Paper Queen sequence

So this is something I've been doing for uni lately.  We've been working on visual sequence.  It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to create a story with no words.  But anyway here's my sequence.  See if you can understand what's going on!

This is as far as I have got with the sequence so far.  It's about getting up in the morning on Christmas Eve and continuing from here,  the two characters are supposed to go and start doing christmassy things like decorating the tree and baking cookies for Santa.

 I've never done cut out illustration before and I am very much enjoying it but not sure that it works as well as my other stuff.  What do you think? I'd be grateful for any opinions!

Reindeer

It gets to December and every year I suddenly decide I love reindeers.  Wonder if it's something to do with the time of year...  I really want to see this version of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.  Has anyone else seen it and is it good?

Christmas Fairies

I'm going to put these on my tree!  I have loads more that I made so I might put them on etsy soon!

My friend Sian and I took these fairies to a craft fair the other week but unfortunately it was a bit of a wash out (or snow out)  and hardly any people turned up.  It was very disappointing.  So there are plenty left!

Sian was selling her beautiful hand painted cards which you can see here:

As you can see it was very empty^  It was like this the whole day!
Never the less we still enjoyed the experience!

More Paper Queen

Here are some more test images of the paper Queen sleeping in her boudoir...

And taking breakfast...

(boiled egg and soldiers)  I did this other version too but I think I prefer not being able to see all of her face.  I need to work on my faces and expressions anyway.

And then she stretches at the sunny window...

Enjoy!

Buckingham Palace

I've been quite obsessed with Castles and Palaces lately as you can probably tell.  This is why when the state rooms were open at Buckingham Palace this summer/autumn I just had to go!

It was a rainy cold day and as we approached the Palace we noticed that there were lots and lots of people milling around outside.  It soon became apparent that this was because it was time for the changing of the guards.  So we hung around to watch.  They were all wearing their grey overcoats because of the rain.

I did this drawing:

After waiting a good forty five minutes in a queue we eventually got inside the Palace.  It was pretty spectacular.  Everything was red and gold, sumptuous and luxurious.  I couldn't imagine what it must be like to live there!  It gave me some great ideas and was definitely inspiring.  I am learning more and more how important it is to feed the imagination and not expect it to work in a vacuum.

 Throne room^  (I have to admit, I did expect the actual thrones to be a bit more impressive looking.)

After seeing the Palace we went to look at the royal stables.  They have a proper name but I can't remember it right now.  This is where we saw these amazing royal coaches like this gold one here:

It reminds me of something from a fairytale!

After being blown away by all this splendour and beauty we went to the gift shop and I found the nicest advent calendar:

And which is why I thought in a roundabout way this Buckingam Palace post would be appropriate for today!

Paper Queen

You probably won't remember this time two years ago when I wrote about my Snow Queen Paper Palace (well just bedroom really).  It must have been one of my first blog posts.  Anyway recently I've been experimenting with the way I make pictures and illustrations.  For some reason I kept thinking about my Snow Queen bedroom and decided that I really really wanted to experiment with some more stuff like this. But this time to actually make illustrations out of it.

So for the past couple of weeks I've been creating another royal room.  I plan to make three.  Bedroom, dining room, sitting room.  And it's all going to go towards making a little story about a bossy Queen.

Here's the bedroom as it is.  (click to enlarge)  The Queen is sitting in her bed at the moment, just waking up. 

I found this amazing paper with crowns on it that I used for the wallpaper.  You can get it in pink as well and I plan to use some for when I decorate my castle.

And here is a close up of the dressing table with all its bottles and perfumes:

And I even made a book case with tiny books in it! some of them open and have real pages.

Prettly much EVERYTHING is made out of paper.

And.. here are some of my very first experimentations at 3d/papercut/photographic/whatever it's called illustration.  (The Queen waking up in the morning.)

I think I need to work a lot more on the lighting. But for test shoots I don't think they came out too badly.

What do you think?

Cats and Snowflakes

Magic Cats having a tea party.

I found this book on snowflakes the other day in a charity shop.  Literally just photograph after photograph of beautiful snowflakes.  It's amazing how different they all are!

 ('Snowflakes' featuring the amazing micro-photography of Kenneth Libbrecht)

More castles... and a scarf.

Lately I've been putting all my castle research together to draw my own imaginary one!  It's a big picture so I wanted to record it in stages just in case I totally messed up. 

It hasn't come out as well in this photo but I think it's finished!  I'm not sure whether I need to work on the lighting a bit more.  Still, it was only an experiment.

Lately I've also been knitting a scarf for Henry.  A very long one!

I'm quite proud of it seeing as I've never knitted anything as big or time consuming before.  (It has a few holes in it but shh!)

I hope you all had an exciting and spooky Halloween!