JAZZ

A few Christmas presents have been bought (eugh, no money left) and some are due to be made. I started to print my Christmas cards last night too - will post photos soon as I may do a DIY screen print tutorial with them...

Also got to take up my dress for work Christmas party on Sat (another 'eugh' to that) and then another 101 things before I head home up to the West Mids on 24th... but it's all good :)

First layer drying...

YOUTH

1st December means cloves & oranges! They're currently drying on the radiator making my room smell amazing!

I always used to help my dad make them back home :) I'm not really bothered about Christmas till the 24th but I love to make these early and have them around the house.

I've now got all the supplies for my Christmas cards, so will get on with making those this week too. They're going to be finch-themed I think!

ALLOW

Had such a boring day at work today but I decided to make the most of it and do some illustrations, ending up with me drawing pretty much everything on my desk...

I've been playing around with them in Illustrator and made a repeating pattern - it's so much easier to do than I thought! I may print a few sneaky A3 copies of this at work and use as Christmas wrapping paper, not exactly festive but oh well :)

In other news, I plan to visit the Mill Road Winter Fair / Judy's Affordable Vintage Fair in Cambridge this weekend and meet up with a few friends. Tonight is emails, mulled wine and pizza!

Oh and a quick P.S. - I got a lovely paid commission today for ten small drawings, brightened up an otherwise dull Friday...  quick turnaround for Tuesday as the original illustrator dropped out but I'm happy to fill those shoes!

POST-IT

My evening has involved eating, baking (cinnamon rolls) and sending lots of emails... I may be meeting up with a film-y person next weekend but not sure yet. I have my second day with Hattie & Flora on Thursday though which should be fun! Details soon... :)

Also a scan of some beautiful old photograph wallets; I've been scanning in lots of my collected slides and photographs after borrowing a slide scanner from work (which I'll conveniently forget to remind them I have, of course) It's amazing to be able to see all the slides close up, mostly people in the 70's. One of my fave's is below - don't the guy and girl look as if they were photographed just the other day? It's exactly what people are wearing now...

  

GUTS

Moleskine scans from my recent Denmark / Iceland trip

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COINS

Last Wednesday I assisted Hattie & Flora (also accompanied by four other lovely helpers) on setting up the Bluewater shopping centre 'Winter Wonderland'!

Although I love illustration, I want to spread out a little and am trying to get experience and hopefully freelance work in prop making, event styling, art departments and set design. I have a few other potential projects in the pipeline, but Hattie & Flora (a.k.a. the very lovely Harriet & Jodie) were the first company I contacted as their past work and styling looked incredible, just my sort of thing :)

I was thrilled to be invited along for a day's experience/interning with them and am soon to be repeating this with another event!

As the Winter Wonderland is now up and open I wanted to post a few (very poor, sorry!) snaps of the day,

 

 

 

 

 

 

... A very welcome halfway hot chocolate!

I got absolutely covered in blue glitter, but didn't care :) I had such an amazing day and it was a brilliant insight into all the organisation and hard work that goes on to make an event like this happen.

All photos from Hattie & Flora Ltd. event styling day @ Glow, Bluewater Shopping Centre Kent

ANTHEM

No going to work for me tomorrow! 

But I will be working on an exciting project down in Kent... :) Update to follow soon!

A recent pancake breakfast of mine with butter and maple syrup; reminds me of our breakfasts in Iceland. I'm having withdrawals from that country, I loved it so much. I need to work on my illustrated 'travel journal' type thing of our road trip, have been itching to work on it but other things keep getting in the way. Usual story.

 

Also a work-in-progress snap of a shoe illustration I'm working on...

INKY

Some type I'm working on for latest Dead Ink project...
Just got back from the pub early to do some work, oh it never ends!

Ciao x

HOPE

Well I've been on a bit on an adventure.. me and my friend Henry went to Denmark and then Iceland on the 18th October! We got back late Monday night, I'm still adjusting back to normality... how dull.

It was absolutely incredible... I'm in the process of getting all my rolls of film developed and am going to create some illustrations/travel journal out of everything. We saw so much I can't begin to list it, I want to get all the Danish/Icelandic places and names correct so am going to upload everything as one post so it's all together :)

Driving through Iceland is highly recommended, I can easily say it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen.

REEDS

I recently worked on an e-book cover for Dead Ink publishing, for 'Controller' by Sally Ashton (available on Amazon!)

I really loved working on this; it was originally titled 'The Controller' which I personally preferred but the title was edited for publishing. I'll soon be working on some more things for Dead Ink, will update in due course... :)

DEEP SPACE

I've been working on my forever unfinished website over the past couple of days, it's now very near to being complete... nuttin' special, but everything's in one place at last.

estellemorrisdancer.com

I think I  need to work on more narrative pieces and actually finish a series of something... all my work seems to be one-offs and oddities :/

Bonne nuit!

BLUEBERRY

I've had a busy illustration-filled weekend; have finished my Tigerprint competition entry for 'Tell a Tale' and also a poster for a friend's gig. The Tigerprint was a children's pattern/illustration, quite different to my usual work but I enjoyed it :)

Now back to my actual job tomorrow... boo. So so wish I was getting regular paid commissions. Maybe one day.
 

 

PYRAMID

Some recent charity shop purchases which I forgot to upload...
I found the perfect white vest.

STARRY SKY

Just had a lovely evening out in Linton (a village outside Cambridge) with a few friends, I planned on drawing but when there's not another friend there who also draws I get really self-concious! (plus I was too busy eating and drinking shandies haha)

But aside from that, I worked up one of my illustrations from the pub garden on Sunday

 
And also here is a sneak peek of my work-in progress for the latest Tigerprint competition, 'Tell a Story'. It's my first vector based illustration but I think it suits the children's theme quite well, as is a good practice projet for me using Illustrator,

JUMP

Some drawings from Sunday in the sunny Empress pub garden.

FLY TIP

Just saw this on Vogue.com, Lana Del Rey as the new face of H&M. I do really like her music and her as a person actually; I drew an illustration of her a while back - I know she's quite manufactured, a product of a record company with a fake name (and lips!) but she's kind of turned herself into a character which is really interesting.

Some of my favourites from the campaign: 

I've also been obsessed with a band I saw at my friend's pub gig on Sunday, 'Gunning for Tamar' - this one being my favourite on-repeat song at the moment.

THIS WON'T LAST FOR LONG

More sketchbook drawings from Sunday... we went to my friend Ben's alldayer-pub-gig-charity event in Ipswich, 'twas lovely.

These are pretty bad actually - and I seem to have made someone look like Stevie Wonder in the second spread, but hey ho.

PRESS FIRMLY

The moleskine came out on a pub trip a few days ago.
I think I made the guy in the bottom left look a little BFG... oops.

SECRETS