Sky Arts Tv Portrait Festival; Dublin

I just got back from Dublin yesterday, I was selling my portrait work at the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Festival in the RDS. Much to my surprise I was contacted a while back by Sky Arts to sell my work at this event. The last two weeks was a bit of a mad rush to get everything printed, packaged and prepped, which was especially difficult given how glorious the weather has been. I made a lot of stock expecting a bigger crowd, but the sun was against us as most people stayed outdoors. It was still a lovely event and I got to meet some really amazing artists.

You might recognise a couple of the canvas bags from my Etsy shop or bookstall, but I really expanded my range for this festival. I did loads of new author paintings and also go the images printed onto 5x7" cards. I've started listing the cards already online, but as the week goes on I'll get around to listing everything else. I'm not really happy with the staging of the photos that I did for the cards, so I plan to re-do them this week, and make them more bookish. Also now that I have the original paintings mounted I think I will put them on sale too. Watch this space!

The main part of the event was artists competing on the day for national portrait artist of the year. As far as I could gather they have traveled around four different cities hosting these types of festivals, at each show the artists have four hours to paint a model. At the end of the day a winner is chosen, an overall winner is then chosen, with the prize being £10,000. It was amazing to see the artists work, especially under such a high pressure situation, I know I couldn't do it!

There were lots of events on throughout the day for people to take part in like life drawing classes, sculpture, face painting, and face reading. These graffiti artists were amazing to watch as the day went on.

As I said it was lovely to meet some great artists on the day. I have known Tanya online for a good while now but this was the first time I got to meet her in person, which was great. Tanya has a very successful Etsy shop and a big following on Facebook. Some friends of mine got some of her work at the weekend, and I think my nice would really like a piece for Christmas too.

I also met Shane O'Donoghue, we quite obviously have subject matters in common, but a really different take on them. I really liked the style of his work, it probably appeals to the printmaker in me. All of his designs are cut by hand first and then laser cut afterwards. I'm very tempted by these amazing bookends as a present for myself when I'm feeling a bit more flush. 

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From Ruby Robin Boutique I met the lovely Kay and her super nice helper Sarah (??), they were like a beam of friendliness! I fell in love with all of their jewellery, and wanted to buy loads of it, but poor sales stopped me from indulging myself. But through the wonders of the internet I can drool over their lovely things online until I feel the need to spoil myself in the near future.

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 I had also seen Jokamin's stuff online before, I think I stumbled across her stuff on Facebook. I love the style of her work, both the paintings and the ceramics. You can see how hard it was for me not to buy all the amazing stuff that was for sale.

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How cool is this Zooey Deschanel print??? Again more things that tempted me into spending my rent money! Basically if anyone ever wanted to buy me a present I would have been happy with anything from any of the stall holders. (on a side note I must say I love her product photography, it's a good kick up the arse to step up my game when it comes to product staging).

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Full Range of Canvas Tote Bags

I have at long last sorted out all the problems I was having with my canvas bag production. At the very beginning I was ironing them on by hand and using prohibitively expensive transfer paper. Then when I got a heat press from a friend of mine I had major issues with getting the pressure right. Then ensued a problem with burning the canvas of the bag, which a teflon sheet from ebay solved. After all that I still wasn't getting full coverage all the time, there was a lot of costly wastage. I just recently changed my brand of transfer sheets and all my problems were solved-eureka!

Today I did a whole batch of bags and there was no wastage whatsoever. So thrilled was I by this revelation that I took some photos of my range of bags and listed them all in my Etsy shop. I've been meaning to do this for ages, but since I was having so many problems it didn't seem to be worth my while.

To see all 12 designs go to this section in my shop, they are €5 each. I will also be selling them every weekend at the Milk Market. Now that all the glitches are sorted I'm looking forward to working on some new designs.

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The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Drawing Evolution

 Here is another design that I've been working on for my series of canvas bags. Since I thought of the idea of making bags a couple of weeks ago I knew I wanted to do my own Lisbeth Salander( The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). I enjoyed posting last weeks evolution of Frankenstein's Monster so I thought I would do the same for this.

