Done!

As i've now written 3 picture book texts, i'm trying to get a few illustrations together for each to send to potential publishers. This illustration is for the second manuscript I wrote called 'Come out and play' a kind of tongue-in-cheek, humorous story poking fun at modern society, in a child frienly way of course.

This illustration is a double page spread for the last part of the story. It started life as a pencil drawing:

Then it was worked up into a painting. I had to split it into two separate sections, as a) I didn't have any suitable paper big enough, and b) my scanner only takes up to A4 size paper. I think i may have to invest in a larger pad.

Lastly it was finished in PhotoShop. Ta da! Heres the final thing -

Hope you like the cheeky egg on head detail which came to me in a moment of sillyness whilst was working up the original sketch :^)

A party fit for a King

The weekend before last we went to Amsterdam. We booked the trip a while back to coincide with the King's Day festival on 26th April. This annual festival is in honor of the monarch's birthday; now Willem-Alexander who was inaugurated last year when he took over from his mum. So this year's festival was the first King's day as previously its been Queen's day.
http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/experience/kings-day/all-about-kings-day-in-amsterdam

Now in England when we think of celebrations for a monarch's birthday the imagery that comes to mind would be the sort of canons blasting, trumpet sounding, busby donning marching guards and such. The usual po-faced pomp and regalia you associate with the English royalty.
Well my friends in the Netherlands (well in Amsterdam at least) his majesty's birthday is celebrated with a city wide techno rave, where everyone gets dressed up in as much orange garb as possible and wonders round from street party to street party.

We got into the city at about 9.30 on Friday night when the festivities had already began so we had to get into the spirit pretty quick. As various forms of dance music (i'm not complaining) seemed to be the staple, our first outing on the Friday night was a King's Night drum and bass event at a club not too far from where we were staying.

Having got back late from the club or should I say early, and given that neither of us are spring chickens anymore, we foolishly considered skipping a good chunk of the Saturday daytime celebrations to have a long lie in. But still bleary eyed after breakfast we decided to venture out.
And blimey....were greeted with a sea of unexpected orange madness!!
We swiftly dived on a nearby stall for a much needed orange accessory, this was mine (pretty tame i know):

Then went on an adventure. All the streets are closed as are most of the shops which are instead replaced by LOTS of random stalls dotted around between numerous street parties, most seemingly playing techno.
The general order of the day is to wonder around by foot (or bike if you dare) stumbling from one crazy event to the next. There are ticketed official, pay-for events where you can while away the hours but you don't really need to bother with these as there are loads of free stages set up about the city. Once such was the 'Pacha' stage (complete with bar and many an orange reveler) which we found at around 1pm. Guess what...they were playing techno.

Unfortunately we'd made the mistake earlier of not bringing a proper camera with us, so only managed to catch the action on a mobile phone. I desperately wanted to take a pic of a guy sitting, bopping in the window of his apartment overlooking the crowd. You might just be able to make him out in the middle pic above.

Then we moved on and found a massive parade on the canal. The boats just kept on coming.

Some were moored up and holding private parties. Most of the boats were playing music, can you guess what kind of music? Yes you got it techno! Lucky that Dave loves a bit of techno haha:

Like everyone else we spent the rest of the day ambling around being totally bemused. By 7pm it was carnage as you can imagine and I couldn't help but have sympathy for the poor buggers who would have to clean the mess up.

Still it was one of the most surreal and bonkers experiences i've had for a long while.

So who's up for King's Day 2015?

The time has come

Last Thursday I bid goodbye to the day i've been in for the last seven and a bit years, to make a break as a full time freelance illustrator.
Its so weird to think i won't be going back again and i don't think its quite sunk in yet, especially as we were away this weekend in Amsterdam for a short break and to see the Kingsday festivities, which was an amazing experience & i'll blog about next week. So i haven't really had time to fully digest the fact that i'm now going it alone. Although given i've been preparing for this moment for a long time now i feel as ready as i'll ever be.

Heres to the end of an era and the start of a new chapter!

Lovely Eggies

You may not have noticed, but Easter is upon us. You wouldn't have guessed, would you? Ahem...Ok so i'm being sarcastic, but seeing as you can't move for hot cross buns, bunnies (not hot cross bunnies, that would be odd) Easter eggs and such, and not wanting to be left out of the Easter hype machine - here comes my contribution:
A downloadable freebie* adapted from a card design I did a couple of years back, to use (or not) for/on whatever you see fit - screensavers, cards and the such like.

I'm gonna make this really easy for you, so that if for some reason you can't just drag the image straight from this blog then drop me a message (lucy@lucyshappyplace.com) and i'll email it to you.

Like many of you I imagine, this weekend will involve a trip to visit family (in-laws actually), so as i won't be here to post on Friday, this is me signing off till next Tuesday.
Hope you have a happy Easter folks, and don't eat to much of the sweet stuff - you'll make yourself sick like i did last year on a enormous great white chocolate egg.
Byeeeee! 

*for personal use only please, but of course you're all lovely so i know that won't be an issue

Growing the community

Today’s post as its not about illustration or anything vaguely arty, instead its about the community where I live with my husband in Newcastle and why I love being part of it.

