Goggle Eyes

Here's a piece I did for my Middle Grade portfolio, based around Anne Fine's Goggle Eyes, which is a fabulous book. If you haven't read it, you should - and if you've got an Audible account, do yourself a favour and get the audiobook, Jane Asher does such a great job.

"I know!" I cried, "I know why you're so upset. I know why you're crying your eyes out. I know why you don't want to be sent home!" She lifted two fierce, red-rimmed little eyes that burned through the cupboard like live coals. "Your Mum's going to marry that man with grey hair."

Her mouth fell open. I felt like Sherlock Holmes on a good day. "And you think he's a proper creep. You've thought he was a creep all along, but being the sweet Helly that you are, you've been too gentle and polite to say so, and now she's talking about your happy future together, and it's too late to explain that you don't like him."

She twisted her fingers so tightly, I thought they would snap. "Don't like him?" she repeated in a cold, low voice. "I can't stand him." and all the colour drained out of her face.

"Helly?" I flicked the cupboard light switch. Luckily for her, it was the dimmest lightbulb ever seen. I slipped inside and dropped on a pile of old gym shorts and woolies. I pulled the door closed to shut us in. "Listen," I said, leaning towards her, "No need to tell me about this sort of thing. I am the World's Great Expert, Helly Johnston. The stories I could tell you!"

She looked up. "Go on then," she said, still ashen. "Tell me."

***********

I didn't actually plan the image out as square (I want it to look like an illustration in a book, after all). The space above is for text, voila:

As I was suddenly super busy when Colour Collective rolled round, I slapped on some colour (fortunately the 'Delft Blue' prompt was a convenient colour for school uniforms!) so I'm adding that here, although I prefer the black and white version. What do you think? Colour or black and white?

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.  Not sure how long it took, I worked on it over quite a stretch of time.

Lapphund Christmas Cards 2017

Every year I do custom Christmas cards for some lovely friends. We started in 2013, when they had just got their first dog, so she was the subject of the cards. In 2014 they had a second dog, so I added her in, and by 2015 they had a gorgeous little boy, who naturally had to be included too!  This year marks the 5th year of this card series, their little boy is now two and a half, and most of their card recipients have now tumbled to the fact that these are custom commissioned cards, they aren't just super-good at finding cards with dogs that look like theirs!

Back when they only had dogs, I used to do two separate designs for them, but now I just do one, with a traditional Christmassy red-green-gold colour scheme, and another with a blue-gold-grey colour scheme. Here's that second colourway:

You'll notice that the icecream in this one doesn't match the rest of the colours - that's because strawberry icecream is his favourite and we wanted to feature that. The red card has a choc-mint icecream, (because strawberry doesn't match red) and let me tell you, I got very hungry while painting it!

We got them printed at Moo, and they of course did a wonderful job:

These were done in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Go below the cut to see all the previous years' cards:

Floral Christmas Cards

Here's a commissioned Christmas card I did this year. I always love these projects! I've been doing cards for these lovely people for a few years now, and they usually feature birds in a woodcut style, but this year we did something different (much to the consternation of my parents, who would look over my shoulder and demand if I was sure this is what they'd asked for. Not sure if they actually expected me to say 'no, actually, I decided to do whatever I liked' or what...) 

The commissioners had done some work in their garden this year, removing a large pine tree and planting lots of paper daisies. They like natives to bring the birds to their garden. The new yard has been attracting a lot of attention, so they wanted their cards to feature paper daisies. I did up a few concepts, including one based on the floral cards I do myself every now and then, and that's the design they chose:

I added a few extra natives - pink bottle brushes and swan river myrtle - to keep things interesting. They came out very clean and modern and I like them a lot!

We were printing via Moo, of course, so I did a dark version as well, to take advantage of the printfinity option at Moo. I like the way the colours glow against this dark background:

They printed very nicely:

It was such fun to do a Christmas card with such non-traditional colours!

Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro

Illustrator Tips: Preparing your digital canvas

I often jump into conversations on twitter to help people asking for advice with illustration, so I thought I should start a little blog series dealing with some of the things I often see asked, or that I think might be useful.

