Painting plates

         Light washes of colour are applied over the plate sketch to form the outline, shape,
                                                 texture and shadows of the plate

Once the lighter washes and key shapes have been applied, the detailed areas of the plate can

                                                      start to be painted 

       The layers of colour and detail are gradually built up until the illustration is complete

It's a chilly day here in Melbourne and I've just finished some home-made parsnip and ginger soup to warm me up a little, put my comfy ugg boots on and turned the heating up a notch.  Ahhh, much better! 

I thought I'd share how I created some of my recent plate illustrations for Real Living magazine and the process I went through with the painting.  For these illustrations I worked on Arches Medium textured 300gsm watercolour paper.   

The first stage I went through was stretching the watercolour paper, the process of stretching paper prior to painting means the paper will always remain perfectly flat, and won't buckle when the wet paint is applied.  I don't always stretch my paper before painting - especially when using the 300gsm weight paper, but as the illustrations where to be photographed I wanted to ensure the artworks remained perfectly flat.

Using a B pencil I sketched the outline of the plates, including any pattern and detailed areas.  I try to do this quite lightly, so I can rub out any pencil marks once the artwork is finished.  Sometimes I work 'blind' and paint directly onto the paper without any pencil sketches first, but for these illustrations I chose to sketch the plates first to ensure I could capture the plates as accurately as possible.

Once the outlines were sketched, I started to apply light washes of watercolour paint to create the plate outline, as well as shadows to give a sense of 3 dimension.  Once the basic shape of the plate was finished, I added more layers of colour to acheive some of the basic detail and pattern of the plate.

The layers continued to be built up, finishing with the darkest areas and fine detail.  With watercolour you always paint light to dark - so lightest areas first and building up to the darker sections last.  Any white areas are created by letting the white paper show through, rather than using a white paint colour. 

It depends how detailed you want the artwork as to how many layers of paint are added or how much detail to include.  I like my illustrations to have a sense of realism and detail to them - but without being too perfect or 'finished'.

Mother's Day plate illo's in Real Living magazine

My watercolour plate illustrations for Real Living magazine  

 

 

 

This months edition of Real Living magazine features some yummy cake recipes for Mothers Day - and the cakes are photographed on my watercolour plate illustrations!

Rather than have the cakes on actual plates, I was asked to paint the plates so the cakes could be photographed on the illustrated versions.  A very cute idea!  It was great to paint the pretty plates knowing they were going to be used as styling props, as its something very different to what I normally do. 

The delicious recipes for the cakes are: flower jam drops, blueberry cheesecakes with white chocolate base, chocolate coconut hedgehog slice, fig and frangipane tart and triple chocolate cherry cakes.

Yum!

New life.....

Little baby Jasper

 Johnson Bros 'Playtime' ceramic cup and saucer set

We welcomed little baby Jasper into the world two weeks ago!  He decided to arrive quite unexpected a few days early, and was pretty keen to get out-and-about into the world.  So, here starts a new life for a little person and the start of a new and different life for me and Mr B.

Amongst the beautiful gifts we received for our little man was this vintage children's ceramic cup and plate set from two very special friends.  Its an English Johnson Brothers design called 'Playtime' and features very cute and quirky animal illustrations.  It's lovely Jasper can get to start his own collection of ceramics!   

Orange op-shop finds

Staffordshire Potteries cup and Broadhust saucer with stylised floral patterns in orange, ochre & black

Myott plate with rose pattern in orange and yellow

Retro salad bowl and servers

Orange and yellow floral tin with matching flour mill

I think I've posted before about randomly finding and buying objects in similar colours.  I've had another experience of this recently with some second-hand finds that all ended up being in the orange colour palette!

Firstly I picked up the retro Staffordshire Potteries cup and the Broadhurst saucer from the Daylesford Mill Market, and loved the mix-match patterns in orange, ochre and black - the cup in particular has a fabulous graphic floral pattern.

Then I found the Myott plate with the rose pattern in yellow and orange.  I love the hand-sketched feel to the rose pattern, and the orange and yellow colours help to prevent the plate being too 'pretty' or granny-ish!  The plate also has a quite beautiful scalloped edge detail.  

