Blogs that inspire me.

Kate Beatons Hark! a Vagrant http://beatonna.livejournal.com/
And Zac Gormans Magical game time http://magicalgametime.com/
are two blogs that I follow personally and enjoy looking at frequently. Both have a very simplistic but different comical  drawing styles that I love. Their blog styles also mirror that, with a plain white background that at times make their illustrations look like they're merged with the blog or floating, it just completely fits and doesn't distract the audience from looking at the illustrations (something I have been trying to do in my blog.)

Something I find special about Zac Gormans game related comics is that I know what the references are, and that quite a few of his comics have a animated aspect in them. That's something I'd love to have a go at, especially for my blog, as I wouldn't really be able to put a simple animated comic like that anywhere else. He also posted information about a collab for publishing a zine (about a certain game) that I'm interesting in maybe submitting for. SO I may try making something for it to send off to him.

by Kate Beaton

Kate Beatons blog parodies so many books, but she does it in a way so that you don't have to know anything about that book to make it funny. Another thing that I noticed that she posted on her blog was that she'd sent some scans of her work without the dialogue to Japanese students that were learning English for them to fill out in English. The results were comical themselves with the grammer mistakes that took place. But an idea and side projects like that are really interesting and something that I would love to do and blog about.

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Normally I'm more used to the fancy layouts Tumblr uses, so I've been hunting around for blogspot based blogs for some inspiration on what I could achieve with blogger instead.
So I found http://drawnanddevoured.blogspot.com/ which again like the other blogs have illustrations that merge with the blog perfectly, but also has a blog title banner that has been illustrated and been cropped as a rectangle with curved edges, which makes it look professional and sleek. Another thing I like in these blogs, that I have done with my blog as well, is linking up on the side collumn- the other websites that my portfolio can be viewed or purchased.

My top trump

This is the top trump card I made of Yoshitaka Amano. He's a massive inspiration of mine , as he does concept work and logo art for the final fantasy games and also the illustrations for Vampire hunter D. In my opinion he has a very stylized art style that is slightly oriental, dark, magical and fragile. Which is what appeals to me the most. He's not that well known among most people but most gamers would of likely heard of him.You can see more of his works here http://www.elevenland.com/amano/amano.php3

Childrens Illustration and webcomics research.

Illustration by. E.H. Shepard.

 (My research was very loose and I thought I should just write what I found interesting and now take pride in knowing.)

E.H. Shepard is an childrens book illustrator I absolutely adore. His drawings have a very lifelike and characteristic, but fragile feeling that relates to the stories he illustrated for like "Winnie the Pooh" and "wind of the willows" But his illustrations and sketches for the Winnie the pooh series will always be special to me and were the most fitting, iconic or moving in any book I have read. I would love to be able to achieve the same effect.

I also love the story of how the characters and designs came to be of "Winnie the Pooh"- as I believe E.H. Shepard designed the characters based on his children's toys. but they were named after A. A. Milne children's toys which looked much different.
E.H Shepard illustrated mostly after he served in the war, but he worked on a vary of things including comics, just like how Beatrix Potter first was recognised for her Christmas card designs. This means that if I were to pursue a career in Illustration I won't end up following the same type of illustration all the time.

Illustration by Tracy J.Butler

Tracy  J. Butler is the author of Lackadaisy which is a on going web comic now turned published series.
You can find her website for the comic here http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/ From what I can remember it would seem that making this series is only part-time, like most web comics, as it doesn't provide a great income. So I think her main job is being a assistant teacher for some type of  illustration (forgive me if I'm wrong)

Mindmap of Kadi

Here's a messy free flowing mind map of me and a more compact and cleaner version. I added both of them because I like the messy one too. It includes some of my inspirations e.g. E.H Shepard, goldfish, Studio Ghibli etc. and a bit about myself.
It also includes the skills I've arrived to my university with- the most useful being that I'm fairly confident with software such as adobe Photoshop and flash, while using a graphics tablet. I also feel like I've got good observational drawing skills.

Timeline of how to become a children's illustrator.

My timeline of how I plan to become an Children's illustrator. I've been playing with the idea of becoming a children's illustrator for a while as it would allow me to create magical adventure stories and illustrations in the cutesy style I aspire, all in one. I look forward to publishing work and making prints and merch. I'm sure my timeline and path will end up changing along with my likes and dislikes anyhow.

Digital painting practise

This is my WIPs of practising a different way of digital painting using Paint tool sai and messing around with colours and hair styles. I was trying to aim for a more vibrant but still soft way of painting.

A favourite image.

This was a fanart piece I did for Atsuko Maeda's solo debut titled "Flower" This is one of my recent favourite digital pieces. I had sketched out the line art traditionally then scanned and edited it digitally, by just messing around with layers and blends. It doesn't have an amazing likeness of her, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.