Christmas Baking Fun

The pie is taking shape...

Before cooking!

Me with the pie.


Finished pie!



Coffee muffins.

Before cooking...


Just out of the oven.


The finished product!

It's hot!

James is testing them out- he said they tasted good although he doesn't looked too convinced here!

Me with the pie again!

I used the Christmas holidays as a chance to do some baking- mince pies (as promised to James), muffins (as I don't like mince pies) and a creamy gammon, onion and mushroom pie made with left over gammon from new year's eve in James lovely new pie dish which he got for Christmas. Yummy!

Christmas Card 2010

This is the Christmas card I made this year (and by this year I guess I mean last year seeming as it's now 2011!)

Paul The Octopus- final design

So.. this is my final design- it's 380 mm wide and 260mm high and has a 5mm bleed around the edge as specified in the brief it also allows for the center fold of the magazine (it is intended for a double page spread). We could opt to leave 'dead space' for text if we wanted to but I thought there was already quite a lot going on in the piece. I'm reasonably pleased with it- again I'm not sure my style of illustration really suits editorial stuff but I've given it my best shot!

Paul The Octopus

We had to start off by doing 8 thumbnail ideas before choosing 2 of them to take further.


This was the first of the 2 ideas I chose. This one is a more realistic take than the other- the other idea was favoured by my tutors and other students on my course so I developed that one more.

This is the initial development of the second idea in black and white- this idea was liked by my tutor but I'm still not sure that my style of drawing really works in this context.... my tutor did make the point that if I was in the position of doing an editorial illustration in real life they would have hired me after already seeing examples of my work so I wouldn't have to worry about them not liking my style...

This one is collage on request from my tutor- I think it would be more at home on a birthday card...

This is my favourite- much more subtle and detailed than the others (it is done in coloured pencil).

Here the top one is done with coloured pencils and the bottom is done with watercolours. The top one is way to 'garish' (unfortunately it was all I had with me at the time) and the bottom one isn't detailed or 'exact' enough for my liking although I much prefer the subtle colours.

The second part of our module (after the Darwin bit) was on editorial illustration. We got a choice of headlines all about animals and had to pick one to illustrate- mine was on Paul the psychic octopus. This isn't my preferred area of illustration at all and I'm not particularly pleased with any of it but here is some of my initials ideas etc for you to have a look at.

Giraffe

As a small part of the module that I am currently working in on at college we have to start learning to use adobe illustrator. As an end result we have to produce our choice of animal, drawn using this software. I am very much not a natural at using illustrator but anyway here is my attempt at a giraffe!

Anniversary Meal Cooked By James.

This is the meal that my lovely husband James cooked for our one year wedding anniversary. We had a lovely meal of chicken wrapped in parma ham with a creamy tomato sauce, served with mashed potatoes and baby carrots and for desert we had home made lime meringue pie.

Christmas Card For James

This is the Christmas card that I made for James for Christmas. It is hand cut card and spray painted red to finish.