Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts

Saturday, 1 November 2025

Cosy Sleepy Watercolour Dachshunds!

In the spirit of the sleepy "shrimp" cats I painted recently, I just couldn't resist painting some sleepy, snuggled-up sausage pups too. Like the cats, these weenies were another personal passion project, and I have made them into keyring charms, which can be found here

 



Artwork © Amy Holliday 2025

Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Sleepy Cosy Tabby Cats | Art therapy for pet loss

 At the sudden loss of an extremely beloved kitty companion, I found myself with the urge to draw him in his favourite cosy, peaceful sleeping positions. He was a beautiful brown tabby, but for variety when it came to painting I included orange and grey tabby colours.

brown tabby cat sleeping watercolour painting

orange ginger sleepy tabby cat watercolor painting

the first sketches of kitties in cosy slumber


cute cosy sleeping tabby cat watercolour illustrations
the completed, scanned paintings

I liked them so much I decided to make them into keyrings, with the idea that anyone else grieving a beloved tabby could find comfort in them, or to carry a reminder of their companion with them on their travels.



They are available to buy in my shop here !


I doodled more sleepy cats (I can't stop!) with various colours and breeds in mind, some based on new real life fluffy friends who have blessed us with their presence. (The cat distribution system is real!)



siamese tortoiseshell black and calico sleeping cat illustration


Artwork © Amy Holliday 2024

Tuesday, 23 April 2024

Tabby Cats & Revisiting Old Kitty Illustrations from 2013

I recently came across scans of some unfinished cat sketches on my hard-drive from a sketchbook dated 2013(!) I still liked them and decided they ought to be finished. I first needed to excavate the sketchbook from the bottom of a storage cupboard in my parents' house, but luckily the sketches were found. 

(insert photo of sketchbook)

On the same page was a finished brown tabby, and the two sketches looked like they needed to match (although it wasn't a difficult decision due to my biased love of brown tabbies). After painting, I rescanned all three together to bring them up to the same scan quality (the scans from 2013 look poor now in comparison to my current scans - likely a mixture of the scanner technology improving over the years, and possibly some slightly improved editing skills! (hopefully). 

watercolour tabby cats



I still like the paintings from 2013, and along with some new cat illustrations would love to make some prints and stickers with them. 

Here is a collection of most of them, including two of the new tabbies:

watercolor cat illustrations

Artwork © Amy Holliday 2013-2024

Sunday, 17 December 2023

Wild Fungi Series | Personal Project Mushroom Studies in Watercolour | Scientific Botanical Style Illustrations

Some recent completed wild fungi illustrations - a personal project I've been working on in my spare time. Fungi are fascinating! More 'shroom species have since been in the works.




Artwork © Amy Holliday 2023/2024
NOT FOR USE without written permission
www.amyholliday.co.uk

Saturday, 16 December 2023

Wooden Pin Badges | Woodland Wildlife Watercolour Illustrations with Fly Agaric Mushroom, Honey Bee, Bumblebees, Butterfly and Snail

I made some new wooden pin badges featuring some of my nature-inspired illustrations!

Made from responsibly sourced, fast-growing maple wood. Not only are they nice to look at but they use 20 to 24 times less energy to produce than enamel pins!

The wood grain compliments the watercolour textures really well. I'd love to expand this collection over time with more designs.

These lovely pins were made with the help of the great Zap Creatives here in the UK. 

Available at amyholliday.etsy.com 





Artwork © Amy Holliday 2023

Tuesday, 31 March 2020

Planet Earth Studies // Watercolour Illustrations

Self initiated studies of our Planet Earth / Planet Home / Earth Mother - hopefully there will be more to come in the future.





Artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2020

Friday, 13 January 2017

Fluffy, Fat, Festive little Robins

Happy 2017! Things have been quiet on the blog lately - oops! I haven't been able to share much for the last few months as most things aren't due to be published until later THIS year! Hopefully I can share more soon.

Here are some fat little festive robins I did for fun over the holidays :) 




Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Sketchbook // Bird drawings: Street Pigeons

Drawing exercise - freehand, quick, loose, no erasing - some turn out fine but others not so much, but that's OK. Here is a handful of the better studies from life and some from photos. I love drawing birds!





Monday, 22 February 2016

UK Wildlife // Squirrel Studies

A second batch of UK wild animal watercolour studies - this time its the squirrel.


The introduced US Grey Squirrel vs the resident British Red Squirrel. The grey has become the most widespread out of the two and is now the dominant species. (Luckily for me I live in the North where reds still survive, but I love both kinds!).


I also took a little time to try a softer style...




Images and artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2016

To see more of my work visit www.amyholliday.co.uk

Friday, 12 February 2016

UK Wildlife // Red Fox Studies

I was glad to finish some paintings from one of my own personal projects this week - the first in a UK wildlife series, the red fox. I am aiming for a slightly more traditional, non-fiction approach with these but that still has my own contemporary style. What do you think?



A collection of some of the initial loose sketches: 

  
And then some of the more refined sketches, exploring various positions and face styles:



Images and artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2016

To see more of my work visit www.amyholliday.co.uk

Saturday, 31 October 2015

Batty Halloween // Starry night bat

A quick painting of a seasonal critter... hope everyone has a great Halloween!

Artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2015 

Friday, 21 August 2015

Food Illustration // Organic Chestnut Mushrooms

A little "still-life" chestnut mushroom study. 


(C) Amy Holliday 2015 please do not use without permission.

Monday, 13 July 2015

Sketchbook // Watercolour Succulents in Pink Purple Blue and Green

I love succulents! They are stunning little things. Here are some rough experiments in combining/blending completely different colours within the same object.




Find more information on stunning succulent plants on this lovely site here.

Edit 2020: vinyl art stickers of my succulent paintings are now available on Etsy! You can find them here.




Artwork (C) Amy Holliday 
www.amyholliday.co.uk

Monday, 29 June 2015

Super Vegetables // Broccoli and Sugar Snap Peas

I've been so busy lately working on quite a few projects, but unfortunately I'm not able to share any of the work just yet - but that's no excuse to neglect my blog. As always I'm still working on few personal projects when I have time to spare. One of them being new vegetable studies. Here is broccoli and sugar snap peas. Both absolutely delicious and superheroes when it comes to nutrition. Let me know what you think!


 


Artwork (C) Amy Holliday 2015. Do not use without permission.

Friday, 3 April 2015

Personal // Grand National Steeplechase

I finally finished this sketch from 2013! I used a couple slightly different techniques when painting this one too.




Artwork is (C) Amy Holliday 2015 do not use without permission. 

Friday, 27 February 2015

Happy New Year of the....Sheep! (or Ram or Goat!)

Two very sheepish pieces I had an urge to finish last week. The first being quite realistic in its colour palatte, with the second being more experimental - possibly influenced just a smidge by old Chinese art. Either way, I had fun with both of them!






Wednesday, 17 December 2014

Personal // Lemur King! (Tribute to The Ring Tailed Lemurs of Madagascar)

A little personal piece I've gradually built on over the last few months. Lemurs are amazing little creatures with huge personalities and it is so sad that there are so few left in the wild. (90% of their Madagascan forest home has been lost to produce agricultural land for man's livestock). We must not let the remaining forests be destroyed, or we will lose these loving, funny little characters forever.






Artwork is (C) Amy Holliday 2014. Please do not use without permission.