Over the past five weeks I’ve taken an intensive children’s course via the great team at Make Art That Sells. This course was my favourite topic – children’s books (!) and was taught by the lovely Lilla Rogers and very knowledgable art director Zoe Tucker. It was very exhausting but fantastic to be learning new skills in this area, and I focused on the story The Owl and the Pussycat. My assignments below.
I’ve joined the wonderful community of illustrators taking courses through Make Art That Sells this past year, and it’s been invaluable to push my work, learn more about different markets and presentation and develop friendships with talented artists I’ve long admired who are also taking the courses. So I was thrilled to recently make it into the top 50 for the annual “Global Talent Search” with this entry (you had a fun assignment designing a tea set!). Now I’m busily working on the next project and having a ball, details will be out next week 😬
Week three of the course is on children’s book (my favourite!) though the story was a lot darker than most of the children’s books I’ve worked on. It was fun to build a dark story feel to the cover and work digitally, playing with some new Photoshop brushes I have.
So this was a bit of an experiment… The theme for this week was Staffordshire Pottery (featuring very nonchalant animals!) and I ran with a dog “Best in Show” theme, suitable for kids. I think next time I would focus on more abstract design rather than characters as they are hard to translate to a plate (!) however a great experiment for me and I’ll try again soon. 
I recently (after at least a YEAR of musing) decided to sign up for Lilla Roger’s art courses, very practical illustration courses that I’m hoping will teach me some new areas and practical skills. First class down, I’ve learnt about fabric design and I am most impressed with the class! A lot of work, but learnt a lot and I’m excited about the journey ahead. Here’s this week – fabric design based around Pyrex and pasta.
Jesses Mess 