Washi tape

I designed a washi tape! To be honest I wasn't sure whether to save posting this until I can show the finished manufactured product, but I worked too long and too hard on it and want to shout about it as much as I can.

As I was wrapping some parcels for my shop I thought how fun and 'on brand' it would be if I had my own washi tape I could use to secure everything (I currently use a generic patterned one I bought in Japan). I knew it would involve creating a long, run on image, and I immediately thought of my Folktale Week drawings, which to this day are still some of my favorite illustrations I've ever created (all of my work from 2018/2019 is to be honest, I feel like that was when I peaked 😭) As much as I love that artwork, it doesn't all make sense because it was following a prompt list, so I decided to create a new version and this time really commit to the theme of Russian folktales instead of just being inspired by the general aesthetic.

There's not a huge amount of characters, partly because I wanted to keep it identifiable to a global audience so didn't want to go for anything too obscure, and I didn't want it to look too crowded, it's mostly just supposed to be a forest with a few magical elements.

Obviously I had to include Baba Yaga and her hut, which is probably the most iconic character to people from around the world, and I also included the Firebird which crops up in a few different Slavic tales. And a bear, because it's the Russian forest, and they do crop up in folktales (plus I just love bears OK)

Now I just hope it comes out OK! I put a lot of detail in and I hope it isn't too pointless for such a small product. It'll eventually be sold in a set with another tape, and I'll be sure to update when it's ready!

Godt Nytår

Happy New Year!
Wishing you all the best for 2021 🎉

The Snow Queen

I've got such a backlog of artwork to share that it's difficult to know which order to even go in! I've written out a list and there's literally 20 things on it that I need to post here, so buckle up I guess as I'll try and post as much of it as I can over the coming weeks.

My recently completed Snow Queen project feels like the most natural place to start, as it's been occupying a large part of my mind for most of the year. Back in June I shared some original sketches that I'd created back in May, and even before then it was a project that I knew was looming for me. 

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen is probably my all time favourite fairy tale, and it's something I go way back with. When I was in my foundation year of art school for my big final project I decided I wanted to illustrate my own version of The Snow Queen. The artwork is kind of cringey to me now, but it was a labour of love as The Snow Queen is an epic in length for being a fairy tale, and a lot of background research went into everything.

This feels really embarrassing to be sharing, but I also think it's really important to show that we all start somewhere as it's easy to fall into the idea that people can just magically draw like that when in fact it's taken years upon years of practise, hard work, and trial and error. I was definitely bound by the limitations of my skill level (perspective, what's that??) but when I look at all 23 illustrations I can see that I had some good ideas, and it's something I've been wanting to update for a long time. I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'll recreate the whole book as like I said it's a long one, but I'm really proud of these illustrations as they stand right now and am pleased to add them to my portfolio:

You can tell that this is supposed to be a direct update of one of the old illustrations above, and I think because of that it really shows just how much I've grown as an artist. One of the biggest things I learnt at art school was the importance of backgrounds in telling the story and setting the scene - I can distinctly remember my tutor looking at my illustration of Baba Yaga and suggesting giving the fir trees a character of their own: "maybe they could look like they're leaning in and listening". And as much as I loathe backgrounds, it undeniably makes a huge difference! I did take Danish architecture into account, although I think there's so little of the buildings on show that it could also be anywhere which isn't necessarily a bad thing. 

I think my biggest struggle with this particular illustration was whether it matched the mood of the others and looked cohesive next to them as the colours are much brighter, but it's also at the very beginning of the story before the Snow Queen tries to ruin Kai's life so I figured it worked in that sense. The Snow Queen is essentially a coming of age story detailing the passage between childhood and adulthood, so I wanted them to look on the cusp of that.

