3 designs entered the arena, only one emerged victorious

That's right, I'm here today to announce the winner of my 'Choose the project' competition!

This was first foray into creating a survey and overall I'm rather happy with how everything turned out. I think next time I really need to look at other ways of getting it in front of more eyes, because there really was not a lot of participation going on. This was despite the lure of winning a free print.

However enough about my musings, you're here for the winner aren't you? It sure was a close one and it seemed like the Procession was the design to take the laurels of victory, as for most of the time the survey was open it was in the lead by several votes. In the end though a couple of extra votes towards Pirates in the last day or so saw it take the lead and claim the prize.

Here's a visual representation (a fancy way of saying i made a column graph) of how it all turned out.

As you can see, Pirates only won by a single vote! Party had a lot less love as it only got 3 votes.

I'd like to take a moment to give a big thank you to everyone who took a few minutes out of their busy lives to enter the competition. Thank you for your support and interest in my work. Also I hope I didn't annoy people too much with my continued Facebook posts about voting. I hope you enjoyed being part of the creative process.

Now it's time to start developing the design as chosen by you, the people. I'm really looking forward to developing Pirates to it's full potential and will endeavour to keep you well informed of it's progress. Once the final artwork is all finished and done, I'll announce the winner of the free print. Good luck to all!

Here's another look at the rough that gets to go all the way to the top:

I'm going to try and make sure I post plenty of in-progress images for this work, particularly since I've already shown you what the rough looks like.

Watch this space!

^_^ Thanks for reading

The 3 P's - Procession, Pirates or Party?

Hey there blog watchers, I haven't seen you since January, (totally my fault). It's been some time, so I thought I'd do something exciting for my new post. Details below.

While I was designing my Chinese new year illustration for 2016, I came up with 3 distinctly different ideas. Usually this is a normal part of the design process: To pick one to finish and discard the rest. Then I thought, why not involve others in the process? I want YOU to decide which rough I should bring to finished artwork. I'm going to dub this idea "Choose the project," catchy title yeah?

Of course you should be possibly rewarded for your hard work, so 1 (one) lucky person shall receive a FREE A4 fine-art print of the finished illustration. I'll be choosing an entrant at random. If you would like to enter, please make sure you fill in question 2 so I can get into contact with you to send you your new art.

You can find the link to the survey below. It's only 2 questions and some contact info, so it shouldn't take very long at all...Unless you're the kind of person to agonise over which one to choose, in which case your guess would be as good as mine. Please make sure you do the actual survey, if not you're entry won't count and the hard work will be for naught.

Choose the project: Chinese New Year 2016
 

See the worlds of possibilities below. Remember, only YOU can decide the path I shall take. Will it be Pirates, Procession or Party? Happy voting and good luck for the draw (if you choose to enter). Just also keep in mind that being rough as these are, changes are likely to occur, (that's the nature of the creative process), though mostly this will be detailing, the basic design and structure will remain.

I'll be posting again in a few weeks to confirm the winning rough that I'll be taking through to finished art, so look forward to that.

Thanks for reading, be back real soon.

Transitions

Hi there blog watchers! Happy 2016!

It's been far too long, so I think it's about time I showed you a new piece of work. We'll blame work for that as it does really impact on the amount of time I have to do things I love doing. Still, I manage somehow and will hopefully continue to do so. But enough about that, you're here for art aren't you?

 

This new one is entitled 'transitions'. It's about change, specifically the changes we make in our lives that forever impact us. Often it's a choice and since we don't have the ability to see the future, it's a blind one; We don't know what will be on the other side of that 'portal' we choose to step through. In some cases there might not even be a way to retrace our steps and go back to how things were before, which can make that 'choice' all the more daunting, however it's also what keeps life interesting.

Things have changed oh so much in my life these past couple of years and I hope they will continue to do so. Most of these changes have been positive and have in most cases exceeded the possibilities of how I thought they would turn out. I hope that 2016 will be just as bright and bring with it even greater possibilities.

I'm quite proud of this piece. It was a good chance to really experiment with a strong sense of lighting, which I don't normally do. It was something of a challenge with how to actually do the shading and I wasted time with layers I probably didn't need to use.

One thing I struggled with, was whether or not to put in a deeper background. In the end I decided against it, because no matter what I tried I just couldn't get it to look right. Background is still something I struggle with and it will certainly be a thing I'll try to focus on overcoming this year. I've been sitting a on fantastic idea for an exhibition, but to really make it work I need to be much more competent with backgrounds, so I really can't wait to get there and start on that work specifically.

I was originally not going to put in a pattern on her top, but in the end I just couldn't resist. I love patterns and fabrics and if I didn't love fantasy and science-fiction so much, I'd probably be a textile designer. In illustration however, I can be both at the same time! I find that even the simplest pattern, (like the one above) can really bring some extra life to an image.

If you have any questions about this work or would like to obtain a print, just leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

Until next time...