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/

OUIL602 - Standing out

During Easter I want to take my portfolio and some work to different studios to try and bag myself a job, or at the least just get myself noticed. I think the obvious choice is to do something to do with pigeons. I really liked drawing the dog greetings cards so I think I should continue this and draw pigeons also. Seeing as I haven't screen printed in a long time I think that I would benefit from doing it one last time before I leave Uni forevvveerrr.

I'd want to make the pigeons semi-realistic but stylised to make them a bit more interesting. I think the screenprints should just be two colours, so that it isn't too difficult to print in the time frame that I have. 

OUIL603 - Anorak is the dream.

So after being at the Anorak briefing I have decided that working at Anorak is my actual dream. 

I'm gunna put together a portfolio to send them, and probably a few other people too.

I'm excited, but scared because Anorak is in London and London is a scary place where I would most certainly not want to live. I think to calm myself I may look for more places like Anorak but in Yorkshire or somewhere in the North. If there isn't anywhere like that then I would just have to start my own childrens magazine.

The covers of Anorak are amazing and I think that's it really important to give children the chance to see really nice illustration, rather than the rubbish that is normally seen in the children's magazine aisle. One of my favourite things about Anorak that was mentioned during the briefing was that the magazine is gender neutral and doesn't try to aim itself at any specific group of child.

OUIL602 - People I must speak to.

Screen Print places -
If I want to go visit a screen print place I should screen print something to give them.
- Awesome Merhcandise
- Printshop http://thisisprintshop.co.uk
- Inc workshop https://www.incworkshop.co.uk

Studios
- http://www.thearchipelago.eu - The Archipelago
- http://www.thebowery.org - The Bowery
http://www.huntingtowndesign.com - Huntingtown Design Manc
http://www.reddoorstudios.co.uk - red door studio Manc
http://www.oliversin.com/Shape-Design-Studio
http://www.wolf-studios.co.uk/illustration_animation.html
http://www.crookedcartoon.co.uk

http://www.lvaf.org.uk/lvaf-directory/
http://blipblipblip.co.uk - Art education and gallery

OUIL602 - My portfolio

I think for my portfolio the best approach I can take at the moment is to just put all the stuff I actually like in, and not worry about them having an order or a theme.

OUIL602 - Contacting

Dear John,

I think I've already told you this but I managed to get the email of a woman working at Penguin Publishers and sent her a copy of my two previous COP books, not to get them published or anything at the moment, just to get some feedback on them and to also ask about work experience. She hasn't got back to me yet but I'm hopeful.

I also sent my greetings cards (look below, these are my faves) to the Scribbler submission email. I intend on making loads more of these and just pestering them until they reply.

OUIL602 - My to do list

Dear John,

Now that COP is out the way I'm looking forward to really getting my teeth stuck into PPP and 603. I feel like my best course of action would be to write a big to do list/list of questions to help get my thoughts in order.

- Make a list of places I want to email/potentially work at

https://www.monsterpress.co.uk/

Awesome Merch

http://www.pyreclimber.com/

- Decide what my main brief will be for 603.

- Do I want to do Illustrated t-shirts with just patterns or characters.

- Should I print onto cushions as well, cushions and other materials?

- Should I make a whole range of homeware, with clay etc

- I should work more with typography 

- Make some illustrated patches, find out where to get my designs printed.

https://www.madebycooper.co.uk/products/badges/custom-patches/embroidered-cloth-badges?gclid=CL_-wOH4tcoCFda4Gwodrz4Jsg

- Do I need to come up with a theme for the work?

- Feminist quotes?

- Do I screen print myself or send off for them to be made?

- Do I want to get into tattooing??

- I need to more funny work.

- I should re work the hispter zine from first year

OUIL602 - Kaylan Presents

As I will be part of Thought Bubble festival, I was invited by Kalyan Presents to take part in a live comic drawing evening at LS6 Clock Cafe. 

The event itself, although only small scale, was very fun, and I got to talk to some really nice people. I took part in both live comic and portrait drawing, everyone was really pleased with the portraits we did, I handed out a few business cards and met some other artists who were also exhibiting at Thought Bubble. 

OUIL602 - Testimonials

Dear John,

Following on from the portfolio surgery with Patrick, I decided to ask a few people that I've worked with in the past to write me a short testimonial, just something along the lines of why they like my work and what it was like working with me. I've got one response already from a girl called Hildur who I've worked with a few times:

"Becky is an absolutely brilliant artist with so many good and fun ideas! She is flexible, easy to collaborate with and very thorough. I'd recommend her to anyone and everyone who wants something designed. I'm very drawn to her work (pun intended)." - Hildur Hoglind - Musician

"Becky's ability to put ideas onto paper is faultless, she is a versatile designer who can always produce exactly what you ask of her, and still exceed expectation! She did artwork for my recent tour and the merch sold incredibly well, simply due to her wonderful illustrations!" Sam Lyon - Musician

I fell in love with Becky's art as soon as she showed me. I played a house show and she did a doodle in my touring book which ended up turning into Merch designs and now she is my go-to-person for all designs. What a legend! - Tom George - Musician

OUIL602 - I have a domain name

Dear John,

This afternoon I took the plunge and spent my money on a domain name. www.pigeonsaresick.co.uk is now registered to me, and I'm going to start building the site after Thought Bubble is out the way.

I hope you are proud of me.

Becky

x

OUIL602 - Rami Kim

Dear John,

Whilst browsing pinterest once again, I cam across another artist that works with cermaics. Rami Kim.

Here's is slightly less abstract and more figurative than the last illustrator I blogged about, but I love how she combines character with her clay work to create cute little objects.

Definitely gives me ideas.

Becky

x

OUIL602 - Mina Perhonen

Dear John,

I found an illustrator who perfectly shows what I want my practice to be about.

Mina Perhonen designs patterns for clothing, and has her own fashion range. Obviously my work would look different from this, but I love the colours she uses, and how she combines illustration with fashion design.

OUIL602 - Ruan Hoffman

Dear John,

Whilst I was browsing Pinterest, as I do so often when I'm procrastinating, I came across this artist, who makes ceramics.

These are super nice, I like how they aren't all uniform shape, and are more like a canvas then a bowl or anything like that.

It makes me want to only do ceramics from now on.

Becky

x