June bits and pieces
Hello my dears! I hope you are well and enjoying some lovely time outside.
May and June are my favorite months of the year, it always fills my heart with so much joy! One of my favorite things about Scotland is that it’s much closer to the Artic circle than France (where I’m from), therefore it gets an amazing amount of light during the Spring and Summer months. It never gets completely dark at night.
There’s always a black bird singing right above my bedroom window and waking me up way too early :)
A little sparrow viewed from my studio window
I feel so lucky to have a flat with south facing windows and trees nearby. It’s like a proper bird watch! So many sparrows, magpies, tits and my favorite… wood pigeons! The first babies/teenagers are now flying out of the nest and it’s a pure delight to watch their little faces! Parent pigeons are so good, both male and female look after the young ones and it’s so nice to see them feeding and grooming the babies 🥰 (see below the whole family together, how sweet!!).
We also have a nest in a small Japanese Maple tree in the garden. This is the male guarding it. Its been almost ten days since the couple started to sit on the nest so there should be some new babies coming soon (the eggs incubate for 17 days). I haven’t taken any pictures of the nest as I don’t want to stress them out!
Of course I’ve been feeling quite inspired to draw wood pigeons lately! They’re so goofy, funny and adorable characters!
Designing the winter collection
Spring is usually the time I start thinking about Winter products. I’ve been wanting to offer some wrapping paper in my shop for a long time so after doing some research about manufacturers, I started sketching ideas.
The first pattern I wanted to focus on was the woodland friends (just above). I was really excited about choosing the colour combination but it didn’t go as expected. It felt quite overwhelming… Probably because of the wide range of possibilities, there’s just too much choice! I couldn’t find something I was happy with… Nothing felt right.
I finally went for something simple and modest, forest inspired. I’m happy with this simple palette, currently in the process of making a pattern with these!
Ideally I would like to be able to offer two or three different designs. One of the ideas was to replicate my illustration of the ice skating birds. For the third design: no idea yet. I tried different things but again, nothing felt right. I spent many days working on these and it just left me frustrated and unhappy with all the attempts… It happens!
Now I’ve just stopped working on these, no point on forcing it as I have no motivation anymore. I feel stuck, I just don’t want to be designing products at the moment. I’m sure I’ll be feeling happy to start working on this again in a few weeks! Or not, we’ll see 😀
That’s the reason why I start working on the winter collection in Spring. I can take my time and step away for a few weeks if I feel stuck or unmotivated!
Calendar 2023
If there’s one product I’m really excited about it’s the calendar! Last year was the first time I offered one in my shop and it was quite successful! I love the idea of bringing a bit of joy in people’s home, turning the page to a new illustration every month is such a lovely thing!
For the 2023 calendar I’ll use some existing illustrations and will also paint a little bunch of new ones for the following months: March, May, October and November.
See below some sketches for October
Here are the drawings for May and September. I’m so glad I was finally able to paint the breakfast scene, it’s be sitting in my “Project” folder for years!
Finished!
And finally, the big ambitious one, the dinner scene! I really worked quite hard on this sketch, I’ve been wanting to paint a meal scene with lots of different characters for a long time. This is a potential cover for the calendar (I’m still hesitating with the cleaning owl above).
I finished the sketch ages ago but I can’t make a decision about the background. Do I leave it white or do I paint it with a warm chocolate brown? What do you think?
(Do I really think it would look good with white background or am I just choosing the easiest option?)
That’s it for today my lovelies, I hope you enjoyed taking a little peek at what I’ve been working on lately! I wish you all a wonderful day 🌞
See you soon,
Cécile
