15 artists. Final 5!

11: My Mum
My Mum isn't an illustrator, she works as a TA at our local school, my old school. She is after the art teachers job. My Mum was my first real inspiration, even Surley Hughes. Mum went to Hereford Art collage but never really did anything with her art skills. Her favourite form of art is sculpture which she is quite impressive at. When I was little she used to make salt dough crafts. She'd make animals, cat's in garden pots, witches, women carrying harvest, ect. She used to hold a craft stall called 'Courtney Crafts.' I tried to help when I was younger but I wasn't as good as she was. I always loved my Mum's drawings and loved watching her doodle while she waited for things. When Mum owned a 2cv she wanted to make a book about the car called Berti and a duck. She had a story planned and images drawn but, she lost time and ended up selling the car. Mum helps me with work at home and giving helpful criticism telling me if things work or not.












12: Naomi Romero  - DeviantArt
Naomi has recently been accepted in to the 'BRIGHT' children's illustration which is based in America. Her concepts are great and her style is unique. She catches the characteristics of each dog breed and personalities of them too. She uses Photoshop CS6 with custom made brushes.

13: Lindsey Campbell - DeviantArt/Facebook
Lindsey is an artist I found on DeviantArt. Her watercolour skills are impressive and I love the softness she brings to her works. Even her works that may seem a little edgy to people are also done with a soft touch with the way she uses her watercolours and pencils. She works mostly with dogs and has made her own Dogs with flowers theme where dogs have flowers growing on them. Below is one of my favourite works of a baby Giraffe.

14: Ktshy )Katie Shanahan) - DeviantArt
Katie works as a cartoonist, animator and storyboard artist in Canada. She does her own projects such as 'Shrub Monkey's' which involves her and her two friends and sometimes other people from their lives. Shrub Monkeys are comic shorts and a series of things that happen in their lives. I love her drawings of people and how she takes a part of someone and emphasis it so they look who she's drawing which is always good. I love the simplicity of her comics and are clear.

15: dCTb (CT) - DeviantArt

CT is more anime based professional digital artist living in the America. They have created a pink heroine character called Annie. There animation work is what I love the most of their work (which is linked below). They show clear weight with the movements and are true to the anatomy. You can see they have clearly observed the anatomy and practiced many times. I also like how the colours are slightly faced out in some imaged. Their concepts are good and they have interesting character ideas.

http://artistrations.deviantart.com/art/AMP-Flipping-Annie-Mei-tion-462940910

15 artists. 5 more.

6: Luve (Gourd King) - DeviantArt
Gourd has graduated under illustration but unfortunately isn't doing it professionally but his work is very sweet and comes across as very fairytale. They have very good observational skills creating very convincing backgrounds and I could easily see these being used in children's books. His style and media used make these images, especially the donkey image below, look very vintage with the sepia tone yet bright colours.

7: Colonel (Serene Wyatt) - DeviantArt
Serene is a concept artist and children's book illustrator. She enjoys designing characters and creating concepts. Her imagination is very interesting and has a clear interest in dogs. My favourite of her work is 'Gatordog.' Basically just a massive dog/alligator character with a child/teen friend. Not only her character designs are good but I like her style and drawing/colouring technique too.

8: Oxpecker (Pip) - DeviantArt
Ocpecker's work is observational and real life work of mostly horses. Her proportions and movements are very accurate. She lives in Australia with her own horses. I even got a commission from her for my Mum of her old Pony. Her skills with water colour, pencils and gouache is impressive and she knows exactly what shes's doing. She used white Gouche on wet water colour to create dapples.

9: Fukari (Judyta Anna Murawska)
Fukari's work is very sketchy and bright. Her drawings mainly consist of her own personal characters with quirky and unusual outfits. I love her characters and their personalities. They are all very diverse and all have their own back stories.

10: Lauren Faust
Lauren is the creator of the modern time My little pony and Super Best friends forever. She is married to Craig McCraken who created power puff girls and Foster's home for imaginary friends. Lauren helped her husband with his works drawing them. Her style is very noticeable and makes sure that in the shows she creates they are modern and entertain both boys and girls, young and old. Although my little pony still has some aspects aimed at girls  there are actually still aspects appealing to boys, sometimes using internet memes, jokes and tried moving away from the original type of My littler pony where all the ponies were girls and very girly wearing ribbons and dancing. Her  My little pony show has become very popular amongst boys and girls, young, teens even adults. These are sort of things I admire about her, she fits in the modern era, she's not afraid to change things, has a good sense of humour and is one of my inspirations. Apparently she wasn't a huge fan on 'Equestria girls' as it changed her idea of the ponies characteristics, making them all seem girly with similar personalities the opposite to in her show.

