Pocket Witch Camellia

I'm very pleased to be able to show these to you! A while ago one of my friends was going through a rough time, and I designed this little mascot character to cheer her up. Originally I planned to keep her entirely private, but my friend actually encouraged me to share her in my portfolio, which was extremely kind of her! She also encouraged me to design more of the same type of character, so while Camellia won't be appearing again without permission, look out for more Pocket Witches in the future!

So here is Pocket Witch Camellia, appearing in 8 postcards sent to my friend, dispensing advice and encouragement. The advice itself was very personal so I've left the speech bubbles blank, but otherwise these are exactly as they appeared on the finished cards.

Dolly Postcards - Autumn 2013

And here's the second set of postcards for Thought Bubble, in dolly style. I'll be interested to see if anyone buys them, I can never tell if my postcards are any good right after I print them.

These are Poppet and a friend helping themselves to a quick snack, Meilee and Lin who have never seen a flower before, Nettle and Spider who don't need an umbrella, and Jessie enjoying a midnight broomstick ride.

Postcards - Autumn 2013

Here are this year's postcards, in my normal style. I just managed to get these done in time for Thought Bubble this weekend, they literally arrived in the post today! These seemed much harder than usual, I think I burned myself out doing Inktober. (I'll post those pictures later.)

These are Larkspur watching the marsh-lights, Nat and his shadow, Shasta carving some charms (because I'm going to keep putting him in these sets until someone likes him as much as I do) and Sweetpea being his adorable self in his home tree. The sharp-eyed among you may notice Shasta's postcard is a colour version of one of the first pictures I put on this blog.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, peeps! I thought I'd make a post with what I think is my best work of  this last year. In chronological order, these are:

The Mysterious Land of Under-Noodle, from the Inspired Eat Me! anthology

The Mystery of the Night Boy, a Patience mini-comic

The Hyaku Monogatari feature from the Hallowe'en issue of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?

This Is Not A Serious Music Publication, a collaborative music zine I made with Sammy, which is probably my absolute favourite thing I did this year.

Two postcards from my Autumn 2012 set.


I think what I learned this year is a) I do some of my best work under extreme time pressure, and b) I also do my best work when I'm really excited about it. (Both apply to the music zine.) Possibly also c) due to being willfully contrary, bad reviews only make me draw MORE COMICS.
Unfortunately I also learned that it's very easy for me to get caught up working on small press comics and zines because they're a lot of fun to make, neglecting the work which would get me closer to illustrating actual books. Hence my plan for next year is to manage my time better and prioritise book-related work, even if it means making fewer comics. This was a really difficult conclusion to accept because I really love making comics with my friends, but I only have so much time in the week after going to my day job, and I just can't do comics (in the quantities I've been doing this year) AND do the work I need to break into book illustration. Not until someone starts paying me to draw things anyway.

So... I hope 2013 brings me people who pay me to draw things? 

AW YEAH NEW YEAR!

Autumn 2012 Postcards part 2

These are the other five postcards I made for Thought Bubble, in my 'dolly' style. These are all my own characters as well, but they're not all as well developed. I was still aiming for a limited colour palette with these, and I think I was fairly successful. I definitely like my own work more with fewer and duller colours.

There's Coda, a young princess who suffers from an arranged marriage and is moved from her home in the mountains to her husband's kingdom, which is largely forested. Then there's those two creepy edwardian children from the Danse Macabre postcard, perhaps this is where they found their skeleton friend. Then Lena, sister of Lucas and possessor of the gift of prophesy, following a ghost lantern. A little witch in a field of eyes. Lastly, young Nettle and Spider, enjoying a psychic tea party (the best kind). Possibly Spider will read their tea leaves when Nettle puts the cups down.

Autumn 2012 Postcards

These are five of the ten new postcards I made to take to Thought Bubble. I'm really pleased with them, I think they show improvement from the last batch, which is always encouraging. Part of it might be that I really tired to limit my colour palette for all the new postcards.

They're all my own characters this time. There's Meilee and Lin, who have fallen asleep in the rain because they can't find any shelter, Shasta contemplating a remnant of the Old World, Jessie looking out over the castle town in her Patchworker uniform (it's a sort of messenger and general dogsbody, if you're curious), Louise being led into the woods by some fairies (they're still after that key), and the Crowboy giving Lottie a little gift.

yet more postcards

 These are some more postcards I made for promotional work, since I realised I had no black and white work in my children's style that wasn't incredibly old.  I discovered, to my delight, that the sort of hatching I used for Patience is a Virtue comes out really well with this line art, so I'm very pleased with them.

Incidentally, the foxes are from a story I very vaguely remember from my childhood, about a fox whose husband dies.  Her suitors all have more and more tails, but she eventually marries one with just one tail. It had beautiful illustrations, but we got the book from the library and none of us (me, my sisters, my parents) can remember what it was called or who wrote it.  If any of you know anything about it I'll love you forever if you can help me find it.

More Postcards

These are the other 5 new pictures I took to the London Book Fair as postcards.  They were meant to be in my normal illustration style, but still appropriate to give to children's book publishers.  I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, the colours came out very well on the cards.

Postcards

These are some postcards I made to take to the London Book Fair this year.  There's actually 15 of them, but 5 are pictures from Alaizabel so you've all seen them already.  These 5 are in a style I developed for children's work, although they're still a bit dingy in terms of colour palette because that's what I liked as a child.  I'll upload the other 5 in a little while.