgrain effect.
Happy "pride" month!
I revisited this rattie moon piece to add in a starry night sky background. I always felt the 2020 original with its plain background was missing something. Recently I've began experimenting with dark backgrounds and this felt like a great piece to try it on.
A blog post about the original painting can be found here
A private commission of a floral bouquet design completed early 2022. The three featured flowers are aster, freesia and elderflower. It was inspired by and influenced by lovely old vintage book illustrations. Each flower had a special meaning to the client.
This was quite the technical challenge to do! At the time I was unsure about how to approach such an intricate design, and considered it would be best to draw and paint each flower separately, then later reassemble into a bouquet digitally. If I were to do this again, I would dive in and draw it all as one piece.
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!
A couple months ago, I was approached with the idea of a commissioned original artwork - a special portrait of two little ratty fur-babies.
It's been years since I've done a "pet portrait" or even a bespoke physical artwork, but after hearing this idea, I couldn't say no - even though this would be my first time drawing rats! The piece is 11x14", much larger than my usual illustration work, which was a little out of my comfort zone but nice to have more space for lots of lovely detail. In fact this whole piece was out of my comfort zone which was a good exercise and I was grateful for the opportunity during lockdown to slow down and do something different. This is the original artwork that has now reached its forever home, but I do have a scan for myself.
