Miss Mouse

Here's the completed version of my latest masterpiece, I think I posted some WIPs of it a couple posts ago. Basically my favouritest kind of thing to draw, plus it belongs to a series, so keep your eyes peeled for more!

Schoolism Live Workshop - London

I was lucky enough to get tickets for the Schoolism Live Workshop in London where I attended three awesome workshops by Jason Seiler, Alex Woo and Bobby Chiu!

(This is a photo of Alex Woo, taken by Bobby Chiu, that's why it looks really nice!)

Actually going to this workshop made me realise how much I suck at drawing. Jason Seiler is an awesome characature artist and he was teaching us about thumbnail sketches and how to make the most of a person's facial features and the general feel of their character.

Below here are some crummy sketches we were doing in Alex Woo's workshop, where he was teaching us about gesture drawing.

 


Bobby Chiu with one of my favourite paintings of his 'Big bad Bunny Eater'.

And Bobby Chiu my hero was showing us his painting technique and also filling our minds with positive and truly inspiring thoughts. It was a great weekend, I learnt SO much, and I will SO be going back next year!

Louisa

Animal characters

This is a sneak peak of something I've been working on! Still in the very early stages, and I'm already regretting putting her in such a detailed ruffled dress! Curse you Hobbitsies!!



This is a character from a series I have already begun designing, where all of the characters featured are a type of animal wearing awesome history/steampunk/sci-fi inspired costumes. I started with this little beaut because, well, I love dresses and wigs and hairsies.

Keep your eyes peeled for updates!

[EDIT]





xLouisax

Monster story

Because I work in social games and such, its kind of in my interest to play games, which is really cool!

I Recently downloaded Monster Story to my Iphone! Man, its such a simple game, but theres something about it, I keep coming back to! All the monsters are so cool, and you can breed them to make cool babies! And I really like the artwork, it's very simple but masterfully done. I've actually spent money on this game that's how much I like it! Good job Team Lava!





I've also downloaded Fashion story and Bakery story, which I already think aren't as addictive as Monster story, but I'll play them properly and let you know what I think!

Where Giants Roam - EOW

I did another Environment of the Week recently, it's actually a pretty small and rough picture, don't really know why I'm sharing it here, (and dude this image is a bit pixellated!) but I felt it was a bit of a triumph because I tried out a new technique with it. :)

I really need to get into better practices when creating artwork, such as creating B/W thumbnail sketches to generate ideas and to get a good sense of form and lighting. I see artists doing it all the time and they're like amazing so I figured I need to get into the habit of doing this. I also, painted the whole thing in B/W and coloured it after, it's a really neat technique! :)

Here's the WIP if you're interested.

xLouisax

18th Century embellishments

When I recently visited Mount Saint Michael in Cornwall, I had a bit of an art-geek moment looking at some amazing embellished 18th century maps.


This is not my photo :p (http://www.cornwalls.co.uk/photos/img2713.htm)

Mount Saint Michael is a really cool castle on top of a little island just off the south coast of England, but it's actually just a short boat trip away, and you can even walk across to it when the tide is out.

(http://www.belmont.school.nz/WebSpace/1080/)

Anyway, I couldn't help sketching some of the beautiful embellishments I found there...


I love this shit! Why can't we decorate things like this nowadays?

Ghostly Courtiers - CHOW

I took part in the latest Character of the Week community activity on Conceptart.org. There was some amazing ideas coming out this time, which makes me both depressed and jealous at how unimaginative I can be, haha!

This is the handmaiden to the young queen. She was indiscreetly having an affair with the newly married Prince. Due to the bad publicity brought about by these actions, she needed to be assassinated and was never heard of again.

Doing community activities on Conceptart.org is like the best thing ever! It's as if everyone is on the same journey, and we all share our works in progress and give each other help and tips or even just 'fresh-eyed' advice. It's such a good thing to do and you can learn so much from other artists, even by simply following someone else's WIP.



If you've followed it in the past and felt like maybe you should take part one week, I strongly recommend that you do! It is hard work to complete it before the deadlines, and usually the topics are quite tricky too, but it usually takes you completely out of your comfort zone (which is a good thing) and it's so worth it!

I desperately need to be doing things like this all the time, I've gotten so caught up with work and spent so much of my time commuting that I've hardly had the time or energy to do contests like this and also my own personal artwork. But luckily now I'm working from home so have a lot more free time, yipee. It's a good think cause I seriously need to study study study.

xLouisax

Cornwall - tropical colours

I recently had a family holiday in Cornwall, England. I've been a few times before when I was younger, but never have I been somewhere in Britain where the coastline was so picturesque! Literally aqua blue seas and bright sunny skies, like something out of a travel guide. I didn't take anything work related on holiday with me so I've had to resort to drooling over the billions of photographs I have taken.



I haven't painted anything in a while, so thought I'd sketch something out to remind myself of my holiday. Hmmm, not bad.... It was nice to experiment with tons of different brushes. It's refreshing to do something like this when the artwork I usually create day to day (with vectors) is a completely different technique. I should really paint a lot more, I'd probably get a lot better at it, lol.

I don't like to call myself a painter because I think it is a bit of an insult to people who actually are painters, so, because I mostly create artwork with Flash and Illustrator I'd call myself a digital illustrator (for now). :)

xLouisax

Tech city Magazine - spot the Sharks!

Sharkius was featured in this month's copy of Tech city. Aside from the awful fish related puns throughout, and the really bad photo of all of us, this is still pretty cool!

Best job in the world! :D

HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY! :D

This is as far as my Easter greetings will be going! These are some cute decorations we made for the game that me and my colleagues have been slaving over. It's called 'Me to You My Place', it's free to play on Facebook so give it a try! It really is a great game!

Me to You My Place, click here to play!

A lot of crazy things have been going down lately. I'm working at Sharkius full-time now, mostly as an Illustrator and Animator but I'm also doing a little Design work and I'm greatly enjoying it. I really love and respect everybody I work with; they're so passionate about what they doing, and work so hard! Plus we're all really silly, and get to play with a giant exercise ball everyday - we call it Giant ball or 'Whooaah' ball. :)

Also, we met someone quite exciting the other day...I'm not going to pretend that I possess a giant plethora of knowledge into politics, but it was still exciting to meet Chancellor George Osborn! He came over and talked to us and everything! He was asking about our company and about social games. Me met him because he opened the Techhub Google Campus in London, which is set to be like the biggest hub for start-up companies and entrepreneurs involved with Tech in London.

Another thing that's going down; due to unforeseen circumstances, me and my housemate Michelle (check out her blog and shop!) are leaving our current abode in Surrey and moving house to central London! :D Exciting times my friends, exciting times!!

All the best,

Louisa