A First Peep at my New Nature Guide Designs...

Hello,
It feels like ages since my last blog post, February seemed to come and go in the blink of an eye!  The reason for my quietness is I have been engrossed in a few projects.  I can now share the main project that's kept me busy with you all as I mentioned a bit about it on a blog post I did earlier in the year.  It's been a real delight to work on this series of nature guides, it's an ideal project for me with my love of nature illustrations.

Goodness me though, they certainly involved a lot of work.  Drawing up all the elements with pen alone took a fair few hours and let's not mention how long colouring-in on my computer took.  I definitely feel like I have achieved something by sticking with it all and getting them all done....

The plan for them all now is to get them printed up as posters and listed on my Etsy & Folksy shops very soon (hopefully this week).  

​These designs are now also with my publisher friends at ArtEco Designs, who will be offering them as wholesale greeting cards (blank inside, 120 x 170mm cards)....

My Instagram followers will have spotted these in development.  Instagram has been the only social media I've tried to keep updated in the past few weeks.  For those of you who may have missed those updates, here are some of those images, so that you can see how the designs came to be.  I now have LOADS of line drawn birds, leaves, butterflies and creatures everywhere...

When I shared some of these on Instagram a fellow illustrator asked if I use a drawing app to speed up the process.  The truth is, with this particular project the thought had crossed my mind a few times and I have the google searches to prove it!  However, I absolutely love the simple act of drawing with a pen on a piece of paper - just like I did when I was a child.  It was my dream back then to do this as a job when I grew up.  Now I am firmly in my middle youth the need to escape to that feeling of being a small child drawing with a pen on paper makes me a bit hesitant to rush to make the whole process digital.  I am no technophobe and grew up with every stage of digital technology and some of the drawing apps available are undeniably fantastic...but I'd really miss scribbling with a pen.  A bit of offline living is a good thing in my book...or should that be in my 'sketchbook!'...

These designs were done the long way as usual - hand-drawn, scanned and coloured digitally.  Many started as sketchbook drawings, most as loose sheets (so much easier to scan) - all drawn with my trusty black fibre tip pen...

It's hard to see some of the details on the design, which is why I have shared some of the close up images here, like the little hedgehog below from the bottom of the British Wild Animals design...

I hope you enjoyed taking a first peep at them.  An email newsletter will be going out to subscribers with an introductory offer for these as prints and posters as soon as they are ready and the listings are up on my Etsy and Folksy shops.  If you'd like to receive that offer, here's the link to join my mailing list

Have a lovely week!
Best wishes

Angie