Live Love Draw - new blog!

Hello! I've been busy working away on some new personal projects, one of them being a brand new blog! I'm really excited about a fresh space where I'll be sharing my creative adventures and daily life as an illustrator. I'm going to be sharing my stories and experiences and things I've learnt along the way. It will be a more personal blog with a combination of lifestyle and illustration mixed together. I hope it will be a space of positive creativity. Stay tuned for the launch of the site which will hopefully be the beginning of next month!  

Adventures in film Pt.3 - everyday moments

   

These are my fave pics so far from my film camera experiments. It was fun to capture everyday moments. The weather has been crazy recently, going from bright sunshine to pouring rain...I guests thats april (showers) for you! I've been trying to play around with light as you can see in the first two pictures. The first pic is from our main room that has 3 walls of big windows when the sun shines it's so bright, I love seeing the different forms and shapes the light shafts create. The second pic is the view from my studio, when the sun shines its the best thing.ever. Third pic is a personal project I've been working on in between my current job, a book project (on bread!) I'm having fun with this project and I'm excited about developing it, I have a lot of ideas for it. The fourth and fifth photo is of my lovely dog Elsie (and my wellies.) We walk everyday and I love having her with me during the day. The last pic was a pic of my lunch, I made the crunchy lentil and watercress salad from Clotilde Dusoulier The French market cookbook which I'm obsessed with, highly recommend this book if you're a veggie or you just love veggies in general! 

I have one more film post coming next Fri, see you then.

Inspired by: Flowers

This time of year feels so colourful and vibrant. I love witnessing the seasons changing - I appreciate it even more now that I have a dog and walk her daily. There's a woods close by us that we sometimes go to and it's been amazing seeing it change from bare, frosty branches to a crispy coating of autumn leaves and now the floor is covered in a beautiful blanket of bluebells, it's so pretty. I find flowers so inspiring and I love having fresh flowers in the studio while I'm working. I really like the energy of the above photo's from my 'beautiful things' board on Pinterest (Here are the original sources for the top & middle photo, the restyled chair is unknown.) Below is an illustration I created for The Financial Times last year for the Centenary of The Chelsea Flower Show, this year the show is held on 20th May, you can buy tickets here. What are you currently inspired by?

Creative hobbies: Project life

I wanted to share some photo's from my project life. I started it at the beginning of this year and recapped the end of 2013. I love it because it's a great way to store memories and everyday moments that are special. I rarely printed out photo's and took a lot less before this project so it's been a good incentive and I would really like to continue it for a long time to come. It's designed to be accessible for everyone so you don't have to be a creative person to use it. You buy a binder, layout sheets and a core pack of cards.

I like to use mainly photo's in my spreads with some journalling and a few cards to add a bit of colour, I also add transfers and a couple of stickers but I like it to look quite simple.

Adventures in film pt.1

I've been experimenting with taking more photographs at the moment - I got my instax mini in December, which I love for instant snapshots and I recently borrowed my brothers Minolta Dynax 7 film camera to try and learn more about basic photography. As you can see from my above pics I've got a lot to learn but it was fun to have a play around with the camera and capture some everyday moments. At the beginning of this year I started Project Life (you can read more about PL here) and its definitely encouraged me to take more photo's and appreciate the little details of everyday. It's so refreshing to go back to basics and use a manual camera as opposed to a digital one that does everything for you. I even bought a disposable camera after feeling inspired by this post on skunkboy blog and I'm looking forward to finishing it and getting it developed, it's fun rediscovering photo's that you forgot you took. 

Here are a few forgotten pics from last year that my brother took whilst I was working on the egg for The Lindt big Egg Hunt, we found them last month after developing the photo's from my first film camera experiments. Next Friday I'll be sharing some photo's of my studio from my next roll!

Illustrations for 'Edible spots & pots.'

Late last year I had the pleasure of working with Christina Gaugler from Rodale inc. on a number of illustrations for Stacey Hirvela's new book 'Edible spots & pots.'

The commission included drawing 66 edibles and 16 projects - it was so much fun! The creative challenge was drawing the vegetables and herbs in a realistic way but retaining my own illustrative style and using only two spot colours! It was my first time using spot colours and I really enjoyed having the restriction and I think it's helped the edibles to look that bit more sophisticated. That is if you can make kale look sophisticated! It was also fun creating the project illustrations as it was a theme that I hadn't illustrated before. Chris was really helpful and sent me some little bamboo sticks to construct mock-ups of the some of the projects to draw from. Here are some selected drawings from the book. (You can buy the book here!)

