Reflections and Portraits

Hello my lovely friends.  How have you been?  (I guess I'm not really expecting an answer, I have deserted you for quite a while now it seems!

So what's been going on I might hear you ask? 

This year has been pretty hectic, lots of orders, new products and kids keeping me occupied.

I was also diagnosed  with Fibro this year and it made me reevaluate a few things.  I noticed I was getting increasing pain in my hands and my eyesight was getting worse so I found I was making more mistakes.  Don't even get me started on the brain fog, I have to write everything down otherwise it's instantly forgotten. 

Well in an attempt to be more consistent with my illustration I have moved to using an IPad Pro for all my designing and then printing on top quality card rather than all hand drawing.

My original method was to sketch on paper, get approval from the customer,  make any changes if needed,  then scanning, redrawing and then colouring  (and that was on a good day, often the pen might slip as my hands hurt, or I would draw a line a little too thick or occasionally take a pen lid off and it explode. )  If I found any problems I would redo.  Some portraits could easily take several hours just because of a tiny mistake.

As you can imagine this had to stop, or at least change!

It was a real battle with my brain and heart though.  My brain wanted to be practical and produce top quality portraits every time.  But my heart felt it wasn't truly hand made, that customers wouldn't expect something digital to be hand drawn.  What do you think?  I started to realise that it isn't always the way you make something but the results with some handmade items.  If I realistically charged for all the time a portrait took, with all the redos and customers wanting last minute changes no one could afford it! But, if I drew it digitally I could easily make these alterations, reduce my time and the pain in my hands.

I also discovered a wonderful new plan formed...... but I will tell you more about that another time or you will be sooooooo bored of such a long wordy post!

So today I thought I would show you a little look at my portrait style as it has changed over the years and how they look now.    

My first portrait.  You may notice noone has any necks!

I did love this one though and it was for a friend and never sold so don't panic any of you copyright police out there!  (that's usually me lol)

My portraits started to have tiny necks and longer legs.  

Another hand drawn portrait, this one has so much texture and that kilt!!!!  Oh my that took hours to get the pattern right!

You may notice that hand drawn portraits are much harder to photograph too, so much detail is lost in the image.

In fact it took well over a year for my characters to start getting more realistic proportions.  I've never liked the idea of drawing someone as large or thin, busty or flat.  I tend to create my portraits with a feeling of their inner child.  I do get asked to make people larger or thinner mind so I have started to do that now.

Here is a portrait  I was asked to create for a preschool!  What a great way for people to identify with the staff in the setting in a friendly way.  This portrait was digital, and just as well as there were a few alterations, people to be added and others who had changed job roles. Here it is again all festived up ready for Christmas cards!

Here are some other fantastic portraits.  These are all digital and I really love the detail and the new style.

So that's it from me until the next post!  (hopefully in less than 6 months!)

I will be sharing this post on the wonderful Handmade Monday so do pop by and check out some other amazing crafty blogs!

Jen xx

Mermaid wishes and starfish kisses

Hi all.  Anyone else drowning in the school holidays?  Ours haven't been all bad at all, just very full on! I have to say I am a little looking forward to them finishing though!
So what have I been up to on the crafty front?  Well despite the chaos, inspiration seems to have been flooding my brain (and frustration at not having time to do all my ideas!).

I have been working on wedding portraits, here are a couple of couples I have recently illustrated.  There are before and after pics so you can see the similarities.  I also took a video so you can see the sparkly details on them. If you would like to order a wedding portrait then please click here.

I also started producing stock images which can be personalised.  So the first one is Mermaid!  You can be made into your very own mermaid!  The first one is me! Eeek! (I know I rarely show my face do I)  The second is of a lovely friend who ordered one as soon as she saw the first!  If you would like to be a mermaid then they are £20.  Each one has shiny accents adding lots of depth. (watch the video to see what I mean)  I am going to be adding names underneath too, these ones where my practise runs.

