Next Weekend

I have a stall selling some illustrated goods at Fred Aldous, for more details about the event here is the flyer:

Please come along!

Zoooooo

Yesterday I went to the zoo, I don't think I will ever get bored of looking at animals, I just find them so fascinating. It was a beautiful day and I got to see everything I wanted except for the giant anteater which I was really looking forward to but it was only possible to view it's home from over a river and the combination of distance, a fence and trees made it very difficult to see. However I did take some photos of some of the animals I saw! Here are my faves (as you can see the giraffe comes out on top, it's a childhood love that will never die)

The giraffe head just peeping in from the side on this photo made me chuckle!

Baby giraffe just melted my heart.

Papas fave (below)

Brian Wildsmith

Another fantastic illustrator that I've been looking at recently is Brian Wildsmith, he is a childrens book illustrator. I love his use of colour and the soft way that he applies it to create dream like worlds and creatures. His animals and characters all have a really distinct style that is simple but full of life. Here are a few screen shots of his work:



All images are screenshots from Brian Wildsmiths website: http://www.brianwildsmith.com

Eric Carle

Recently I've been looking at Eric Carle's childrens books for some inspiration for my own illustrations. He's most famous for 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' but he has so many other beautiful books as well. I really love the methods that he uses to create his vibrant imagery as they're so hands on and basic but they produce really striking images that have a lot of character. The textures that he creates with the painted papers are really amazing and add so much depth to the simple shapes that make up the characters.

Some of my faves are below:



All images are from the Eric Carle Museum: http://www.carlemuseum.org

Charles Keeping

Last weekend I visited Whitby and after poking around in a few charity shops I found a copy of Dragon Slayer The Story of Beowolf by Rosemary Sutcliff which is illustrated by Charles Keeping. Keeping is one of my favourite illustrators, his use of line to create drama and expression is something which really inspires me. There aren't a huge amount of illustrations in the book but it's still exciting to see work by Charles Keeping that I haven't seen before. I really love the colour on the front cover, the colours are so vibrant and add to the drama of the line drawings. This was a great little find for me!

NEW WORK

Website update!

I just added 2 new projects to my website;

'The Outsider' - the illustrations that I created in response to the novel 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus

plus an animation that I made for Waggledancer and WD40 last week.

Take a peek at both: http://www.emmabrownowl.com

The Illusionist

Last weekend I went to see The Illusionist at the Cornerhouse; I was reallly excited about this film by French director Sylvain Chomet as I am a big fan of his previous film Belleville Rendezvous. The Illusionist was completely different to the first film; it had a very melancholy feel to it and had more of a serious edge to it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful, the animation was perfect; the exaggerated characters and the soft palette of colours worked so well to create something that was charming and just lovely. It was so good to see hand drawn animation that had real character to it rather than digitally produced characters that are perfect and hollow. It gave me some hope for my own career and style of work which has so many handmade elements.

Screen capture from Pathe International.