Ta for the post! & I'm not slacking!

My thanks to Dave Coustan and Tom Harris over at "earthling blog" for posting a link to this blog in their list of sketchblogs to look at - "blogs without all the reading". Just to be mentioned in the same list as DRAWN is very flattering indeed. It's a great boost to know that there are some people who tune in from time to time ... if you are one of them, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I'll try to make it worth the visit! :)

If you are wondering why I've not posted to Illustration friday for the last couple of weeks, I'm not slacking, honest. To cut a long story short I was very lucky enough to be posted on drawn.ca last month which then lead to me being contacted by an children's book illustration agent over in the US who expressed an interest in wanting to represent me in America...woohoo!!! My heartfelt thanks once again to John Martz at drawn.ca! So all my free time is now spent working up pieces which my agent (that sounds really nice to say) can show to publishers. Like many illustrators out there I have lots of ideas for children's picture books, and now is the perfect time to bring them to life. Expect sketches and page layouts in the near future... At the moment I'm writing and rough sketching...watch this space!

Elephants for auction

Here are watercolours which I'd promised to do for a charity auction: elephant research I don't know that I'm totally happy with one of the more naturalistic of the watercolours but Its's made a pleasant change to work with real paint again after all my digital work of late. If anyone has seen my earlier posts you might recognize that a couple of the watercolours are based on a digital elephant I did last month. I found it really useful to go back into my original psd document and switch off layers to plan out my painting. I didn't try to recreate the digital with watercolour (that would just get frustrating) but it was great to have something to aim for.

Xmas elephant

This is a design I've been working on for an elephant charity xmas card. I've tried to appeal to as wide an audience as possible with this (unlike some of my other elephants perhaps...), after all we want to sell as many cards as possible. Fingers crossed it's suitable.

G is for Giraffe

Here's the latest in my ongoing animal alphabet. This one took two just to fit her all in!