Edited - I have now added names and I think it makes them so much better! what do you think?

I have a few other designs in the pipeline including princesses, knights and invitations for kids parties. (all personalised of course)

I am hoping to produce these as cards as well ... hopefully!

I have also opened my order books to logo design.  So far these have been popular and with the started package being £20 with 50% off while I add to my portfolio I have a few to do.  I have 2 spaces left at the 50% price of £10.

So what do you get????

Well you will get a facebook profile pic logo on a square background (as facebook likes to crop images and cut bits off!) You will also get a larger logo jpeg and a watermarked png to put over your photos (I really need to do this to my photos)

Lastly ... I have sent my little book off to the printers! Yippee! Just have to wait to find out waiting times and costs and then I will open the order books for the first Crafty What Nots Children's box!  I'm so excitied!  I have decided that the first box will be aimed mainly at preschool and reception age.  I was going to create two boxes as well as a school and preschool box.  But as this is a pilot box I didn't want to be too ambitious.  So I made the decision to just do the younger age, then if it proves popular I will create the other boxes.  I just hope people will love the characters as much as I do!

If you would like to see what the characters have been getting up to then they have a Facebook page, just click the image below. 

Well I think that's enough for today! I will be off to link up with Handmade Monday, do pop by and read some lovely bogs!

Jen xx

Painting murals

It's been along time since I painted a mural so I thought it was about time I got creative in the house!  Our middle one was spending more time in our room at night than in her own, (I'm sure many of you can relate) It was driving us a little mad, a three year old tornado who kicked you and stole the covers in the night!  My cunning plan was to make her room so lovely she wouldn't want to leave it!
My ponderings took me to painting a mural.  I have done a few in the past and I have to say they work much better if you can work solidly on them rather than a stolen 10 minutes here and there.  But I had to work with what I had!
These pictures are a little dark I'm afraid, I took them at bedtime so that you could see the pretty fairy lights.  They are actually little butterflies which I staple gunned around the edge of the tree.

You may recognise some of the illustrations from past posts, I tried to keep them in keeping with the portraits I create.

Emily is just showing the size of the images.  It is quite a small room so quite difficult to photograph with out distorting things somewhat.

We had this odd box in the corner of her room which actually covers a slop from the stairwell ceiling.  this made a great spot for a seat.  I upcycled an old foam mattress (I made a right mess throughout the house cutting this up! Foam everywhere.)  I then covered is in a scrap of fake suede. It's quite deep but looks fab and is mega comfy as it has a memory foam top!  I was hoping it would make a nice nook to read.

I really struggled with what paint to use.  I bought some tester pots and used those mostly. When I needed more colour I mixed acrylic paint in white emulsion.  This seemed to work well.  

I then used a thick perminant maker to go around all the edges.  Over all I liked the effect. 

Here is a little video I took.

Well that's it for now!  I have decided I will be moving my blog to my website soon.  I am trying hard to have fewer things to maintain so moving my blog will help me keep my website up to date too... hopefully!  I will keep you posted however!

Well I'm off to visit homemade Monday so see you there xx 

Jenny xx

Valentines Day

Valentines Day.

Did you celebrate?  I must admit as I have gotten older it has become less exciting to me (think I am growing more pessimistic as each year goes on!)  either that or the thought of more stuff cluttering up my house puts me off!

Anyhow, that said I do like to try to create a little something special for the other half!

Here is my latest creation!  A family tree of us and our three girls.  This is a different format to my usual portraits, I love the quirkiness of the tree and that each of the girls names are written in the branches,   I also thought I would experiment with a little dimension and the couple in the front is raised as is the grass.  The whole thing was finished off in a Shadow frame.  The piece was 12x12".

I am not sure whether this is something I will start offering to sell, to be honest I'm not sure how to price it. What do you think?? Did you enjoy your valentines?

I'm popping by to link with handmade Monday, do pop by to say hi.