15 Artists. the first 5.

These are artists who i like or who inspire my work. To be honest I don't have that many who inspire me. i have one main person who inspired me as a child to draw and become an illustrator but not many who inspired my drawings.
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1: Shirley Hughes
Shirley wrote and illustrated my favourite book as a child, Dogger. This is the book and illustrator that made me want to become an illustrator. Her work was always interesting to look at, her expressions were good and so were her forms. I am no fan of drawing life drawing or observational but I appreciate it. She studies people and families in parks and draws almost every day and all day to get the right movements and expressions and weight in her drawings. I also love how in the background of bigger images there are more stories going on, lots more people doing things other than the main characters.
It was nice too as as a child I could relate to the child in the book. Dogger was the only book I read of hers but I know she has other well known books.

2: Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake is well known for illustrating the books of Roald Dahl. He gives motion and character into each thing he draws and that's what I like. Clear expression and understanding of the characters. He apparently hasa good reputation as a good and humorous illustrator, illustrating more than 300 books. He also used to host a children's storytelling show in the BBC called Jackanory where he would illustrate the tale as he told it. I like his child like and squiggly drawings. To me they are nice to look at, fun and colourful. His technique for colouring is a new way I've started to experiment with but mostly in a different way to him, more digitally.

3: J Scott Campbell

Campbell is a comic artists I have recently found over the past year. I have a major interest in comics and his style is very interesting to me. He has a unique style that is easily noticed and has done many variant covers even one for the My little Pony comic series. He has a good eye for colours and I like how he manages to capture likenesses in caricatures he does of people. His drawing of Buffy the vampire slayer are very good and look like her too and same goes for his walking dead. He draws a lot of Disney characters as well and shows he can draw his style and accuratly draw other styles like disney. His work is very popular and well known amongst comic readers, he has a good use of expressions too. Expressions are things I like the most on characters. I know many people wouldn't be keen on his style of drawing mainly how he portrays female characters but I admire his skill in drawing, anatomy, colours and inking. He has an exclusive contract with Marvel to draw the spider man series which, is what his work is known from. He's also done work for DC but has also created his own such as 'Danger Girl and Gen13'

4: Stan Lee

Stan Lee is another artists as writer I like. He was the brains behind spider man who everyone thought would be a terrible idea so he snuck it into the back of another marvel comic and as promo/preview and loads of people loved it. 

The fantastic four were his first creation,  they were more realistic than previous heroes. They squabbled between them, worried about bills, trying to impress people. He made a huge change or stepping stone in the direction on which super heroes would become more like us with backstories, different personalities, likes and dislikes even building families. He's more of a publisher and writer rather than an illustrator but his writing and imagination brings the characters and their stories to life. The big main heroes we know like Hulk, Thor, X-men and spider man were all created by him and I admire his handy work, making Marvel what it is and influencing other comic publishers and writers to give more with their characters

5: Norman Thelwell

Norman Thelwell is one of my favourite illustrators and writers. He's mostly known for the little girl and her chubby pony works which, he didn't intend to get so big. He was asked to draw one for an editor and after that got so many commissions from other publishers the popularity of them got so high he ended up writing his country books about the ponies and making a little series called Penelopy and Kipper. I enjoy reading his books, especially his pony works, as they are humorous and very clever. For most you have to of either experienced it, know the terminology or lived there to understand some funny parts but he sometimes works against what he has written, writing the opposite or drawing another term for what he really means. He has ridden on a past wild horse up a canyon where they horse was determined to eat some grass down a ledge, he thought he would of died from falling off a cliff with a horse, he knew he couldn't move as it would unbalance the horse and they would surely fall. The horse gave up and he was still alive. It was after this that he began the pony books. He is also known for his real life scenery pictures which he uses for his backgrounds of his illustrations and prints.

Mermaid illustration

A little Merchild visiting the sea life. This was a fun experiment to create with different brushes on photoshop.

Alice in Norwegian wood.

Ever heard of the 'Norwegian wood'? This was a University project that I was very pleased with. I was asked to create a scene that represented two sections from two separate poem(s)/story(ies). This was a mix between a section of Norwegian wood where the woman throws a cake out of the window and Alice coming out of the water with all the other birds.

I used Gouache paints and a biro pen.

Chubby little Robin

This is a little image gift I did for my mums Facebook image for Christmas 2013. Using Photoshop and my graphics tablet. I enjoy drawing chubby little birds.