stormy weather

What started as a dull, dreich day has turned into thunder storm - torrential rain, thunder and lightning. Me and Jackson have spent 20 minutes with our faces pressed to the kitchen window watching the rain bounce off the trees and turn the patio into a river. Jack's first thunder storm (that he can remember anyway) and he thought it was great fun!
After a hectic week I've finished all the commissions due at the same time! Two illustrations for the summer issue of Juno, and a pet portrait of Jessie the Jack Russell. Now I have time on my hands to seek out some new commissions - still searching for the next elusive book commission...

Hey, it makes me mad....

..when you think you have comments and its some crappy spam thing. Does anyone else have this problem? I have been neglecting this blog of late but that's the reason why - I quess it's kind of demoralising when you go to the effort and all you get back is crappy spam. Hmmm, maybe no-one else has even seen my blog!
Plus, I can't search the blogs anymore (ie for illustration) only a SPECIFIC blog - so I just have to use the 'next blog' button which could take me a million years to find anything interesting to me! If anyone can shed some light, I'd be most grateful, ta!
Meanwhile, here's a pic of me at my day job (as I'm at work now with no access to my illustrations!). I'm in the middle!

chicken out

This is something that's been trying to get out for ages - studies of chickens. Not sure why exactly, there's something about them that I find fascinating. I think they remind of dinosaurs and as I child I knew every dinosaur name...

This is the second illustration for the next issue of Juno magazine. I'm definitely entering a 'folkie' stage.

part of the process

After seeing the work on wishes & heroes blog, I'm inspired to try collage for the next Juno illustration - and I love the process! I'm having so much fun it's a real pain to have to stop tonight. It's to illustrate an article on reducing your carbon footprint, so the whole recycling/reuse aspect of collage feels very appropriate. Here's a detail from the illustration.

dark island

The Juno illustration is hopefully finished, just need to get a final approval from Emma, the editor. Then one more to do for the same issue... The biggest excitement of the day is that, after four weeks of practice, I can finally play Dark Island on the clarsach and it actually sounds like a tune! I've been playing it so much tonight my back aches.

Juno

Rough for the latest illustration for Juno magazine - all about how many cultures have male rites of passage but none for women because childbirth IS a rite of passage. And how modern society has eroded this with the expectation that women carry on as normal during pregnancy.