I've always loved this section of the tale where Kai is looking out the window at the falling snow, and suddenly the Snow Queen appears and looks at him through the window and beckons. Considering the magic mirror hadn't entered his life yet I've always found this passage a really interesting part of the narrative. This was the very last illustration I created, and it underwent the most changes from sketch to final piece as I'd originally envisioned the Snow Queen smaller, almost like a fairy, as she's described as a snowflake getting brighter and brighter until it formed the shape of a woman. But I didn't like the idea of her shifting sizes as it didn't make much sense, and as her size isn't mentioned in the book I changed it and I like it much better this way. 

The mirror falling into Kai's eye and heart while it snows. I intended this to be more of a spot illustration to be surrounded by text.

This was the first illustration I digitally painted, and it really set the mood for everything else. It's when the Snow Queen comes to take Kai away and kisses his forehead and touches his heart to freeze him where the shards of mirror are. 

I really wanted to keep some design elements of my original Snow Queen, as well as keeping it as far removed from anything to do with Elsa as possible! The character is always portrayed as a woman so white she's almost albino with equally white hair, and it's an interpretation that's never made much sense to me as I always figured she'd look more indigenous than anything else. But at the same time I didn't want to appropriate Sámi culture or identify it to any particular real world group in any way as she's a magical being and not a person. I tried to make her dress quite fantastical and kept it from following any historical period to keep that other worldly vibe, and as she lives in the mountains I figured she'd make do with the things around her such as a cloak made from the hide of a polar bear, and a crown fashioned from reindeer antlers strung together with brambles. 

Kai's design is the only subtle reference to Frozen as I wanted him to kind of resemble Prince Hans.

Again this is another illustration directly based on one of my old ones, except this time I actually used reference for a running reindeer (I think I used a reference for a horse before and it shows!) I kept the red cloak as I love the pop of colour it gives to an otherwise very muted palette. I generally made Gerda very warm toned, and Kai very cool toned which I felt matched their character arcs.

I think this one took the most work, but it paid off in the end! The hardest part was getting all of the ice to actually look like ice and not rocks or pieces of slate. I also tried to adjust Kai's skin tone to show how he's slowly freezing. I looked up pictures of frostbite but that was a bit too knarly for what I was going for! I also gave him heterochromia to signify the shard of mirror in one of his eyes.

I tried to create a selection from all different parts of the book, in the hopes that it would tell a condensed version of the story regardless of whether I expand on it. I'd love to create the whole book and self publish it, but at the same time these took so much work that I just need a break from it so I guess we'll see if that ever happens! I created these for my portfolio more than anything, as a self commissioned project to show an example of sequential illustration to any potential clients, but it seems a shame to just shove it in my portfolio and forget about it so I'm hoping to perhaps create some things for my shop out of the designs. Definitely a postcard set, but I'd like to do more with it if possible as it's all of my own original design and I want to move into selling my own characters more. 

Sister Alyonushka, Brother Ivanushka

Another Russian folktale, this one based on Sister Alyonushka, Brother Ivanushka. You can read the whole tale here. As in a lot of these stories they were orphaned as children and set out across the forest so Alyonushka could find work. Her younger brother Ivanushka soon grows thirsty on the long journey and begs for water each time he sees it, but each time Alyonushka says no and warns that he'll be transformed into various animals. Finally he's so thirsty that he doesn't stop to ask at the next spring, and Alyonushka is devastated to see him transform into a goat. There's much more to the tale, and you'll be glad to know that it works out happily - Ivanushka is able to save his sisters life and gets transformed back into a boy.

It definitely has elements of that scene in Pinocchio. I feel inclined to say that Ivanushka was less deserving of the punishing transformation as literally all he wanted was a glass of water, whereas Lampwick and co got up to all kinds of shenanigans - but really no one ever deserved that.

Anyway, when I was deciding to draw The Armless Maiden I initially couldn't decide which folktale to illustrate so I decided to go with both. I've never drawn a goat before, but I think it came out OK? I tried to include elements to hint that all isn't what it seems by giving him the same coloured fur and eyes and Alyonushka.