Initially I drew the line drawing in pencil and scanned it in before shading it in with graphite pencil. The third image shows the two of these images put together in Photoshop, making the outline darker. Fir this project all colouring is done on the computer, similar to the way to the way the a lot of comic book artists work. I added layers of colour using textured brushed, building up an interesting background. I wanted to go for a ruddy and army green palette rather that the expected grey and black.

I'm happy with the result, but the purest draftsman in me kinda prefers the simple line drawing. I learned this from the work that I did last week, that's why I scanned in the image after this first stage. I might go back and do another more simplistic version, as a learning exercise, to see what result I get. Having said that, I'm still drawn to the final image, I like the colours and textures that I was able to get in the background.

What do you think?

Update: After a few hours I went back and played with the colours a bit. I think I liked the background too much to allow myself to see that it was making the piece too busy. I knocked back the saturation and made it much more monochromatic, meaning that Lisbeth pops out more.

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Frankenstein's Monster: An Evolution of a Drawing

I've been doing some drawings for my canvas bag designs, and I thought it would be a fun exercise to show all the different stages of this piece based on Frankenstein's Monster. I used pencils, water colours, graphite pencil, and pens. I then scanned it in and did some colour and darkness alteration in the last two stages.

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Book Worm Canvas Tote Bag: Waiting for Godot

When I get an idea for a new project I become totally obsessed with it. Usually I'll be thinking about it as I fall asleep; planing out the finer details. For a while I've been toying with the idea of doing canvas tote bags for the my second hand book stall Bazaar Tales. It was only when ideas starting sparking off about the book themed illustrations that I could do that I became consumed by the idea. 


When I finished college years ago I really wanted to do children's illustration. I worked on making a portfolio for a while but I never had the guts to show it to anyone. In the end I got distracted by other projects and eventually by Nice Day Designs, and the dream was shelved. When I made the connection in my brain between the tote bags and my abandoned dream of being an illustrator I got very excited indeed. I really love the work that I do with Nice Day designs, but lately I've really missed doing artwork. I had chatted with some friends about maybe doing pieces for exhibition, and trying to get back to making work again unrelated to crafts. In reality I knew that I wasn't going to take that time for myself, as there is always a mountain of work to be done. But I feel that this new project could give me the outlet I've been craving while still expanding my range of crafts.

The idea is that I will do images based on books, quotes, famous fictional characters. I don't want to do anything that already has an established image, like Winnie the Pooh. But things like Alice in Wonderland have loads of different versions, so I would happily do my own. I've been wracking my brain thinking of popular books that have a visual element that really appeals to me. On the list so far is; The girl with the dragon tattoo, Hamlet, Frankenstein, Lord of the flies,and the Narnia books. 

I went through my illustration sketchbook and had a look at the ideas that I was working on. There I found this idea sketch for Waiting for Godot a play by Samuel Beckett, this depicts the character Lucky. I was chuffed to find something that matched exactly the kind of thing I was looking for to put on the bags. I set out to do the drawing and dug out my pencils and notebook. To be honest I was a little nervous, drawing is like any exercise, and I was feeling rather unfit and out of practice. The enjoyment of getting back to basics overcame any initial trepidation and after a few hours I was finished.


I got the transfer paper is Silkes and a bunch of blank canvas bags in Aldi. If you are attempting doing any transfer stuff yourself just be careful firstly reverse your image before printing it, and also to iron it for AGES. When you think you are done, iron it for a bit more, it's better to be safe than sorry; especially since the paper is so darned expensive!

I had a look through some of my other paintings and illustrations and I found these two pieces; Beckett and Yeats, which also work perfectly for the book bags. I'm delighted with how these turned out and they make a great pair. I intend on doing more Irish writers as they are so recognizable, and probably popular with the tourist crowd. I plan on doing a good few designs in the next week or two and then after that add a new design each week. The bags will be for sale at the Bazaar Tales book stall from this weekend and they are just €5. Or if you would like to buy one online head over to my Etsy shop.


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