I knew before moving to Newcastle in 2006 that the area known as Arthur’s Hill (or more widely Fenham) where my then boyfriend owned his house was considered to be an undesirable part of the city to live. I never really fully understood why, but that’s probably because by the time I arrived on the scene the days where practically every house in the locality had bars on the windows were gone. This past Fenham is now long gone, yet despite huge improvements it still carries a stigma. The perception of the place was perfectly illustrated recently by two of my husband’s students, who don’t live in Fenham, but made great assumptions in a presentation that backed up the standard view - painting it as ‘rough’.

I suppose having lived previously for many years in fairly dodgy parts of Manchester (Levenshulme, Rusholme), Arthur’s Hill didn’t feel particularly unsafe - it was exactly the kind of place that I was used to. I’ve never had any bad experiences here (touch wood that I never do). Ok so you get the odd group of kids hanging outside the local shop, but really where doesn’t? And I’ll admit it has a big litter problem which badly needs addressing, but all in all I consider it to be a safe and vibrant place to live.

Last year we decided to put our house on the market, mainly because we wanted a change of scene and something which Arthur’s Hill definitely does not have - a nice local pub. Yup it appears I have reached ‘local pub’ age – yikes!
Also there was speculation in the rumour mill that due to all the government cuts and the impact this was having on the North East, Arthur’s Hill may slip back into it’s former bars on the windows self. So I’m ashamed to say there was an element of jumping ship.
However we were in two minds as to whether or not we definitely wanted to leave, and the more we looked at potential new areas to live in the more we noticed there were very few places we wanted to move to.  Added to this was the realisation that nowhere else would be nearly as convenient; as it’s around a 15 to 20 min walk from town (so both Dave & I can walk to work), its close to a park, and a major bonus – it has the largest, cheapest & best quality green grocers i’ve ever known (Hutchinsons).

We had a lot of viewers who already lived in the community. A number of them had moved to Newcastle from other regions and were now renting in Fenham, but decided to buy because they liked the area so much. The praises for Arthur’s Hill and the house were sung over and over, which all the more made us want to stay. A few offers came in and we saw a couple of places we quite liked, but after a few months of looking couldn’t think of anywhere else we’d rather be; and in the knowledge that I would soon be embarking on a mission to make a living from freelance illustration, being somewhere with a low mortgage made sense.

So in January the house came off the market, and instead we decided to try and make a positive difference to the place we lived in by joining a community partnership project called ‘Greening Wingrove’- http://greeningwingrove.org.uk/

Wingrove’ is to help and inspire people within the community to work towards improving the area in all kinds of ways as well as to bring the community together.
The ward is by far and away the most diverse in Newcastle and I really love this about it. I strongly believe this is something that should be valued rather than looked down upon (which I think it is by some). Living amongst so many different people makes me feel part of something good and genuine.
Unfortunately people do tend to keep themselves to themselves and there is an element of different groups sticking together, which is only natural. So ‘the project is also trying to encourage greater interaction between the different cultures and engage the community in it’s entirety. It’s a noble project with admirable ambitions.

Recently as part of the lottery funded Greening Wingrove project a growing in small spaces initiative has been launched which we decided to get involved with, especially because Dave is quite green fingered already. The initiative is trying to encourage as many people as possible to grow veg in their front yard space, with the long term goal of transforming street fronts into lush green and partly edible spaces. It will also act as a talking point, so a means to get neighbours to engage with one another and grow the community spirit.
To get us going a workshop was hosted by Mark Ridsdill Smith from Vertical Veg http://www.verticalveg.org.uk/ with tips and advice about growing in containers.

So Dave has made a start by installing this enormous planter at the front of the house:

While he was putting it in a number of passers-by and neighbours got talking to him about it. A real testament to the initiative considering we’ve barely only ever exchanged ‘hellos’ with most of our neighbours!
Now we’ve started potting various types of runner beans and herbs.

I have a good feeling about it and I’m hoping that being able to concentrate fully on the illustration will maybe free up some actual spare time so that I can contribute to this more.
As the stuff grows I’ll post some more pics and hopefully later in the year we’ll be able to see and eventually harvest some of the fruits (or veg) of our labour. Watch this space.

A finished image, perfect for this sunny day

Friday's invisible (non existent) blog post was down to a desperate bid to finish this piece off so that I could submit it in time to Hallmark Creative Design Studio's Kool for Kids competition.
I knew there wouldn't be much of a chance to work on over the weekend as we were going kayaking on the Border Esk for a good chunk of it (which was pretty flipping scary & fast as the water levels were quite high), so something had to give and it was the usual Friday post.
Really pleased that I managed to finished it off, and even if it doesn't get anywhere in the comp i'm planning on using it as a card design and maybe selling it as a print in the shop at some point down the line:

Since posting the sketch last Tuesday, you'll notice I altered the border so it now encases the characters and brings the whole design together.
Hope you like it. I don't yet have a title for the illustration so if you can think of something fitting then i would love to hear it.

Tune!

Not the usual mug shot post today then as i'm going to have to focus on some other stuff for at least the next couple of weeks. Today i've been painting these guys:

This will eventually form one of a new batch of card designs that i'll start properly once i finally move to going full time on the illy work. Thought i'd squeeze this one in now as (i manage to complete it on time) i'm going to enter into a little design comp i've spotted on Hallmark's blog.

Once its finished i'll stick it up on here.
In a bit of a rush this evening because, fortunately, my other 1/2 has just remembered that we have tickets to see Richard Herring this evening, which clearly had totally slipped both our minds.
So i better dash....toodle pip!