Old Uncle Horace Cartoons

Quite a few people have asked me how I make the Uncle Horace cartoons. Do I draw on old papers or do I use tea or other mediums to give the paper an old feel? And a few other questions as well. So I thought  it was time that I explain the process.

After I have my idea and have done my research (on plants etc.) for the cartoon, I first start by sketching the idea out in pencil on normal white paper:

Then I carefully ink in the lines, tidying things up as I go along and adding fur to Nim. I use a fine mapping nib for their little faces and a fat, blobby script nib for their bodies and their environment. I use waterproof black indian ink (Windsor and Newton), which does not bleed when adding watercolour.

After the inking, I erase all the pencil lines and colour the whole cartoon with watercolours. I tend to stick to a limited palette, so that the whole series of cartoons hang together. I only use one red, the same red I use to make my pinks, only one green and one blue. I use a few browns though, as they all need a slightly different colour fur. 

And at that point I scan the illustration in and put it into photoshop. I have a large selection of scanned in antique papers that I have picked up over the years from antique shops, flea markets, e-bay, etc. I love them. Don't quite know why, but there is something really appealing in those old yellowed papers and the old fashioned script writing. I select the papers that I think will work with the specific cartoon and blend them in photoshop. Often there are at least 3 layers of old papers blended together, using different blending options for each paper, depending on the effect and atmosphere I am after (light, dark, night, happy, sad, etc.)

Then last, but not least, I copy-paste the illustration into the file as the top layer and use a 'linear' blend so that the cartoon shines through bright and clear. To keep Edie's feathers as nice and white as she likes them to be, I add a little bit of white with the paint bucket tool, usually on about 50% opacity. That keeps her happy! All the others, I'm afraid, will have to be happy with the way their fur comes out in the linear blend. But then Edie is our special Diva Duck!

And that, in short, is the process I go through. It takes about 2 to 3 hours to create each cartoon from beginning to end. You can find this cartoon and many others on http://fiercegreymouse.blogspot.co.uk/

To view the sample pictures at full size, just click on them.

Valentine's Day Emergency?

If you've forgotten to buy your loved one a Valentine's Day card, don't panic, click on on of the cards below to get them up to full size, print it, cut it out, fold in half, write in a loving message, and hey presto! An instant Valentines Day card!

Happy Valentines Day everybody!

Portfolios

Today I finally choose my final 20 illustrations to upload to the AOI (Association of Illustrators) Portfolio website. 

Choosing the best of your own work is one of the most difficult things, as you throw your heart and soul in creating all your illustrations and they are all dear to you for one reason or another. So how do you choose what to display in your professional portfolio, which you hope will give you the best chance of work?

Before starting my selection I had 2 portfolio reviews. One with a professional illustrator and one with the AOI itself. Both had some good advice:

• The top tip I was given is this one: In your portfolio show clearly "this is who I am and this is how you can use me." Everything else just links back into that statement.
• Understand what makes your style 'your style'; even when you display illustrations made with different materials there should still be something that is recognisably you.
• Make the portfolio memorable; consistency of style helps and starting and ending with a BANG! helps too
• Show only what you can do again (eg I removed all my etchings as I do not have access to a printing press)
• Show only what you want to do (in my case children's illustration and greeting cards)
• If you are seeing a potential customer with your portfolio, amend your portfolio to suit what you think they need 
• Pieces should show your skills and potential
• Have some variety in images to keep the attention of the viewer, but be consistent in style
• Only choose your best pieces, reduce, reduce, reduce. You can show all your work when you are ancient and they organise an exhibition with overview of your life's work. But for your portfolio you need to choose.

Then I read on-line portfolio advice and there is a lot of it out there! Just do a Google search on "What makes a good portfolio" and it will find 156,000,000 in less then half a second. A lot from reliable sources, just take your pick. But they all come down to that first bit of advice: "this is who I am and this is how you can use me" and then lots of talk about presenting things in an original and clean, tidy, organised manner (which in this case was not relevant as it was for an on-line, pre-structured portfolio).

