It’s been a busy month in the art studio as Christmas orders for pet portraits have already started coming in! First off I have started offering wooden decoration pet portraits.
They measure 6x6cm and are hand-drawn using coloured pencils. Both sides of the wooden decoration are varnished to protect them.
If you are ordering a single-sided portrait, the reverse side will have your pet’s name written in cursive, or there is a double-sided option for two portraits on one decoration. Starting from just £20, these make lovely and affordable gifts and are nice to hang around your home at all times of the year, not just during winter 🙂
My pet portrait keyrings have also been doing well, and I have been working on improving the resin application to get that perfect domed finish and shine on them. From what I have seen I appear to be the only maker offering this feature on my keyrings, and it just makes them look so glossy and pretty! Gives me peace of mind as well to know that the keyring portraits are well-protected from dings and scratches. These are hand-illustrated using coloured pencils and again are very affordable – prices start from £20.
Both my keychains and my wood decorations include gift-wrapping. I am currently making every effort I can to be more environmentally conscious and reduce the amount of plastic waste in my packaging. While my shipping envelopes are not yet recyclable, I am no longer using poly bags for packaging keyrings and the rest of my packaging is recyclable. Once I have run out of my current stock of envelopes, I will be transitioning to eco-friendly padded envelopes.
If you are interested in booking a pet portrait or a keyring/decoration for Christmas, now is a great time to do so! The earlier you reserve a slot the better, as I do fill up very fast from September onwards.
Lastly I’ve been hard art work designing more stickers! First up we have my coleoptera series of beetle illustrations, made with coloured pencil. I have always found beetles so irresitably colourful and beautiful. This is an ongoing series that I am going to keep adding to, there are just far too many amazing-looking beetles out there that I want to draw! The original illustrations are available for a new home, as well as their sticker counterparts.
I have also designed a new set of subtle LGBTQ+ pride stickers! This time around they feature my digital illustration of a leopard gecko. They are super cute and holographic to boot! They are fairly subtle as well so are a great way to celebrate your identity if you aren’t able/ready to be open about it yet. I love how these look and I definitely nabbed a “Secretly a Dragon” phrase one for myself haha!
Playing around with simpler and smaller illustrations has been really fun! These designs are something nice and quick to do in between working on commissions and allow me to take a bit of a breather. I’m hoping to make a lot of small wildlife illustrations going forward though I do find myself missing making larger-scale paintings.
I recently started on a pan pastel and coloured pencil piece featuring a family of coot chicks and their parent, based off a combination of references I took a few years ago. One of the chicks is showing off to his mother – how cute!
This one took a while to work out the composition for but I’m very happy with the final sketch I came up with. Early days yet as I have only done the water in pan pasels and have just made a start on the wood log, but I am enjoying this one so far! It’s my first time combining pan pastels and coloured pencils. I was surprised by how well the pans seem to adhere to watercolour paper (given how stubbon soft pastels can be in that regard!). Hopefully I get the time to work on it some more soon in between commissions!