Exhibition, fame, rejection, festivals, fashion, jewellery, jumbles and creosote!

There has been lots going on since my last update. Obviously I have been generally sort of panicking about my exhibition at Sheffield Showcase which starts next Wednesday 1st June. In between, gathering frames and mount boards (and incredibly expensive mount board cutter - £21 I ask you!), looking at pictures in various frames, changing them around, thinking what to leave in/out, etc. There's no shortage of pieces to include and I have until next Tuesday to continue musing on the best combination of pieces and the best way to present them.

This week in preparation, and to publicise the event, I emailed some pictures and details off to the Sheffield Telegraph and I am very pleased to see today here I am in print!

It's all becoming very real! I do hope that I get some contacts or even, dare I say it, sales from the exhibition. Who knows?

So that's the FAME bit. And the EXHIBITION bit. Festivals?

Well I did an illustration about Wood Festival yesterday for Amelia's Magazine. It hasn't been published yet, but here's a sneak peek below. I really enjoyed doing a larger, busy, social scene and working in a colourful, happy, almost children's illustration-y way (there are lots of children in the image). It was a bit of a slog because at first I attempted to do all the colour digitally (when proficient this should save time), but as I am very much still learning it was a bit slow, and the colours came out too solid and bold, so I went back to basics and good old fashioned pencils and thumbs etc, for the colour, and enhanced just a bit digitally at the end!

Still good learning again. (learning what I'm not very good at - yet anyway!)

Here's that peek, the image pre-colour:

and a section post colour:

Now, Fashion, Jewellery, Jumble and Creosote.

Well, fashion wise I also did another fashion illustration today for Polish Fashion Week and Amelia's Magazine. More to follow. Jewellery, I was approached by the subject (human!) of one of my previous illustrations to do some illustrations for her own jewellery. Exciting! So that's a new collaboration I am very much looking forward to. Jumble - well the Dan Shaw CreatureMag illustration I did some time ago has got all a bit jumbled up, but the upshot is Betty from CreatureMag has asked me to do another illustration for the magazine. So that's also great.

(Again the explanation re: jumble will come later).

Finally Creosote: I've done an illustration of folksy muso King Creosote and his new collaborator, Jon Hopkins (quite a pretty boy). I was pretty pleased with the results. Pictures to be posted in next posts as Blogger for some reason puts your last uploaded picture at the beginning of your post so it all looks rather odd and is hard to change round.

Ahhhh... a last point I just remembered and added to the title: Rejection?! Royal Academy Summer Exhibition rejected my Ex-Fighter picture. Bar stewards! I received the letter yesterday. Still I now have to collect the picture so at least I have an excuse to go daan Laandaan for the day!

To be continued. . . .