Kindergarten

I have this feeling that most of the kindergartens are Winnie-the-Pooh themed. I like it but aren't there other funny children's stories?

In November I was painting a wall in a kindergarten. It, of course, was supposed to be a Pooh connected painting. (I had a photo of the projects I've made somewhere but I cannot find them right now) The budget was rather low and the wall to paint sooo long (10m) but anything on it would make it look better.

Marie Antoinette was helping to choose which characters' poses were the best :)

 Somehow it's very hard to find a proper yellow acrylic paint that is not transparent. But when mixed with a bit of white it all covers just right.

 Painting grass and flowers took me a whole day. Except the 10 meters long wall where the characters are the whole hall had a grass on this one side.

Every door was surrounded by flowers.

Some time after finishing the wall I was asked to do the grass and flowers on the opposite wall too so it would look more completed. I did it yesterday and it looks cute now :) I have also added few butterflies which you can see on my TwitPic profile.

Painting kindergartens is fun. Hope I will have an opportunity to do it again.

A.

New photos

After some time spent actively on my Etsy store I've decided that a lot of my items' photos are not good enough to catch attention. So I've made new ones and will be replacing them together with relisting the items. Hope they will look great now :)

A.

Quick journey on a broom

Some time ago I have made illustrations to nursery rhymes written by Ewelina. She wanted to publish her creations and has decided that my style of illustration was the best match. Here's what came out of it :)

The book is rather slim but small size makes it even more cute :) It's a nice feeling to have a book with your own illustrations on a shelf.

A.

Chicken - Illustration Friday

Inspired by Geninne and her birds (and a video of how she creates her birds) I've decided to try it out too. My chicken, if you've ever seen a chicken like this, is not as pretty as hers but it's a good start. I can already feel that this way of painting gives a lot of possibilities.

A.

Tea Party

Recently I have finished making a big commissioned illustration. I really like how it turned out and it's a super good things since works with coloured pencils not always end up as I wished them to. But this one looks amazing ^^

Here are few photos and sketches I've made on the way:

 A quick first sketch just to catch the first impression while reading a text (because this illustration is based on the text).

After that I've made a more accurate character designs. I know that for some those still are sketchy sketches but for me it's enough to remember and be sure how a character looks ;)

Then I remade sketches and compositions of the scenes. (There are two different illustrations - I'll start making the second one tomorrow)

 Fixed and cleaned sketches with a bit more details.

And the same sketches with base colours just to give this overall feeling. 

 

 Then the idea changed a bit - I had to make the illustration longer so it would fit into a 2 page spread in a square book.

This is what I've printed out to trace lines on a paper where final image will be made. I use my enormous light table Aurora for tracing.

 Few photos of the progress.

 And here are close-ups of the finished image. I really like how the water came out :)

A lot of flowers :)

 

 This is really nice paper for coloured pencils. I don't like it for watercolours (although they are its supposed destination medium) but this way of using it seems great :)

And the final image! This is a scanned version (have to scan it in 4 parts). This picture looks a lot better when viewed live or on photos but it's too hard to take a nice photo of such a big illustration with my amateur camera...

Hope you like my new illustration as much as I do :)

A.

New Year gifts from me to me

Not much time has passed since my last gift I gave to myself. But I felt it was time for something new to try. For this year I have planned for myself to learn how to sew. And learn it well. There are many styles, techniques and projects that inspire me - two of them are cute and cosy vintage-looking stuff and simple designs with Scandinavian feel into them. Or to make it even more simple - I like ribbons and embroidery :)

Here are two new gifts:

Few things from the 'Scandinavian needlecraft':

And a couple of ideas from 'Home-made vintage':

Tomorrow I'll take my mum's sewing machine to a doctor to check if she's all right and as soon as I'll get her back I'll start creating! >o< Can't wait for that!

A.

Cell phone cases aka Christmas gifts

Here are beauties I have made for my sister and mum as Christmas gifts. I didn't want to spend a lot of money this year (even if you try to do it in a more cheap way, it still is expensive. A bit less expensive but expensive) so I've decided to share my new talent of making cell phone cases. I think they came out really neat! :)

For my sister Kate:

For my mum:

I've made photos of the green case before Christmas and the purple one's photos are more recent. So my mum have made the case a bit 'fluffy' as she called it ;) But it still looks nice (I just have to trim it once in a while so the heart on the back side won't disappear under this fluffiness).

How do you like them?

I'm just in a progress of making 3 more cell phone cases. All of them will be available on my Etsy shop - Secret Drawer. 

A.