Down Under

I was in Australia for 3 1/2 weeks recently. I visited Western Australia, Melbourne and Sydney. It was a great trip, I did a lot of sightseeing and shopping!

Some Shopping

I've decided I'm going to do a proper girly blog post today. I've bought a few things in the sales recently and just a few bits n bobs for my holiday to Oz in less than six weeks, eeek! :)

Boohoo Dress £14.99 

Topshop Dress £32.00 

Crop Top - New Look £5.99 

 White Jumper - Topshop - £15.00 on sale

Purse - Accessorize £15.00

Makeup Bag - Primark - £3.00 

Travel/Toiletries Bag - Primark - £3.00

Sandals - Warehouse - £15.00 on sale 

 Suede Wedges - New Look £19.99

Finally some makeup bits!

I hope whoever reads this post enjoys it, I really like watching or reading about what other girls buy.

Bye for now, Nicola x

Speed Paint Watercolour

I made another attempt at using watercolours last night. I did this Dia De Los Muertos inspired sugar skull girl. I used the paints very loosely, I like splashing on the paints and using them very watery. I used a black fine liner for the details. I made my first YouTube video doing this too :)

Here Comes The Summer!

The weather has been lovely in Scotland lately, I hope it lasts! So I am now officially finished my first year of HND Illustration. It has flown by! Next year will probably be even quicker but I don't want to think about it just yet. Now that I have two months off college, I can finally concentrate more on some personal projects.
I have been doing some charity work recently, for a charity called Funny Lumps which helps children with NF (Neurofibromatosis). I designed a mascot for the kids, they wanted me to design a purple furry monster who has NF. Here's what I came up with :) I'm very happy with how he looks and the kids love him.

I also did some mixed media work and illustrations for 'The Lady of Shalott' poem recently. It is a lovely poem which highly inspired the pre-raphaelites age.

Some recent sketches and an idea for a painting, I have so much in the pipeline! 

Thanks for reading, Nicola x

Red Cap's Revenge

The progress of an illustration. I was influenced by Rik Lee Illustration and Glen Arthur Art on Instagram to do this. I used colour pencil for the figure and the background is painted entirely with gouache. I scanned both in and used Photoshop to alter the contrast, colour etc. 

Here is the finished product and below pictures I took drawing it.

Hope you like!

Also I have an art page on Facebook, check it out and give it a like :)

https://www.facebook.com/StrawberrySkullsIllustration

Nicola x

Dag and Daga and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain

I bought this book recently.

It has lot's of stories in it about trolls, monsters, princesses and princes. My favorite things to draw! There are 29 stories in this book, all are illustrated by John Bauer. I think they were written in the 19th Century but I'm not sure, the book doesn't say. John Bauer, born in Sweden, 1882 - 1918 was one of the world's greatest illustrators of fairy tales. As it states in his biography and I quite agree. I discovered Brian Froud before John Bauer and you can definitely see that Froud was highly influenced by Bauer. If you've seen the Dark Crystal or The Labyrinth then you will agree.

These are some illustrations in the book, he used mainly neutral tones, not a lot of colour at all but I love the way he used the watercolour and especially the way he did the trolls.

You may or may not know I did children's book illustration projects in college. I'm almost finished my first year of HND Illustration, it's flew in! I liked this story so much and felt so influenced by John Bauer's illustrations, I thought I would illustrate 'Dag and Daga and the Flying Troll of Sky Mountain' myself. 

I will be posting my progress on here.

Nicola x