So here goes:

#1. Preparing your digital canvas

When designing for print, it's important to know what specifications you are working to before you start. I can't stress this enough - a lot of clients won't automatically provide you with all the relevant information, and possibly won't see the necessity, but believe me, you'll save a lot of stress by getting this information out of them at the start. Ask! Keep asking! Explain to them that if you have to spend ages reworking pieces that end up the wrong size, it will increase their costs. 

For example, here is the cover for Feral Fergus. I had to create the cover long before starting on the book itself, for promotion purposes, and when I did (back in September) the book was to be printed in A4. But this changed to 8x10". No big deal in this case, but just look at all that white space down the sides of the cover on the left. I had to carefully paint in this area back in as seamlessly as I could, and think how difficult this could be if you have a really detailed background and a composition that won't stand for the alteration anyway! You can't avoid all such incidences, but it's best to at least attempt to make sure it doesn't happen.

Continue reading below the cut:

Mariella

Here's a sort-of-new piece for my portfolio. It's a redo of a piece I did back in 2015 - essentially the same piece, but it's been entirely redrawn so it can stay in my portfolio without bringing down the tone.

It's intended as a book cover, so as I do a lot of work for self-publishers, I added text. This is a roll-over view option on my website. I know conventional wisdom is not to put text on book cover design, because illustrators are not graphic designers... but I do actually have a degree in graphic design. Anyway, self-publishers need to be able to see that I can add text without turning everything into a dog's breakfast.

If I was printing this, I can see spot varnish on the text, maybe even a foil.... but I'm not printing it, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
This has my name on it because it's my story. I've even written some of it!

Find out lots more about this illustration below the cut:

Bramble and Briar

I'm dividing my new website by age (so children's, middle grade, young adult) rather than the previous division of colour/black and white, digital/traditional, and realised that my Young Adult section was a bit thin. While staring into space trying to think of something to do for it, my eye fell on a portrait I did of a friend back in year 12, as one of the three paintings I did in TEE art. It's very dated now, my skills have improved so much, and I was never entirely happy with it as it was - and what better to put in a Young Adult illustration portfolio than a redo of a piece I myself did as a young adult? Plus, I'd come across the photos I took for it back in the day, while I was sorting out files on my computer. It was fate!

Here's the final piece:

I designed it as a book cover. I know everyone generally says that you shouldn't include text in your illustration portfolio as illustrators aren't qualified to work with type - but I have a degree in design, and I do a lot of work for self publishers, who need to see that I can apply type to a cover for them. So as a compromise, I have a version with text available upon roll-over on my website. Best of both worlds!

This isn't a real book. I came up with a title that fitted the image, and used a random name generator until I snagged one I liked for the author. I envisage that text being shiny gold foil....

It's quite a radical departure from the original painting I did back in 2004. I was referencing the Pre Raphaelites when I did it, and looking at the Victorian language of flowers. The plan was to do something very lush and a bit Bollywood inspired, with a huge bunch of white carnations, with a single red rose in the middle. But my art teacher didn't like that idea, and insisted I use coloured carnations, which really mucked up the message. I didn't paint the flowers very well anyway (not aided by the fact that I was working in oil paint, which gives me a bad migraine. Not the best situation for good painting!)

Here is the original:

Yeah. Oil paints really aren't my thing! 

So this was a chance to do it over, see how much I'd improved, and get more of the feel I'd originally been going for when I did the painting. However, I'm still scarred from painting all those carnations with a migraine, and I just couldn't bring myself to do a page full of carnations. So I went with all roses, influenced, no doubt, by the fact that I was listening to Robin Mckinley's Rose Daughter at the time.

Here's the reference photo. Isn't my friend gorgeous?

And here's a progress animation:

As you can see, one of the final stages was to add a colour adjustment and some lighting. That's the beauty of Photoshop. I also duplicated a lot of the roses, for which I am not sorry. =P 

All-up this took about 20 to 25 hours, and I did it in Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. No oil-paint-migraines for me this time!

Christening Cards

When Colour Collective's 'Clover Green' prompt came around, what I *really* needed to be doing was a couple of Christening cards for my cousin's two daughters, so I used the colour in the cards to get two things done at once. 