Безручка

I've been drawing a lot lately - more than I think I ever have before? I don't know where all of the inspiration and drive is coming from, but it feels endless. A lot of it is currently in progress; works that are sketched and being held up by needing to be digitally coloured. I want to take the backlog to do an experiment of sorts on Instagram. I know the platform favours those who post everyday, which really isn't artist friendly and promotes quick, disposable art that's easy to both create and consume which makes me sad. But at the same time there feels no getting away from it while it's still people's preferred platform of choice. I've tried Twitter and had even less success, how anyone gets their work noticed on there is beyond me. My Instagram account has been stagnant for a while as my posting is so sporadic, so I've decided to just completely avoid posting there until I've got this mass of work I'm currently working on finished, and then I shall attempt posting everyday and see how much truth is in the theory. So all of that to say that this blog will be kept far more up to date than my Instagram for the time being!



One of my lifelong fascinations and artistic inspirations has always been Russian and Slavic folktales. It was my main focus for Folktale Week, and that art has always been some of my favourite that I've created and I've wanted to illustrate something similar for a long time. So I began looking up various Russian folktales to see which one sparked my interest and came across Безручка, or 'The Armless Maiden'. It tells the tale of an orphaned brother and sister, and when the brother marries he takes his sister to live with him and his new wife. The wife dislikes the sister and pulls all kinds of tricks to accuse her, but the brother is never angered. It culminates with the wife giving birth and cutting the head off of her own baby which she then accuses the sister of doing, and in retaliation the brother takes his sister out into the woods, cuts off her arms at the elbow, and leaves her there.

The sister wanders through the woods weeping, until she finally comes across a town and she marries a merchant's son who falls madly in love with her. He leaves his pregnant wife with his parents to go on a journey, and tells them to send word as soon as his child is born. The armless maiden gives birth to a son who has golden arms to his elbow, a moon on his forehead, and a sun on his heart. Word is sent to the merchant's son, but her brother's wife is still obsessed with ruining her life even though they haven't seen each other in years and she intercepts the letter and replaces it with one telling the merchants son that the baby boy is half wolf and half bear. The merchants son wrote back his support, which was again intercepted and replaced with a letter to his parents telling them to send his wife away with the child, so they strap the baby to her chest and cast her out.

When wandering through the woods the maiden stops to drink from a well, but her baby falls in and she weeps as there's no way she can save her baby without her arms. A random old man (who himself doesn't help but offers his sagely advise like they always do in these tales) tells her to reach into the well anyway, and she does and her arms grow back and she's able to save her baby. She ends up finding her brothers home, where coincidentally her husband is also randomly staying, and tells them what her brothers wife has done. Her brother ties his wife's braid to a mare and sends it across the fields, and when the mare returns only her braid is left of her.

It's pretty gruesome, which is typical of all folk and fairy tales - The Brothers Grimm and common European tales have been highly sanitised and edited over the years to make them more palatable for modern sensibilities. But I was still quite shocked at the brutality of the scenes with the brother, but it's important to recognise the symbolism in these stories as they're never intended to be taken at face value and were a way of passing on messages or warnings in the days of old. And so I recognised that the dismemberment could represent any traumatic experience, and the subsequent journey the maiden goes on shows how there will always be many more obstacles to overcome even when it seems like things are better. It's about the ability to not just endure, but to strengthen and regenerate as many times as you have to, and it tells readers that although they may feel alone in their journey, there are always others who have walked the same path before.

Although it's a fairly long tale, I knew which part I wanted to illustrate on my first reading and I'm really pleased with how it came out. I had some Deleter screen tones which I'd picked up out of curiosity the last time I was at the art supply store. Now I live in Japan I'm having a lot of fun exploring new art supplies. I don't know if these screen tones are used in the West, but I understand they're popular in traditional creation of Manga. Comics and manga really aren't my area of interest and I know nothing about it, but I wanted to just see what using these were like and whether they could be incorporated into my work.