Last but not least, I asked friends and family for their views. I sent them, what I thought of as my top 32 illustrations and asked them to reduce it to 20. I then entered all the results in a spreadsheet and interestingly enough their independent voting was very consistent. Only 1 or 2 surprises. But a real good indication of what should go in and what should go in first. There were 3 illustrations that everybody voted for unanimously:

And then there was one that to me was a surprise choice. I had put it in because my partner likes it so much, I had originally not even put it in my selection of 32 illustrations! But guess what? It became number 4 after the top 3 and from what I can see from the one day that the portfolio is on-line it is the most looked at image from my range! Interesting...

Useful to have a top 5 as well for when agencies for example only want about 5 images as an initial submission. This was number 5 in my top illustration charts, some sketched studies for a little girl in a picture book I recently wrote:

For the other 15  images, I went down the list in order of their score and added the high scoring illustrations, with only 2 pictures that I really wanted in there myself, no matter what their score was.

So did I get it right? Only time will tell. But if in the mean time you would like to see the full portfolio and discover who I think I am as an illustrator and how you can use me, you can click here to see my brand spanking new portfolio on the AOI website! 

Watercolour 101

A little while back a friend of mine asked me about some tips about painting with watercolours and I thought it might be useful to list a few tips and tricks on this blog. So here we go!

First of all, as with all illustration or art work, the better materials you use the easier your life is and often the better your results will be. The same works for watercolours.

It is well worth investing in a few good watercolour paint brushes. My favourite paint brushes are the sable brushes from Windsor and Newton. They are expensive, but I find you only need 2 of these to do all your work. I have a size 5 that I use for almost everything, (even the finest, smallest detail) and a size 10 to cover big surfaces. I have a few other brushes, but never use them. If you look after your brushes (not leave them in your pot of water, rinse them well, store them lying down in a protective holder of some kind) they will last for years and years.

Good paper makes a huge difference too. Depending on the effect you want you can choose a textured or a smooth paper. But do note that although textured watercolour papers give lovely effects, if you need to scan your illustrations in, you will always see the texture of the paper in the scans, which you might not want. 

watercolour illustration on textured paper, texture still visible (click on picture to see larger image)

I usually use smooth papers and love the Fabriano Artistico HP papers. 

illustration on smooth watercolour paper

For small illustrations, or illustrations without backgrounds my normal Artway Studio wirebound sketchbooks work well too. I found there is no need to go expensive for those. This tends to be the paper I use most of all.

watercolours on smooth sketchbook paper (Artway Studio)

And then of course the paints. Again for the best results and ease of working use artist quality paints. I like the Windsor and Newton Artist's watercolours in little tubes. With each paint it is worthwhile experimenting a bit with wet in wet, painting some on and dropping a drop of water in them, wet on dry and colour in colour. Just to see how each colour responds to each treatment. Different pigments will act differently and some give lovely textures and edges when used on dry paper with a little bit of water dropped into them for example. It is useful to make a sample paper and write with each little experiment what you have done.

Raw umber dropped into naples yellow gives a lovely textured shadow on Enid's tummy

So good brushes, good paper and good paints are your best friends together with a soft cloth or some kitchen towel. Because whilst the paint is still wet, you can still soak it back up with your cloth or with your (clean) paint brush.You can move it around and change things until it is dry. 

For me the joy of watercolour is working fast. You can be very precise and work slowly with watercolours, but they are at their best when you work fast. Going outside your line or leaving little gaps and creating edges keep the painting alive. Move the paints around, enjoy the speed and flow. Don't be scared of working fast, but enjoy it.

animals moving fast, need fast painting too!

Creating textures is another joy with watercolours. A simple way is to just drop a clean drop of water into your still wet painted surface. But more can be done. Sprinkle a bit of salt in your still wet paints, let it dry and wipe the dry salt off. Wonderful stars appear! Or put some cling film on top of your still wet paints and hey presto, great patterns appear when it has dried.

cling film and salt used on a mix of turquoise and prussian blue wet in wet watercolour paints

There is lots more to say about watercolours, but in short, I love them and hope you will enjoy them too!

Summary:

• use good materials, the best you can afford
• always have clean water at hand and a cloth
• enjoy working fast
• have fun experimenting with textures and possibilities and note down what you did with each experiment (if your memory is as bad as mine that is...)

