Paris, c'est quoi?

Whilst gallivanting around Paris earlier this month I came across a sweet children's book describing all of the sights to see and things to do in and around Paris. So obviously I bought it.

I thought the illustrative styles were lovely. A number of illustrators worked on this book and these were Benjamin Bécue, Pierre Caillou, Julien Castanié, Hélène Convert & Camille Roy.
Despite the variety of illustrators, all the pages and illustrations flow and work well together.

I really like all the simplified maps, and how busy but clear all the illustrations are.

The publisher of this book is Milan, and you can find this particular book on their website, where you'll also find a whole bunch of other lovely looking books they have published as well.

And now I need to learn French so I can actually read the book I own! I figure if I can learn French to the level I need to read this book, then that is pretty good going, and I could fare a bit better with the language next time I visit France!

Paris, Oui Oui!

I thought I would share some photos of a collection of interesting things I saw whilst on a wee jaunt in Paris a couple of weeks ago. I've never been to Paris before and I thoroughly enjoyed it, theres so many things to see - I would like to go back one day (and hopefully speak better French as mon francais est nul!)

On our first full day in Paris we went to the Louvre, which certainly didn't disappoint! I was never particularly interested in sculpture when studying art back in my college days, but I would say it was the area I was most impressed by in the Louvre! Look at this angry guy! (He was massive)!

But then again the grandness of Napoleon's apartments was pretty amazing as well! I love seeing over-the-top rooms like this - I wish I could sit in them all day and draw every little object in them so I have a record of all that pomp!

I always take photos thinking that they will be of some use to me in a future project. I'm not sure how these unusual dishes will help me, but I love how bizarre they are nevertheless! Not sure if I would want to eat off them though - I suppose they would be fun to freak out any dinner guests!

I'm can't remember what these were (I think it was a sort of wallpaper?), but I loved the Oriental-themed sewing-ness here!

We also visited the famous Shakespeare & Company, I loved the interior of this English book-stocking book shop (just across the way from the Notre Dame). I think England could do with a few more unique book shops like this.

Sign for Science Fiction section, featuring some War of the Worlds images there! Awesome!

Paintings on the walls.

It was here that I found a book that took my fancy, entitled 'Artists, Writers, Thinkers, Dreamers' by James Gulliver Hancock. (Please excuse my dodgy photos)!

Each page of the book features a famous person from history, surrounded by general and unusual facts about them. I really like the fluidity and busy-ness of the style and the colour schemes. This book has inspired me to explore something similar in documenting our trip to Paris (oh no! Not another travel journal!), I'm looking forward to starting work on it!

We also visited the Pantheon and saw Alexandre Dumas' tomb, which I still find freaky if I stop and really think about it... so moving on, here was a big fat statue we found sitting across the road.

And my last awesome thing to show is the Opera house, Palais Garnier:

It had the busts of all the famous composers that ever played there as part of its exterior decoration - such as Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini.

So there we go, its also convenient that I just finished reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary tonight as well! I found it quite a difficult read, and very hard to get in to - but now that I've finished it and have time to ponder over it, I think I like it a bit better on reflection.

Anyhoos, enough of my jibba jabba. Its Friday night and its time for me to go "PARTY!1!" ("PARTY!1!" is code for "I'm going to bed, I'm knackered).

British Meal Illustrations

Well hello there! Just a quick post to tell you what I've been up to the past few weeks!
I have been working on a set of watercolour illustrations of traditional British meals. I started doing these mainly because I love food; but also to see if anyone else out there loves food as much as me too! So I thought I would try my hand at depicting some of the British favourites.
I began by making some rough sketches to decide on the "layout" of the food and the like:

Then on to some more worked up sketches of the meals - I did a lot of research to see how various dishes were generally portrayed - it made me hungry, I can tell ya!

These were then traced onto watercolour paper using my light box:

It was then on to painting with watercolours:

The final step was to then scan them into the old computer and do some tweaking and brightening:

I'm just making some final touches to them and then they will be ready to send off to print! Wa-hoo!
The Christmas-themed meals are going to be printed as square cards, whilst the British meal ones are going to be A5 prints.
The meals on the Christmas cards will be: Christmas Dinner, Christmas Trifle, Christmas Mince Pies and Christmas Pudding.
The meals on the A5 prints will be: Fish & Chips, Steak & Ale Pie, Chicken Tikka Masala, Cream Tea and a Full English Breakfast.
They shall be appearing in my Etsy Shop in the future.

I'm thinking of maybe trying to film myself in the future whilst I'm working on an illustration, so you are able to see the way I work - plus I really like watching other people's work in progress videos; I  especially like the sound of pencil on paper, I find it very soothing.

So there we go, until next time when I'll be more than likely showing off my spoils from my recent trip to Paris! Whoop!