I'd hoped that it would add a sense of depth to the background, but I think because the colours are already dark that it's barely noticeable and doesn't make much difference! I'm definitely going to try again on something less colourful though. I guess they're usually used on grayscale or even just lineart pieces, but I don't want my work to take on a graphic or 'comic-y' look and would rather try and see if I can get the screens to work with my art, rather than adapt my work to fit the screens.

The other half of the screen tone. It's sticky backed and transparent once you peel the backing paper off, and it's made up of tiny little dots. You can get them in all kinds of patterns.

The Snow Queen

This is a bit of a throw back, but I realised when scrolling through my Instagram feed that there's a few pieces I forgot to share over here, so the next few posts will be of older pieces to get caught up.



For this post I just wanted to share this illustration from back in winter. I have a long personal history with the original story of The Snow Queen, certainly long before Frozen stole my heart. It's always been my favourite fairy tale for no deep reason other than it's a good adventure tale, and I've collected various book editions and film adaptations of it throughout the years. In my foundation degree, to finish the course we had to write our own brief and mine was to illustrate a full 32 page book of The Snow Queen. Which ended up taking me on quite an adventure, as it even involved traveling around the country to see some real life reindeer to study as well as translating and condensing Andersen's original text whilst still keeping the integrity of the original story (as it was a picture book so had to be simplified)

I still have that book somewhere, and I have a lot of mixed feelings looking at it. I put so much work into it, but obviously my style and ability has drastically improved so it's a little embarrassing in some respects. This piece was drawn straight into my iPad (I usually draw the initial sketch traditionally) and was just revisiting the character of The Snow Queen herself. I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it other than trying to improve upon my original idea, whilst also trying NOT to subconsciously make it resemble Elsa.

I'd love to finalise some designs some day, perhaps with Gerda and Kai too. Maybe I'll even redo my whole book!

Folktale Week

I'm not generally a person who enjoys online challenges - partly as they're usually far too vague to pique my interest and I have no idea how to illustrate what feels like words picked at random out of a dictionary, and partly in the case of huge challenges such as Inktober I'm usually so sick of hearing about it before it's even begun and tire of it taking over all of my social media feeds. I don't see the point in taking part in such things when even my favourite artists become background noise, and I doubt I'm the only illustrator who feels this frustration.

However when I heard of Folktale Week, which was held 12-18 November, it definitely felt relevant to my interests and came with a prompt list that actually excited and inspired me so I knew I had to take part. Looking back, I think I aimed a bit too high - I purchased a concertina sketchbook and planned to create a double page spread for each prompt, coloured entirely with Copic markers and coloured pencils to give the storybook feel I was after. I opted to do a double page spread for each prompt as then it would allow each illustration to stand alone, and be less obvious that it was leading onto the next image. I wanted the concertina element to be a bit of a surprise that I could reveal at the end, with each prompt leading onto the next to create a panoramic woodland scene.











You can view a video of the full concertina here on my Instagram.

It ended up being a lot more work than I initially anticipated with each illustration taking on average 5-6 hours, and although I gave myself a few days head start I still ended up falling a little bit behind on the final two days as I was busy with other commitments - how people manage to do month long challenges is beyond me! I actually really enjoyed the process though, I haven't created work to a deadline since leaving uni and I thrive really well under that kind of pressure. Not having the time to over-plan and over-think everything is really liberating and allows me to just get on with it and switch off my perfectionism.

The first prompt was 'Forest' which is why I decided to set the whole thing in the woods, and apart from the reference to Baba Yaga in the first image, I decided to keep most of the prompts fairly vague and inspired by folktales rather than a direct representation of. I felt that if I tried to match each prompt to a particular tale, then the whole concertina wouldn't flow as well, and I wanted the viewer to be able to decide their own narrative from the images.

The very last prompt with the raccoons is definitely my favourite, but then again they are my favourite animals!

I turned myself to face me

I've been wanting to start a new blog for my artwork for a while, especially as my old one turned into my portfolio. And as I've just finished an illustration degree it felt like the right time, especially as I'm kind of in a funny place with my art at the moment and feel like I'm in a transitional period.

