Earth was hard as iron....

Frozen pond

Beautiful skeletal trees in the frosty mist

Teazel bowed with the frost.

This a before shot with bountiful berries...

and now stripped bare in the depths of winter!

Pooch with dandruff? :)

I've not posted anything for a while, I've noticed a few people missing from the blogs, maybe it's just that time of year? It has been freezing here and now snow to boot, it makes me want to hibernate really. Sometimes when I'm working away in my little room I feel like that, I walk the dog on a morning and sometimes see other dog walkers, but then I don't see anyone for the rest of the day, while I work away in my room. I think I actually really like this solitude, it's much easier to concentrate when all is quiet in the house. I took some photos of one of my walks this week..see above, I still can't get the hang of positioning text and photos, I am thick!
I've been very busy with work, which is good, I'm doing some more books. They are different to the last book, 30 little designs in total, so I'm steadily working through them. I've had quite a few books offered, but had to turn them down as they were too short notice for me, I cannot fathom why this should be? However, I am also doing some front covers for a company to take to the Bologna book fair, somewhere I would like to go!! I have 5 projects on the go right now, my room is in chaos as usual!

My Mother's day cards will be in the shops now, as I saw some today in town. So this is my offering to show you, hope you like? See you again soon.

Happy New Year

Christmas card from my Son,Snowflakes dancing above the fireplace :)

Trip to York, Merry go Round

Gallery  display, Love that Fox!

York streets and their quaint windows.

Sparkly window display

Oxfam Bookshop tree of old books.

Hello there blog friends, just a quick hello to say Happy New Year! Before Christmas is packed away until next year, here are some snippets of Christmas from my part of the world. We have not had snow as yet, just lots of wet weather, up to my eyes in mud, walking the dog. Christmas always seems to be such a rush heading into it. I've worked most days, being freelance does that. But I have just taken it steady on the whole, which has been good.
I Hope you have all managed some Peaceful time, and had wishes come true. Now here's to an exciting New Year, which may hold a few changes?? My very good friend from Sark has moved now to Sydney,Australia, so big changes for them, I'm already enjoying seeing what life is like 'Down Under' and it looks pretty good and sunny!! Bye for now, see you again soon.

Festive tidings, blog friends.

Greetings of the season to all you blog friends who visit. I just wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and the very best for the New Year 2013. I was going to show my new Mother's Day cards, but I think this is more in keeping for now. The cards above are in 'Poundland' whoooweeee. I did this little range earlier this year, and wasn't sure where they were headed, but I found these samples on a recent trip to the beautiful City of York. I actually did about 8 artworks,all to have different captions, some of which you can see to the left and below, but I could only find these 2 samples. The display rack in Poundland is abysmal, everything is just thrown in, mixed up, upside down etc, after fishing through a load of cards, I came up with 2, and it is 2 for a pound, so an absolute bargain!! I worked in pastel on these as you can probably see, quite time consuming, I don't think most people realise that cards are done as artworks? I may be wrong?
I don't think I will get chance to write another post before Christmas, so I wish you all the very best, and I hope Santa stops by with goodies for you all. See you again soon.

Leaping ahead....

 I am leaping ahead in time here,jumping right past Christmas, to show you some of the items I received in a lovely parcel this last week. These are Valentines Day cards for next year 2013. I did these designs much earlier this year. Always so nice to see how things turn out, I love the way the image is used again inside the card, it just makes it seem that bit more special. I think my photos have turned out a bit blue?? The light was not very good, even though the sun was shining outside, it is so low in the sky, it only makes it to one side of the garden!

I will be back soon with the rest of the parcel, and even further ahead in time to Mother's Day next year!
I am very excited too, as I have placed an order for the new Imac that has just been released. I've not had one before, so this is very exciting, and also expensive. I have waited ages for this new one to come out, it's super sleek and slim .http://www.apple.com/uk/mac/ I think you should be able to see it here? Then I need to practice with it and one day I may design everything on it???? Or not??? I still love the feel of watercolour paper, and that trepidation as the paint goes down.....but maybe a combination of techniques would be a good thing?
See you all again soon. :)

Here's one I did earlier.....

Hello again blog friends, I would like to thank all of you that commented on my last post, it was quite a moment for me, and I appreciate what you all said.
 I'm back again with the book :) Just thought you might like a sneaky peak into the inner workings of my book illustrating antics? I managed to snap some photos of my work in progress as I was nearing the end of the book illustrations. I'll try and flip between now and then to show you some of the differences that took place. It really is all in the pictures, so here goes.

My first artwork for front and back covers.