The card I shared for Colour Collective featured this illustration. This is Mary, the older of the sisters (she's nearly four). I wanted to go with a very spring theme as that seemed appropriate for a Christening card:

I added text to make it into a card:

And I also made another card for her sister Jemima - but just with flowers on, as Jemima is only six months old:

I used the same font family (Storytime) on both cards, to tie them together, and used daisies on both, as white flowers are popular for Christenings.

I added clear glitter to both cards, but I didn't have time to take a photo of the final result. It was one of those weeks where it was all go! =P

Both cards done in Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Christmas Cards 2016

Here are the Christmas cards I designed for us to send out this year. I always try to do something really fancy for our Christmas cards, and right now I think these are my favourites of all the cards I've done!

All the glittery baubles are made with a glitter texture from (I think, I did these a few months ago) CGTextures.com, but as my mother insists on sparkly cards, the halos were gilded with Cosmic Shimmer Gilding Flakes after they were printed:

Here's a video I posted on Instagram when I did my print test prior to sending the cards off to print, so you can see how shiny they are:

A video posted by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Sep 27, 2016 at 5:31am PDT

We found the gilding flakes at a craft fair, and decided that we had to have them for the Christmas cards, so I designed our cards specifically around the flakes. We used two colours of flakes:

Mulled Wine:

And Autumn Leaves:

Read on for a video of the gilding application, and progress gifs, thumbnails and more:

Penguin Christmas Cards

Here are some Custom Christmas cards I created for some friends this year. Late last year they went on a photography trip to Antarctica - we had already ordered the cards before they left, so there was no Antarctica theme (I did a Carnaby Cockatoo instead), but this year they are spreading the penguin love. 

I used a faux woodcut style, to match the cards I did last year. I was given this photograph to use:

Originally the idea was to enlarge the boat behind them, and have it driven (do you drive a boat?) by Father Christmas, but when it came to actually getting the cards done I had a crashing migraine (and I do mean a real one, not just a headache, I'd spent the day throwing up, after the tooth infection and root canal I had also had that week - my time to work on the cards before print deadline rapidly slipped away from me) and I asked if I could do something a bit simpler. So I gave the two penguins a bauble to play with, and reused the background text from last year's card. I'm really rather pleased that we did, the two cards match each other beautifully, I think! 

I did two colour-ways as we got them printed at Moo and wanted to take advantage of the printfinity option:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2016 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About 4 hours.

Lapphund Christmas Cards 2016

A new Christmas card to add to the lineup for some lovely friends. I've been doing their cards since 2013 and they have evolved from one finnish lapphund, to two finnish lapphunds, to the addition of a baby. Said baby is now a cheeky toddler, and I thought it was about time he got up to some Christmas Card mischief!

The original sketch for this was a little different - I initially had the two dogs joining in with painting the wall, but it was decided that as they are generally more placid and long-suffering than they are naughty it would be better to reflect that. Here are the two sketches side by side. I switched orientation as I felt it worked better. 

Here's a progress animation:

Of course, I used reference photos (these cards are, after all, a slightly more arty equivalent of family-photo cards - they have to look accurate!), and I also used some free finger-paint brushes for the Christmas tree. I'm pretty sure they were these ones.  The nappy cover is inspired by the many wonderful ones he's regularly dressed in. I couldn't leave it plain when he always has such stylish ones!

I did two colour-ways, as usual, as we get them printed at Moo, and it's nice to take advantage of the printfinity option. Back when it was only dogs I used to do two different designs, but lately it's just been different colours. 

Here's the whole line-up of cards. I always keep to roughly the same look. I've linked to the corresponding blog posts if you want to read more about any of these:

From 2013:

From 2014:

From 2015:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2016 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About 6–8 hours, I think. 

Anniversary Roses

I needed a 50th Wedding Anniversary card, and isn't that a perfect excuse to play around with creating another floral design?

The flowers for the 50th Anniversary are yellow roses and violets, so they formed the basis for my design. I then filled up empty space with some miscellaneous leaves and some baby's breath, that being a suitably wedding-themed type of flower. 

 

I approved of being basically forced to put purple and yellow together. I like working with colours on opposite sides of the colour wheel!

The metal for this anniversary is of course gold, so out came the gold glitter again:

In an ideal world I would be able to print all cards properly, instead of printing them out on photo paper and mounting them on cardstock. But until I get so amazingly organised that I have all cards ready a year in advance and can send them off to Moo for printing (i.e. never).... this is the way they are done.

