Magazine collab with Jo Ives

I'm working alongside fashion student Jo Ives for her final major project. She is creating a magazine aimed at children that doesn't undermine them or patronise. The idea is for it to be quirky, visually interesting and it can't talk down to the potential readers. After seeing her roughs and intended photography for the magazine I was really excited about this venture. She created a few plush toys which feature in the magazine and these are some of the illustrations I have done to support her imagery.

Illustrations for Teen Book magazine

Worked on a few more make up illustrations for the latest issue of Teenbook Magazine, it should be up soon so I'll post a link when it is.

Explosive Drawing

Decided to have an arty evening in my room. Few friends came round and we got painty! A very loose theme of Alice in wonderland... any excuse for my friends to draw cats and rabbits really!

Shifted a load of my things to one side of the room. What a mess!

A backing layer of newspaper just to look out for the walls..

Then a white paper layer and we got going!!

The Sparrows Gifts

Open publication - Free publishing - More envy

Narrative unit

My current project involves illustrating a narrative. I have chosen a Japanese folk tale entitled 'The Sparrows gifts'. We needed 4 final images, but that was just too few to tell the story. Hopefully it'll all be complied into a book by the weekend... PRESSURE!! My dead line is the first. So here are my final images and a bit of sketchbook work for you to oogle.  

Basic plot : Woman nurses injured sparrow, this sparrow then brings her a seed, she plants it, and delicious gourds grow from it. The dried gourds even contain rice and the family become incredible wealthy. The neighbours are jealous and harass their mother to be just as successful so she injures a few sparrows and then nurses them back to perfect health. However these are some pretty spiteful sparrows, and she gets her comeuppance. They bring her seeds but these gourds are disgusting and the dried ones are filled with snakes and wasps, which eventually sting the woman and her family. 

Moral of the story : don't anger the birds. 

Sparrow Lino

Prints from my Lino. I wanted to to a few more layers but it wasn't possible as I went home for the holidays. Still, nice to try it out!