Spanish in Sketches

I've been learning Spanish for a little while now. I'm not sure why exactly but it's pretty satisfying nonetheless.

In a bid to widen my vocabulary I've been drawing words to cement them into my memory, and then sticking them up on this blog. They say it's a good way of learning as drawing is "a language without code". So for example, the word for shell is concha:


It's a fine trick for words like shell, brick or mouse but sadly I may never memorise the Spanish word for dignity.

GASH! Summer Party

It's summer time, which the Fresh Prince says is when "The weather is hot and girls are dressing less" which can only mean one thing - Gash! Friday is their summer party and I drew this footy inspired flyer for them.

Families at The Dorchester

This is a booklet for The Dorchester and their special offerings for families. They wanted a traditional children's story look so I got to crack out my watercolours and pencils for pretty much the first time since I did GCSE art, which was pretty satisfying. It's like using photoshop but instant.

The booklet stars Doris the duck, the Dorchester mascot, and her 2.4 ducklings.

It's a small A6 booklet that folds out using complicated paper engineering that words can't describe into two big pages that look like this.


I drew a little illustration of Doris for each of the family specific offerings.

Here's Doris having a little me time.

Doris has a princess-themed party.

Doris gets ready for bed her luxury den. Glamping, they call it.

Doris inspired by a trip to the English National Ballet.

It was a really fun project to work on, and I'm definitely proud of how it came out. Thanks to Jade who was the brains behind the whole operation. As I was designing the booklet as well as illustrating it the whole thing is really a product of pretty much just our two little minds, which is pretty satisfying.

Getting Doris' look right took some work though. The family started off like this:


And ballerina Doris like this:


The whole family went from this...

to this...

to this...

to this...

and this before finally ending up as they did - ie. actually looking like ducks. Using paints, pencil and paper mean that these repeated revisions did take a little longer, but I think it was worth it in the end.


And here are some painty type bits I was thinking about throwing in early on.


So that's nice.