Christmas Fair

If you are looking for something fun to do on Saturday or Sunday (8 and 9 December), you might like to visit the Burbage Christmas Tree Fair.The fair is always good fun, has a great atmosphere and gets us all in the Christmas spirit!  It takes place in the Burbage Church Hall and in front of the church itself, from 9 - 6 on Saturday and 9 - 4 on Sunday. You can get your Christmas Tree there, but you can also shop for original gifts, art, cards, and christmas decorations. For a tasty snack during the day, Nick Venters' famous sausages will be for sale and best of all there will be mulled wine for everybody! 

I have table at the fair (inside the Church Hall) and will be selling illustrated Christmas Cards, Gift tags, Old Uncle Horace tiny, mini book of Great Wisdom and original art work (etches). I am sharing the table with local artist Rosemary Cook, who will be selling original artwork, prints and cards. 

This year the fair is even more exciting as Barbara Townsend will be launching her new story book about the Savernake Big Belly Oak, which I illustrated, at the fair. For more information about the book you can click here.

(illustration from 'The Savernake Big Belly Oak' by Barbara Townsend)

I am really looking forward to the fair, it is such a great event and I so hope to see you there this weekend!

I will leave you with a few sample pages from the limited edition mini booklet "Old uncle Horace's tiny book of Great wisdom and a little story about rhubarb". Some of which are also available as Christmas cards.

Black and White

I have come upon an interesting dilemma this week and just cannot make my mind up. Here it is:

I posted a few draft black and white ink and pencil sketches / illustrations for a new picture book I have written (called 'Sebastian') on the portfolio page of my website, and on Facebook and Twitter. The response to them was overwhelmingly positive (which was great) but for them to stay in black and white. Rather than being inked in and painted with watercolour which I had planned to do.

These are the images I posted:

The illustrations are for a picture book for 3 - 6 year olds. So I had in mind to ink and colour them in with watercolour, as I normally do. These were just some trials for composition and to see how things would work with the texts on the pages. 

I did one page in full colour. This is what it looks like:

But with all the wonderful comments about keeping them in black and white, my dilemma started. Would it work, a picture book in black and white for such a young audience? Would publishers go for it? Or maybe I should do some in colour (the day time scenes) and others in black and white (the night scenes at the duck pond)? Or be safe and paint them all in colour?

Doing some research on-line I found that most black and white illustrations are for older children, and not really in picture books. Although I do have a beautifully pencil illustrated  picture book by Ian Andrew, The Lion and the Mouse. But he does use coloured borders (which I think actually detract from his beautiful pencil drawings). And then there is of course the fun Olivia the piglet picture book series, which is in black and white but with lots of splashes of bright red, giving it a cheerful look and feel. Rather than the more moody, atmospheric feel my black and white illustrations ended up with.

What do you think? Would publishers go for a black and white or partly black and white picture book? Should I be daring and try this different approach? I'd be very interested in your views and comments as I still don't know what to do!

Pugs!

During the last few months I have been working on a picture book written by David Hoskins,with an unlikely hero, a little pug dog! It was great fun illustrating this book, not least of all in finding reference materials with pugs in it (and chihuahuas and dachshunds for his friends). 

Judging by the images I found, I have come to the conclusion that most pug owners and lovers are a little bit mad (in the best possible way...). Here a few examples of the weird and wonderful world of pugs.

adorable but crazy: (found on the girlybubble blog)

more adorable and crazy: (found on cutestpaw.com)

You get the idea.

After looking and carefully drawing life like pugs, time had come to stylise the little fellow. Here a few examples of the different designs I went through to design the final character:

With pugs have such strange, and somehow adorably squashed faces it was quite a struggle at first to get a character that I felt worked and was in keeping with the other characters in the book. Andt in the end this is what I settled for (see Little Pug here together with his chihuahua friend Ruben):

A serious pug, thoughtful and gentle. 

Well, I don't want to give too much away, but here another picture to give you an idea of the style of illustration and the excitement to be had in the story. If you would like to see a few more samples, you can have a look in my updated portfolio. 

Next to updating my portfolio pages, I have also updated the news page on my website, with all the latest projects and events ready for you to read. A new book by Barbara Townsend, which I illustrated, 'The Savernake Forest Big Belly Oak', will be launched on the 8th of December and there is a new app I'm working on with Tizio Publishing (InsomniApp), who also published my Fierce Grey Mouse picture book. The app's look and feel will be painterly and illustrative, in the same vane as Fierce Grey Mouse. But more about all this in the next blog!