It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!

It's December! Which means the tree is up, festive drinks are flowing and the advent calendars are being devoured. I am a massive Christmassy person, I love being festive, I prefer the cold and I love buying presents for everyone. Christmas would last at least 6 months if I had my way.
So now we're at the best part of the year I am feeling at my most motivated. Like I have said before I do work full time, so my initial plans of creating an illustration a day just isn't feasible unfortunately. However I am planning a few illustrations to pop out over this month. So the first of these is Mr Christmas Hog-

Hedgehogs are adorable, so why not incorporate a Christmas theme? I really enjoyed making him and it has spurred me on with more ideas for the rest of the month, so keep an eye out!

Thanks for reading!

Chloe x

Black Lives Matter

There has been some awful things going on in America lately. It's at least once a week we wake up to news of another shooting/massacre, like the Orlando shooting, happening somewhere over there and it sadly becomes the norm. But in the last few days 2 separate videos have emerged showing the execution of 2 black men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. No one is so blind not to think there is a problem with how other cultures are treated by certain officers, but the videos show the shocking truth to these situations.

Sadly after this, during peaceful protests in Dallas, 5 innocent police officers were gunned down. Seemingly this is in retaliation to the earlier attacks.

Browsing Facebook this morning I came across the quote "Fear and hatred will cease to exist when love is in abundance". This quote really puts the situation in perspective. There is very clearly a problem in America when it comes to guns and how the law treats people of colour, but fighting hate with hate wont solve any of these problems.

In these awful times the best thing that can be done is not let the hate overwhelm you, but never stop demanding answers and change. We need to strive to live in a world where you can be accepted, treated equally and not judged no matter your race, gender, sexual identity etc.

Thanks for reading!

Chloe x

A Look Back

Hey all! Apologies for my absence for the last month, I've been wrapped up in those awkward adult problems like "getting a job". Safe to say, it's not been a fun month! But let's crack on with a little blast from the past...

My final semester at University was by far my favourite. Mostly because we had one project that we had complete control over and was an opportunity to have creative freedom.

I've always had an obsession with things like fairy-tales and fables etc. So I decided to illustrate a children's book of fairy tales, but take it back to the darker original story that were once more of a warning to naughty children. Although my lecturers loved this idea, when it came to drawing actual gore they weren't so keen... Which was my whole point but yeah, whatever... So to avoid the goriness but keep it dark, I wanted to keep the backgrounds very black, outlines are white and reserve one colour for each story.

So the stories I settled on including were Little Red Riding Hood, The Little Mermaid and Sleepy Hollow.

This is my first page from my Little Mermaid Story. This is probably the image I'm most proud of, because I'm usually awful at drawing human figures without making them look like some kind of troll. Maybe it's because she isn't completely human but I think she looks pretty decent! This is also where I figured out how much I love using this collage affect with my colours. I'm not a pro with colouring so I tried out just creating blotchy backgrounds on separate paper, scanning them in, messing about with Photoshop and the affects I got as a result were great!

I wasn't too fond of this page from the Little Red Riding Hood story, but it seemed to be everyone else's favourite. I wanted more time to add even more detail into the trees and the background but alas, the deadline loomed. The wolf in this image is very much my strongest point and I was very proud of him looking so damn fierce.

Finally my image from the Sleepy Hollow story. This was my favourite image from that chapter. Again, I would have loved to have spent another day in redrawing Katrina (bare in mind she was drawn and redone at least 6 times, damn woman just wouldn't look right), but there will always parts of your work that you'll just never like. I used the college affect on the filigree and flowers, which is again my favourite part of this whole image. I really must remember to use this affect in my future work!

Just incase you are thinking 'WHERE ARE THE WORDS?! WHAT KIND OF BOOK IS THIS IF IT HAS NO WORDS?', the images I am showing are from my book but these are the Photoshop images. The text was added on in InDesign where apparently I couldn't save that as separate images. But if you peer down below you can see my little collection of photos from my finished printed book.

I LOVE the way it turned out. Obviously being on such a rushed deadline, there are parts I would love to redo and this could be a great project for the future! But for my first attempt at a book printing, I think that went really well. Well done me!

Thanks for reading!

Chloe x

Happy Valentines!

It's Valentines Day! A day where everyone seems to either over gush on social media about their other half, or wish death on others who do so as we are single... Really this is a day to share love with everyone, your mam, dad, friends, everyone you love! No need for any bitterness or sickening statuses, just share your love with all!

I've never been massively into Valentines Day myself. The day perks me up because it's a positive day all about love and that's always nice. But present-wise, I'm happy getting a card but no need to go all out. Though my boyfriend did do amazing and made me a little basket of gifts (best boyfriend ever). I decided to test out making my own card this year. I took a lot of inspiration from Rob Ryan in my design and I'm actually really happy with how it turned out.

As you can tell, this is not a generic Valentines card. I wanted to design a more personal, alternative card that suited us as a couple more than just a boring, samey-kinda card you find in all the shops.

I am really happy with how it turned out, being the first time I've tried something of this style. It's given me inspiration to create more of this style of drawing. Let's get to brainstorming some ideas! But anyway...

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!!

I hope you've all had a great day.

Thanks for reading!

Chloe x

Mr Boris

I haven't had much experience in Adobe digital programmes. I'm not a complete noob, but I'm also definitely not super swish at using them. Also I haven't been able to practice with them since leaving university due, to being poor... BUT I have finally been able to afford Photoshop, so now I can muck around editing my work.
So let me introduce Boris-

Boris is a ginger, fat, fluffy, independent cat, who don't need no man! I originally finished Boris almost a year ago, using watercolour paper, inks, pencil and fineliners. But I've always felt he needed something more to him.

Now I have Photoshop, I decided to experiment with some background patterns. I need more practice but I quite like how it turned out! Hopefully I can work into more pieces of work and get them posted soon.

Thanks for reading!

Chloe x

Trash Panda's

Raccoons seem to be hated animals in the places they live. However the UK don't have any raccoons and I think they're adorable. Weird, stripy, little mouse-bears, that love to dig in bins. How can you not love 'em?!

It's The Coon!

I love experimenting and drawing animals and this week I have been constantly googling raccoons. So I thought I'd bash out the coon!

Thank's for reading!

Chloe x