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2.

Mothers' Day 2016

Here's the card I made my lovely mother for Mother's Day this year. I've been working on creating some more commercial-type illustrations in addition to my kidlitart stuff, and this was one of those experiments. I think it worked quite well!

I chose chrysanthemums because my father bought her a deep pink chrysanthemum as a present (I bought her a blue butterfly bush and put money towards a dwarf mulberry tree, but they didn't all work together....) and added some gerberas in a contrasting colour and some miscellaneous leaves to keep everything bright. 

And because my mother loves glitter cards, I glittered the text after I had printed it:

I'm pretty pleased with it. I think it looks like something you could buy in a greeting card shop, and I think I shall try more things like this. 

I've also turned it into a repeating pattern:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. I spent four hours on it, but I was watching tv at the same time, so that wasn't solid work by any means. The fonts are from the Storyteller family. 

The Little Book of Silly Rhymes & Odd Verses

In January, Ian Andrew contacted me, looking for illustrations for his poetry book, The Little Book of Silly Rhymes & Odd Verses. He didn't want polished illustrations, he wanted sketches that weren't too refined (in his words, 'crude') - a departure for me, but I always do my best to deliver on what a client wants! I sent him links to a few of my sketchbook pieces to check that that was what he was after, and he was happy with the level of detail.

As well as the interior illustrations, I also did the cover and the typesetting. I also did work on the Kindle version, but due to technical difficulties Ian did most of it himself. (Amazon's Kindle plugin for inDesign doesn't work with Creative Cloud, stopping at CS6, the Kindle Previewer doesn't work on my iMac. I did a lot of fiddling on an ancient macbook that still has CS4 on and can just about handle it, but the Kindle plugin also doesn't allow images behind text and insisted on showing them as incredibly tiny thumbnails. In the end I sent the stuff to Ian and he put it together in Amazon's Kid's Book Creator (which I could use, but the preview didn't work. I'm inclined to think Amazon could provide better software!)

I did 18 sketch illustrations for the book overall, plus the cover. Ian was great to work with. I initially worked out each image digitally and sent him a pdf of the book with the drafts in place. He didn't want any substantial changes other than the addition of one more drawing. I then used my lightbox to sketch directly over my drafts on fresh layout paper, keeping things as loose as I could. This was a little tricky for me, as usually I refine everything (probably a little too much) so I worked hard at not obsessing over details. 

Here is a small sample:

This Chihuahua is based on a real one. I was sent photos to use as reference, and it was the grumpiest chihuahua I have ever seen. I adjusted the elf costume a bit, as the original would have looked a bit weird in a rough pencil sketch. 

One of the poems was about the Irish town of Larne. The artist is Larne watercolourist Sam McLarnon who is mentioned in the poem and was loosely referenced from an image by Bernie McAllister - a relative of Ian, which was handy! Ian asked that I use that image for the cover as well. 

When I'd painted the cover and filled the gaps left in the original sketch for the text, I decided that the front was really too bare. It needed something more. I toyed with the idea of various boats, but eventually settled on a few seagulls, just to fill up the space and add a touch more interest. Many of the poems are quite reflective, so I didn't want anything too wacky - wheeling gulls seemed to fit the bill. 

The cover is set in Trajan Pro and Melany Lane (apart from the S in 'silly', I dropped in an S from Recherche and altered it by hand to fit with the other letters. Ian felt, quite reasonably, that the original S was difficult to read.)

Here's a look at the back of the printed book:

Ian was very happy with the final product, which pleased me a lot. I love a happy client! Yay! He was also kind enough to leave me the following lovely testimonial:

Alison’s skill in producing perfectly tailored imagery that matched my words, was a revelation. With a minimal brief she delivered illustrations that were so much better than any I could have imagined. Her work is the true testament to her vision and creativity.

You can buy The Little Book of Silly Rhymes & Odd Verses in paperback or Kindle. Ian's poems are very good, I can recommend it for anyone who likes poetry anthologies. (I receive no royalties from the sale of this book)

Ian has also written several thrillers that are well-regarded. You can find them on Amazon also.