Mothers Day

Mother's Day is just around the corner... do you have something special lined up?

Added to the Nosy Crow website this week

My exciting news for this week is that I've been added to the list of illustrators on the Nosy Crow website. I've been working with them on a book called "Open Very Carefully" starring my favourite crocodile. Please click here to take a look!

Storlann - Gaelic Educational Resource Agency

I have recently been working on a fairy tale book project for a Gaelic educational resource publisher. It involved drawing 1 main image for each story and a couple of black and white vignettes, which I really enjoyed because I don't get to use my dip pen as much as I'd like. It was sent to the printers on monday, so here is a sneaky peak!

Mezzotint Take 3

I am falling in love with mezzotint but in a way its a very annoying process too. Its really hard to see how much you've burnished away. I didn't get it quite right here with the white lines but I'm going to keep working on it and see if I can soften it up a bit with my trusty roulette.

Illustration Friday - Layer

Its been a while since I uploaded anything even though I've been working my socks off, I can't show what I've been working on just yet. In the meantime, here's a recent print.

Mezzotint

I want to say something about the mezzotinting process. You have a copper plate and a 'rocker' which is a curved, serrated edge. You use the rocker to put thousands of tiny indentations onto the copper plate, kind of like making pixels that will print black. Once the plate is completely covered with the dots, you can start to polish parts of the surface back. The more you burnish, the less ink it will hold, and those parts print white.

I rocked these two small plates a long time ago but I was too afraid to polish them back until last weekend when I decided enough is enough!

I MET AXEL SCHEFFLER

I went to a meeting with my future publishers, I got there really early because my class finished earlier then I thought it would and AXEL SCHEFFLER was there!!! He drew me a piece of original artwork in my sketchbook. :D:D:D:D I'm going to cut it out and frame it. AWESOMENESS.