I also found the very cute tin with bright orange and yellow flower patterns at the Daylesford Mill Market.  The tin matches an old flour mill that I already have - perfect!

And lastly I found this adorable salad bowl and servers from Stockroom in Kyneton!  Whilst I'm not really a butterfly person, the bold style of the butterfly and flower pattern on the bowl, combined with the strong orange and black colours stops the design being too sweet and girly.  Love it!!

A brighter start to the week

I'm feeling a little brighter and more positive about the start of this week.  I've finally received some very overdue payments, and I'm making progress with the faulty melamine plate design which should be being re-made this week.  I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed it can be re-made without the fault, and I'll have it in my hot little hands soon!

In light of this good news I set up a photo-shoot session last week to photograph the plates in preperation for organising a website and on-line shop.  Here is a sneak preview of the hand-painted floral plates.  Best of all I get to eat the left-over props :-)

Me Old China in Inside Out!

Inside Out magazine - May-June 2011

 Illustrated 'Vintage Tableware' side plate

'Polly Put the Kettle On' cut-out wall plate

I was really excited to get the latest copy of Inside Out magazine over the weekend - and see two of my plates featured!

One of my Me Old China 'Polly Put the Kettle On' cut-out wall plates was featured, along with one of my Lucy King Design illustrated 'Vintage Tableware' plates, both used as props in an article about cutlery.  It's great to see your own work featured in such an inspiring and design orientated magazine, so I'm sending a big thank you to Inside Out for including my designs in the lovely styled shots!

Etsy - Earth Day

I was pretty excited to see my Me Old China repurposed and recycled cut-out 'Dinner' plate and 'Knife & Fork' plate featured on Etsy's April Shopping Guide today! 

The plates were part of the 'earth day' round-up on the shopping guide which was e-mailed out to all subscribers.  Its always a pleasure to see my work featured by other people and I'm very grateful to be included amongst so many other fabulous products.  Thanks Etsy!!

You can see these plates and more of my designs at the Me Old China shop over at Etsy :)

Exciting new melamine designs!

I'm very excited about some melamine designs I've been working on arrived in the post this week!  I'd started developing a range of designs last year for Lucy King Design, and of course everything got delayed with the sampling due to christmas - but they have all arrived now!

As usual I couldn't decide on one particular range of designs - and so I sampled all of them!  It's the worst thing being a designer is having so many ideas - too many ideas most of the time.  And having no brief to answer means endless options for design themes and styles......graphic, retro, hand painted, pretty, bold etc etc. 

I'd love to be able to create and develop my own range, but apart from having to work out all the manufacturing costs, packaging, retail margins, how to sell the products and if it's actually viable to do (and make a profit myself!) I first need to narrow down the designs to proceed with - and that's the tricky part!!

So, I'm hoping I can ask for some help and feedback from whoever might see this blog post and is kind enough to cast their vote from the designs below.  I've divided the designs into themes - so you can either nominate a theme you like, or a specific design, or your top 3 designs! 
The design references are all under the pictures.

FLORAL - HAND PAINTED ARTWORK (by me!)

Floral 1

Floral 2

Floral 3

Floral 4

VINTAGE MAPS - PAGES FROM AN OLD ATLASS

Map 1 (Australia East Coast)

Map 2 (Australia)

Map 3 (United Kingdom)

RETRO DESIGNS - WALLPAPERS & FABRICS ETC

Retro 1 (wallpaper)

Retro 2 (fabric)

Retro 3 (wallpaper)

RETRO STYLE FLORAL DESIGNS (by me!)

Retro Floral 1

Retro Floral 2

Retro Floral 3
VINTAGE TABLEWARE ILLUSTRATIONS (by me!)

Vintage 1

Vintage 2

Vintage 3

Vintage 4

Vintage 5

Vintage 6

Any thoughts or comments would be much appreciated - thank you!  You can vote anonomously too if you'd rather not leave your name or link to a website / blog.