Layer

At last a bit of time to myself and a subject from Illustration Friday that immediately inspired me - as I've been using layers in my illustrations lately.

This shows how I work from my initial pen and ink drawing in my sketch book. I scan in my illustration and turn it into a graphic which I colour in and then maybe add some more decoration as I did here by drawing the green shapes. Finally I found a photo of some cracked mud, turned it into a line artwork, coloured it brown and clipped it into the shapes of my bag to show the effect of old leather.

This bag is very old and battered now but it's still my favourite.

© 2011 nicky linzey for illustration friday.

Charity Shop Challenge

I know it's late to talk about Christmas in mid January but I'm behind with my posts and hadn't mentioned this years Charity Shop Challenge. Again it went well and you can see the presents I received and some great finds I kept for myself.
However the earrings, bottom right, were a wonderful surprise from Gra who designed them and had them made. I think it was a traumatic time for him wondering if I'd like them - luckily I LOVE them. I wore them on Boxing Day to visit friends and promptly lost one. After spending a sleepless night imagining it gone forever, it was found the next morning in My Jack Russell's toy basket. A mystery!

Charity Shop Challenge

Happy New Year to everyone, hope you all had great holidays. I'm pleased to report that the Charity Shop Challenge was a great success. Even my brother who was very cynical about the whole thing enjoyed himself. It was great fun seeing what everyone had unearthed and we all ended up with some lovely presents, although one was broken by an over enthusiastic Jack Russell helping to unwrap - sorry - I can't even offer to replace it! Here is a selection above, and below are things I found but selfishly kept.

Must have been good - we've all agreed to do it again next year.

Surprised

It was a lovely surprise - for my birthday Gray bought me an Angie Lewin print - my favourite one - Salthouse. We'd been to Norfolk in July and went to a local gallery to try and find one of her prints - they had all sold. So it was a great surprise to me that Gray managed to track this one down in another Gallery and bought it for my birthday in August. I've had to wait a while but it finally arrived today and I love it. Thanks Gray. xx