A little break

Hello,

I've had a lovely week.  I finally took a proper few days off and incredibly picked the week with the best weather so far :D!  I went to visit my family back in Norfolk and spent time in the countryside, and by the coast, in what was permanent sunshine, I really could not believe my luck.  As the weather was so good it was also the perfect excuse to try several varieties of delicious ice cream, yum.  Below are some pictures of my time there.

I really enjoyed getting away, I've come back full of new ideas, and got to work on some new illustrations inspired by my travels.  I love creating work in this way.
In honour of the sun (which is not with me today :(, it has been a day of rain) here's a recent sunny Illustration I created all about bees.  I wanted a really limited sunny warm toned palette for this one.

I hope you've had a great week and enjoyed the sunshine if it was around where you were :). 

New Year, home and away

Hello,

Happy New Year!  I hope 2018 will be a great one for all of us, personally I'm pretty excited to see what it will bring.  I hope if you had a break over Christmas and New Year it was a lovely one and you're all feeling well fed and happy! (I was sent back with a food parcel and I still have some left!)

I had a lovely break, I went to see my family and it was good to have a few days off, I think I needed to wind down a bit.  I got back before New Year and have been working hard since then.  When I do have a break, I find I always come back full of energy and ready to get on.  I also find a change of scene really helps my work and gives me inspiration for some new creations.  I was particularly looking forward to walking out in the countryside and by the coast.  Living in London I really appreciate being able to do this whenever I go home.  I often visit places I went to when I was a child so they feel very familiar.  This time I went walking near Cromer and then went onto the beach (I am sea obsessed, I always need to get close to it).  When I got back here I created some work inspired by the famous Cromer crab.

Here's a couple of photos from the beach, it's quite rocky but the colours of the stones are so pretty and there was some beautifully coloured seaweed.  Nature has such amazing colours.  It was pretty cold by the way, but I am a weed in the cold!

I hope you had a lovely start to the year and here's hoping 2018 will be a great one for us all! :)

A day at the beach

Hello,

A few weeks back I took a little trip back to Norfolk and visited what is possibly my favourite beach there.  As a child I used to go regularly to Wells-next-the-sea so I have a lot of happy memories from that time.  It's great to go when the it's a lovely hot day and you can paddle.  The tide goes out a long way but leaves little pools behind so you have warmish water to swim and paddle in, I love it!  The beach is huge so even if it's busy you can walk and walk and get away from it all.  There's a pine forest behind the beach huts which you can also wander through.  I've been when it's hot, when it's cold and windy too, it's just a lovely place to go to whatever the weather.
So after that little visit I made a piece of work based on it.  I spent ages working on the colours for the huts.  In reality they're all a variety of colours but I wanted them all to relate to each other and share the colouring.
Here's the finished piece

Here's some of the work in progress colour sketches.  I tend to make a lot so I can really sort colours and have all sorts of scraps with marks and textures which I then keep as they are so helpful for future work.  Then I piece it all together before working on the final.

Here's some photos of the beach, ahh it's a lovely hot day today and it would be great to be there!

I hope you're having a lovely weekend, I'm gazing out at a lovely blue sky and looking forward to another sunny day tomorrow :)