My favourite edibles to draw were the ones with unusual textures, little details and shapes. Some of them included horseradish, Tuscan kale and jerusalem artichoke. I hope you like them! 

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Waitrose Kitchen April 14.'

This months feel-good food illustrations for Waitrose Kitchen accompanied recipes for Smoky chicken mole with green rice, Ray wings baked in parchment and Japanese noodle broth. I recently made the sweetcorn fritters and the banoffee peanut butter cake from last months issue - both were delicious, the sweetcorn fritters will be making a regular appearance to my weekday meals, yum!

There are some really lovely illustrations in this months issue from Charlotte Farmer, Annick Poirier, Alan Batley & Kate Sutton & its the chocolate issue, check it out!

Here is a selection of the little food illustrations I've been creating for this regular feature.

Spring is here!

...Longer daylight hours, flowers in bloom, daffodils everywhere, green, warmer days, blossom, days spent outside, afternoon walks and drinks in the sunshine x

My Paris sketchbook...

Illustrations for '365 Reasons to be proud to be Irish.'

Last year I worked with Anova books to illustrate one of their new Portico titles '365 Reasons to be Proud to be Irish,' by Richard Happer. The book is part of their popular culture and humour section and their 365 series. The book takes a look at Ireland's rich history, heritage, traditions, landmarks, culture and more.

I enjoyed working on this project and I really liked the fact I was restricted to using only black and white, it was a fun challenge! This was the first book I illustrated (now I'm on my fourth) and I absolutely love working on book projects and in the publishing sector - it's nice to have projects with a lengthier timeframe and I love seeing the final product!

Icons used throughout the book

I hope you like the final artwork, there were 18 illustrations in total so here are some of my favourite images from the book. Please feel free to get in touch if you would like to see more. 

Waitrose Kitchen March 14.'

This months feel-good food illustrations were all about sweetcorn, lime, flat leaf parsley, cauliflower, puy lentils and sweet potatoes. I can't wait to try out the recipe for sweetcorn fritters with avocado and cherry tomato salsa, sounds and looks delicious.

'We'll always have Paris.'

Next month I'm taking a trip to Paris. I'm really looking forward to 6 days in the city soaking up the inspiration and filling a sketchbook with some new work. I'm planning to go to the usual tourist attractions, The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Montmartre etc and hopefully take a river cruise down the Seine and see a show at the Moulin Rouge. There's also La Roseraie de l'Hay-les-Roses a rose garden that houses over 3000 species in 3 miles of flower beds that I would love to see.

In preparation of the trip I've been researching other artists sketchbook work. I found a really great book 'Paris Sketchbook,' by Jason Brooks (renowned fashion illustrator) that documents his fascination of the city in this 'part guidebook, part illustrated journal.' It's really interesting to observe his sketchbook practice in relation to his commercial work. Below are some extracts from the book that are particularly inspiring…

I love the playfulness of The Eiffel Tower made up of different typefaces, the shape is so iconic that less is more in this depiction. The postcard collection is so aesthetically pleasing, I love collections and it would be fun to start my own collection of something whilst on my trip.

I like how the book is split up into various sections: architecture, the street, le cafe, fashion, shopping, art, a to b and la nuit. It helps give a balanced view of the whole city but it would also be fun to focus on just one study of something. I'm excited by the idea of going into a Parisian cafe and ordering a table of French desserts and spending the day drawing them, eating them and sipping on coffee :) A few other things I love in the book were the little silver foil cut-outs of iconic landmarks of Paris. It's good to look at basic structures and have fun experimenting with different approaches, I'm going to try to incorporate this into my drawing. I also loved the inserts of translucent tracing paper type dividers with inked quotes - love this idea, the ink drawings on coloured pages with simple blocks of white, the collections and groups of objects - doorways, lampposts and the small quick studies of the people of Paris. So inspiring!  

The Artworks new 'Thank You' mailer

This year The Artworks decided to create a special mailer to thank their clients, existing and future for thinking of their artists for so many lovely projects. I popped in to see them on Friday and got my very own pack - a gorgeously designed package that opens out displaying 6 thank you cards each illustrated by a different artist. I thought it was a great idea beautifully executed and I'm so chuffed to be part of their team. There's lots of exciting things happening at The Artworks this year so stay tuned and if you are a commissioner of illustration and haven't received a pack head over to their website to request one - you don't want to miss out!