Doing a degree is weird, as it gets you thinking and overanalysing your work in brand new ways. Especially in the field of illustration as it's basically about commercialising your work and building it as a business. I've spent the last three years completing briefs and trying to get my work to fit into the right box of what industry I want to go in to, which has resulted in me feeling like I've forgotten how to just draw for the pleasure of it, you know? And to be frank, I don't much like the direction my art has gone in, I feel like I've lost myself.



This was my final hand in of work for uni. I've spent most of the past few years working on portraiture, and I'm really proud of what I can do but I miss working in a more stylised way! And the trouble with working in realism is it makes you an awful perfectionist, so it's difficult to go back on. If things don't look realistic to me now, they don't look right. And I'm a perfectionist anyway, so trying to experiment with a new style and grow as an artist is incredibly daunting as obviously when you're trying to change your style things are going to look a bit crap for a while while you're re-learning. And that can be especially frustrating when social media is full of people's 'best bits' and you're not happy with anything you're creating. It can be very difficult not to fall into the comparison trap and to remember the hours of work that the artist you admire is putting in behind the scenes. And it's because of this insecurity that I decided to start a blog, somewhere I can post things I'm not happy with and talk about my growth and just break down some of those walls and be completely honest.

So what is my growth so far? Before I drew portraiture, I mostly drew a lot of Disney fan art. Although I've drawn my whole life, it was when I was a teenager that I began drawing seriously, and that mostly involved copying the Disney style. I'd pause my DVDs and copy poses and expressions, and animators were the only artists I took any advice from. But I gradually began to loathe drawing in this style as it wasn't mine, I was just drawing in the standardised Disney way. There was nothing to set my work apart as my own.


From that, I began looking at my other interests for inspiration which is mostly music and the 1960s and '70s. I experimented with more psychedelic elements and began trying to copy Yellow Submarine instead of Disney, and then began trying to draw musicians themselves which is what lead me to portraiture as it was the easiest way to capture these people whom I admired.




If I try and draw in a more stylised way, I default to the Disney style as that's how I learnt to draw, and that's incredibly frustrating to be honest as it's still something I'm trying to move away from so I can do my own thing. Artists I admire nowadays are people like Minnie Small, Audra Auclair, Lois van Baarle, and Stacy Fahey. I will always love Disney, but I also love Studio Ghibli and illustrators such as Tove Jansson, Raymond Briggs, John Tenniel and EH Shepard. I also love reading, some of my favourite books being Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wind In The Willows, and Winnie The Pooh. I want to take all of these inspirations, and use it to create something that's just mine.


For my final uni project I created a few music posters, and I feel this is the closest I've been able to come so far to something I'm happy with. Still a bit too Disneyfied, but getting there. I'd spent a long time thinking about how I wished I could draw without actually drawing it, so although these posters might not have been exactly what I wanted they took a lot of The Fear away and showed me that I am capable if I just do it.


I've been trying to complete a full sketchbook since last summer, something I haven't done in years. I used to see sketchbooks as a place for practice until I started watching sketchbook tours on YouTube and started to see them as works of art in their own right with perfectly cohesive illustrations on every page. This is an unrealistic way to keep a sketchbook, and that's something I have to remind myself of regularly. I enjoy scrapbooking and keeping my sketchbook as a kind of journal, and find this helps me stop myself from taking my sketchbook too seriously and giving up on it a few pages in. I'm almost halfway through, and am trying to get into the habit of drawing everyday and drawing on location as I know this is the only way I'll get to the place I want to be with my work.




And that's the stage I'm at right now! I'm wanting to turn my YouTube channel into a more art focused direction, and just really hold myself to all of the goals I set out instead of just talking about what I'd like to do. And I wanted an art blog so I can just share something whether it's perfect or not without any fanfare, and just share my progress and my journey. And I hope you'll enjoy following that! ♥