Actual front cover ended up being this lovely lilac, and I love the typeface for the title.

Sweet little bear on the back cover.

 One of the most funny pages to do was of the Big bear yawning. I practised this pose in the mirror,not that I look like a bear?? But it was tricky to make the bear look friendly, without teeth, and without looking fierce. I actually had everyone in the house yawning, to try and get this looking right. Yawns are quite infectious when you try this!! It was funny. I did eventually find an image of a bear yawning and adapted this as best I could.

A well practised pose, makes you quite sleepy!

On the actual book the colour is slightly darker.

The same thing happened with the stretching pose, but the arms were specifically asked to be curved around the head, as you can see.I'm finding this quite fascinating now, comparing the two images, although I do think my photos are more yellow than they actually were. The backgrounds I did were left white, so that the different colours could be dropped in. Each of the pages I illustrated was about A3 in size, so quite big! It was a bit of a shock to my system working at this size, as I don't usually work any larger than A4. Fortunately pastel covers quite quickly, although it was hard work and my fingerprints did literally wear down as they were my tools for blending most of the time!
I hope you've enjoyed this little insight. I will be back soon with another topic. It's been very exciting this 'Book' moment for me. Still can't believe it. Bye for now, see you all soon.

My Ta Dah lifetime achievement moment!

Hello there blog friends, well it's here, my lifetime achievement Ta Dah moment. I think it may be a wish of many Illustrators who mainly work on Greetings Cards, to Illustrate a Children's picture book. It certainly was one of mine. So when this arrived in the post yesterday, I was beside myself excited. To be honest it felt quite surreal, I remember working on the artwork, but seeing it in this book, WOW, it was/is amazing!It's just like those books you see in the shops, hey, wait a minute, It is!!

I shall post a few more images from the book today and then show you how I worked on this earlier this year. I started out by Illustrating the front and back covers. At this point I wasn't sure what the book was about. Obviously it was about bears, but I didn't have any of the words. The words are very gentle and simple, a lovely process of the bears getting ready to settle down and sleep.Margaret Wise Brown is a very well known author in America, (I'm ashamed to say I didn't know of her). I shall leave it there, as the pictures speak for themselves I think?

These aren't all the pages, just a few, I don't want to be a bore, but hope you like them.:)

Back page.

I have to say a big Thank-you to my agent, Advocate, who put my name forward for this book. It is quite difficult to break into the world of book publishing without going through an agent. So many thanks to them. Also to the publishers Parragon, who liked my first Illustrations enough to run with the whole thing, a major commitment. I feel like I may be sounding like a film star whose being presented some award now,and giving a speech, Ha Ha. I don't honestly, I'm just a bit overwhelmed at seeing this dream come true, still can't believe it. Hope you come back to visit and share in some of the work that went on to achieve this goal. See you again soon, thanks for visiting.

I'm in WH Smiths.......

 Hi blog friends, I'm here again still waiting on THE BOOK, I have been told by the editor no less, that as soon as they get copies from the warehouse I will be sent 3, so fingers crossed it won't be long? My book is about 'Sleepy Bears' going to sleep, it's a very gentle story, not many words, lots of actions!

In the meantime, I visited,WH Smith store in town, and there are my designs on the shelves, 6 in total, all very traditional cute bears, as requested.
 I did these earlier this year and they have quickly found their way into the stores. I bought 2 as a) I doubt I will get any samples, and b) they were expensive!!! They are quite big, with a nice red envelope though. Check them out if you go near a store, in the UK that is?? Christmas is still quite a way off I know, but I work on this sort of thing all year and actually I never seem to tire of it, I do love what I do! :)

Artwork for the card designs.

 This is another love of mine below, modelling (not the latest) style of t-shirt!! My poor little puppy, cos' that's what he is to me,  (he's 12 and a half) has had a nasty reaction to a bite. It's under his arm,( whoops, front leg), and so the vet said....instead of him having to wear one of those awful collars, where they bash into everything and everyone, put him an old t-shirt on, to stop him trying to scratch or lick it?? Well, he hasn't taken to this really! He looks a bit fed up :( don't you think? We put it on him last night at bedtime, but it was off by the morning, must have been a struggle in the night!!

My Handsome old boggy looking fed up.

What are you doing to me? This looks like a dress!! :)

This last photo of him makes me think of the talking dog on You Tube, you know the one, with the bacon  etc? Hope this link works, but you've probably seen this many times!? He's much better already my pooch, on his Very Expensive antibiotics. (worth every penny for him, my lovely Jet).
See you all again soon.:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeKSiCQkPw