I’ve grown up with Harry Potter, the books and the films, and this weekend I decided to draw a portrait of this badass witch!
Neville: Let me get this straight Professor, you’re actually giving us permission to do this?
McGonagall: That is correct, Longbottom.
Neville: To blow it up, boom?
McGonagall: BOOM!
Neville: Wicked!
Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall during the battle of Hogwarts in the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, 2011.
Hand drawn, with a little watercolour.
Here is a pencil portrait of Octavia Spencer as Minny Jackson, in the 2011 film, The Help.
If you’ve seen the film you know what scene this is from! …And if you haven’t seen the film already, you need to!
Hand drawn.
This year the lovely people of the Fort William Marathon asked me to create the medals and a series of prints which would be given to the race winners instead of the usual trophies.
The route runs through some beautiful highland scenery, and past some unique local wildlife. Over the next five years the medals will feature a different local animal, and join together in a star, (like the way this years medals have been displayed in the bottom photograph). The prints will also display the animal of that year, but may change in style from year to year.
This year focuses on the hare, but you can look forward to seeing otters, eagles, stags and wildcats!
Hand painted and digitally coloured, printed and then cut and layered by hand.
To find out more about the Fort William Marathon, check out their website:
This week I found an old series of drawings from a few years ago, combining different parts of some observational drawings from my sketchbook, and papercut elements.
Hand drawn and collaged, scanned.
Created in 2015, Waves is an artists book inspired by the long distance relationship between my grandparents when my grandad was in the Navy. My grandad kept every letter my nana wrote him, she found them after he died.
Mixed materials.
These are a series of illustrations I created in 2015, to accompany a short fairytale I had written about selkies. Selkies are a creature common in Scottish folklore, a kind of fairy that takes the form of a seal but likes to come ashore and shed her skin and dance, in the form of a beautiful woman.
Pencil drawings, scanned.
Click on the images to see them.
Thank you to everyone who came and supported us at the degree show, we’ve worked so hard and it was great to see everybody enjoy an amazing opening night, with some fantastic work on show! Thank you also for the lovely comments and feedback I recieved!
https://www.dundee.ac.uk/degreeshow/
Click on the link above to see more about our degree show, and learn about the class of 2017.
https://dura-dundee.org.uk/2017/05/21/djcad-degreee-show-2017-illustration/
And a lovely review of the illustrators from Dura Dundee!
On May 14th the world again celebrated International Dylan Thomas Day!
Under Milk Wood is one of my most favourite stories in the world; beautifully written, it tells of the lives of many different characters living in a small Welsh village.
I have recently completed this Illustrated Guide to Llareggub, which, when folded, displays panels illustrating scenes from the play, and when opened reveals a map of the town. Through careful analysis of the text I was able to extract clues about where characters lived, and piece together an accurate map!
Hand drawn, digitally coloured.
Inspired by recurring suspicions that my father is a spy.
This project began as a sketchbook diarising the many intriguing questions my father won’t answer. Seeing how comically outrageous people found the questions, encouraged me to expand and develop the sketches into a zine. All of the questions and scenarios described in the zine are real and true, but is my father really a spy? We may never really know.
Three colour risoprint.
Copies of this zine will be available to purchase at the DJCAD 2017 Degree Show, which runs from the 19th to the 28th of May. Come on down and have a look, we are proudly Scotland’s number #1 art school, and there is some fantastic work on show this year!
Instead of a typical self portrait, focusing on physical likeness, I set out to create a self portrait that would reveal more about my personality and identity. I explored different ways to do this, and found I was able to represent these more abstract ideas using the visual metaphor of a map.
Hand drawn, digitally coloured.
