Mondays...

Today has not been the most productive, nor the most creative or exciting... I'm blaming this on a busy weekend which has left me feeling extremely knackered!
I'm not complaining, it was an awesome weekend, I'm just using it as a bad excuse for my sorry lack of work.

I have however played around with this sleeping beauty and he's now uploaded to my redbubble shop!

You may recognise him from last year when I entered him in to the Ohh Deer cushion competition. He needed a small bit o tweaking and I made him a more foxy red than he was before and am now much happier with him. He's currently available on everything.

I've spent so much of today starting sketches before tearing the pages out of my sketchbooks in pure frustration. I get an idea, try and go with it and then don't even get past the ugly sketchy stage, my heart really isn't in it today. I've been more in to working on previous works and getting them right.

It's really frustrating when you just can't muster the motivation to get ideas on to paper, they're not give up days they're just... blank days. 

They're annoying but they don't last forever and with all the work I've been churning out lately I have nothing to feel bad about. I just need to take things slow and actually enjoy a day where I'm not run off my feet... or more to the point there isn't steam coming out of my fingers! :P

Looking back over the past month I've realised that I'm slowly developing a style that's very focussed on nature and colour. It's the first time a theme has really begun to show itself and the whole traditional lineart followed by digital colouring makes life so much easier and is actually lots of fun.

I'm hoping to focus more on birds over the next few weeks, I'd taken a break from them and I'm really starting to miss the feathers! So I'm hoping to update this kinda thing...

A made this a while back for the background for this blog, gosh that was a while ago now! I'm really happy with the designs but I'd prefer the sketchy pencil outlines I'm doing now rather than the clean digital inking I've used here. I'm also loving doing repeat patterns so these will be another thing to focus on!

And then the reappearance of this baby...

I also made this a while ago, back when I was better at backgrounds that foregrounds. I absolutely love this piece, it's probably one of my favourites from the past few years but and there is a but, I'm not completely happy with the buzzards so I'm hoping to go back and recreate these beauties and actually make them more interesting. If this goes to plan I will be offering prints! 

Gosh I've rambled so much today! That just shows how with it I am not!

Hopefully my mind will be back to it's normal motivated, butt kicking self soon and I can churn out even more work!

Have a great week!

More stars!

It seems I have become almost obsessed with the stars right now, spending hours looking at the constellation app on my phone, doodling as much as possible, studying galaxy images... I'm not sure what's gotten in to me!

But two more constellations have been added to the mix, this time Chamaeleon (the chameleon constellation) and Vulpecula (the fox constellation)

These were fun but I seemed to lose my technique halfway through and ended up having to lighten them up a lot before adding the stars and animals. Luckily these are done in watercolour, a quick wet brush and towel and paint is lifted with ease!

The thing that drove me insane whilst working on these two was not doing a red fox, painting him blue/purple felt ridiculously wrong! You can see the small splashes of orange where I was desperately wanting to add something :P

These guys will be scanned soon and may end up on my redbubble page :)

And on the mention of redbubble I've added Ursa Major and Corvus to my shop! I have to admit Corvus looks fab on so many products, my favourite has to be this cushion!!

If you're interested in my designs please use the link to my shop at the top of the page! :)

I also managed to complete my raptor designs! And was lucky enough to recieve a surprise voucher from redbubble so me and the OH have ordered our designs for free!!

I'm super excited for them to arrive!

It's always an amazing experience to see your work printed on to a product, whether it's a print or a tshirt. I love it, I love the buzz of joy that zooms through me :)

So the moment these tops arrive I will probably be bouncing off the walls!!

I will be posting more about my raptors before the end of the week including the designs and a bit of an explanation to why they are appearing and taking over my life.

I also have a rather huge project planned which needs to be started over the next few months to be available by the end of the year to early next year, this is currently all I can say on the matter, you know.... just to be annoying!

Now, the sun is out, the birds are singing, I've hit my limit of work for the day! Time to go relax and enjoy the world!

Have a wonderful day!