OUIL602 - Ryan Humphrey

Even though a lot of Ryan Humphrey's work that I like could be classed as fan art, I think it's really unique the way that he draws semi realistic characters that are really easily recognisable. I still have trouble finding a way I enjoy drawing people, and I know that it's good to experiment but I want to find a style which is semi-realistic but still unique and nice to look at. 

OUIL602 - Carson Ellis

Carson's semi-realistic work is really lovely, although it's a bit different from the type of work that I've been looking at for inspiration lately, I really like the aesthetic and the soft colour palette. After working with watercolour to make my pigeon pattern, it got me back into using watercolours, although I need to practice being a bit more careful when I'm painting so the colours don't merge together and look awful. 

OUIL602 - Holly Mills

I've been trying to keep my motivation up over easter by trawling through Pinterest for hours on end and have found a few illustrators who quite tickle me, one of them being Holly Mills.
Really love the combination of colour and texture, especially in the water in the top image.
What I like most about these two images is that the colour palettes are so interesting, yet really simple, mainly two colours and a variation of shades.

OUIL602 - Charlotte Mei

Words can't describe how much I enjoy Charlotte Mei's ceramic work, I've been wanting to get more into ceramics for a while, but haven't really had the chance, after all the deadlines are out the way, I want to get into making little ceramic housewares and characters, I think my animal characters would work really well with ceramics.

OUIL602 - Joseph Veazey

I found Joseph Veazey's work crazily inspiring, I love his weird colour choices, combined with how intense his detail is, especially in the space pattern. 

I really want to do more bold black and white work as well as all my crazy colours, I think B&W works really well in patterns. 

I found the last image really interesting too, because it still has the crazy detail, but looks a lot more realistic, I like that Joseph has another side to his practice aside from the crazy colours and weird shapes.

OUIL602 - A website tour.

This is the front page of my website, the first thing that someone would see when they visit pigeonsaresick.co.uk. I wanted to keep the front page bold and bright, using my logo as the header and then just putting a simple slideshow of some of my work.

Underneath are links to my Etsy, slideshows of some different projects, an about me page and links to my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

At some point I need to add more links to my RedBubble and Threadless page.

At the bottom of the main page is a little link to a secret page that you can only access from that link, it's kind of a fun extra, nothing serious, and is just a page full of badly drawn dogs. You can never have enough dogs. Even though some people may think this page is silly or unprofessional, I don't really care, because it makes me really happy, and I want to try and portray myself as myself, not as some really serious business woman.  

On my About Me page I have a little illustrated portrait, which I think looks a lot better than a proper photo of me, because I'm really not photogenic. I used this on my creative CV also because I think it's a neat little image, but adds a personal touch. Underneath that I have a little contact form which links to my pigeonsaresick gmail account. 

Finally, each of my project pages has a slideshow of the images, on their own, because I think it helps it stand out a lot better, not having the logo there as a distraction, although I think I could do with putting some information about the project underneath the pictures.

OUIL602 - pigeon book is finally done

I finally finished my pigeon book after weeks of faffing around with it, I have all the colour images scanned and cleaned up and all the negatives made ready to be screenprinted:

I think even though the way I drew the image as one and then had to scan them all in and seperate the colours was a massive pain, it still worked well and the final printed books look really nice!

I ended up drawing the pigeon names on digitally rather than by hand to save time as I was running low on that.

OUIL602 - Anti greetings cards



 

The anti-valentine's cards that I made were really popular on my social media sites, especially Facebook. These are the first bit of work that I've done in a while that has tried to be humorous, and I think it worked really well! I want to try and make more funny cards but combine them with my patterns and apply them to different contexts. My funny work always seems to be my most popular, even though I don't do a lot of it, it was the same case with my COP book from Level 5.



OUIL602 - Pigeons

Pigeon 1 - Brunner Pouter Pigeon

Pigeon 2 - Ghent Cropper

Pigeon 3 - English Carrier Pigeon

Pigeon 4 - English Short-Face Tumbler Pigeon

Pigeon 5 - English Trumpeter Pigeon

Pigeon 6 - Silky Fan-Tail Pigeon

I wanted quite a range of fancy looking pigeons, there were a lot more than I'd imagined at first, some of them looked similar though, so I'd tried to pick a nice variety of funny looking types.

My final pigeon images work really well with the simple two colour scheme, hopefully they'll translate well to screenprinting, I'm hopeful for this one!

OUIL602 - Penguin Random House

I met up with an old high school friend that did a placement at Penguin publishers, nothing to do with Illustration, she was working in the PR and marketing department, but she managed to get hold of the woman who deals with illustrators and portfolios.

I emailed, haven't got a reply yet, but I only attached a PDF of my Level 5 COP book, so I will definitely be emailing her again in the near future with my full portfolio and possibly sending heone of my screenprinted pigeon books. 

OUIL602 - My website

I finished making my website yaayy! it cost me £70 to link it to my domain name yayy!
It does look very beautiful though and I'm pleased with it, I'm still adding stuff and tweeking things but overall it looks bloody good.
www.pigeonsaresick.co.uk is now a thing!

This is the main page, the first stuff you see, the little title at the top is an animated gif, and there's a menu down the side and a secret little dog page to click onto.

I have a page for contacting me, I haven't really jazzed that up yet but I'll get to it.

That is my About Me page, which I think think looks quite cute. I used my portrait illustration from my CV that I've been working on, and wrote a little bit about myself, I liked to keep it quite friendly and unformal, because I'm really not a formal person. 

OUIL602 - I made a logo thing

My website was a bit cluttered so I decided to simplify it a bit and have the main focus be a little logo gif I spent a long time making. Even though it's not particularly fancy I think it looks cute and works well!

After being really put off of animation from Level 5, I've been thinking about trying some simpler animation, little gifs that I could turn my characters into.

OUIL602 - I finally have a proper website!

It took me a while to finally get my website live because I kept messing around with the header and the little gif, but I finally did it! www.pigeonsaresick.co.uk will be live within 48 hours. It definitely needs tinkering around with more, because I think it looks a bit messy at the moment, but looking nice will come with time as I add more to it and spend more time getting to know how to use Wix properly. I'm so glad I decided to use Wix rather than Cargo Collective or anything else, even though it was quite expensive, Wix itself is a really nice site to use, seeing as I have literally zero knowledge on how to code or make proper websites. 

OUIL602 - Pigeons

I want to take my portfolio to lots of places during the Easter holiday and I need a nice fancy thing to give whoever it is that I speak to for them to keep, so I'm going to screen print a book of pigeons, like a mini fact file.
I've been compiling images of illustrated pigeons/birds that inspire me, alongside looking through the numerous bird books I have already.

https://uk.pinterest.com/rf101661/pigeon-inspiration/