Prickly things

As part of my Mexican project I've been playing about with patterns and typography inspired by cacti (although my housemate tells me these are more like little wriggly caterpillars!).

I really like this pattern and "Prick" typography, so I've made them available in my Society6 Store.

Finally on Society6

I finally got myself a Society6 account! You can check out my shop here. So far I mostly have the Maneki Neko Meme series up but I'll be adding more over the next few weeks. You can also get Maneki Neko greetings cards on my Etsy Shop.

Here are a few of the items you can get on my new Society6 shop:

Desk of the Day - Sneaker Time

Today I'm working on an illustrator drawing of some Nike Air Force 1 sneakers. I got some white ones for my birthday and have been itching to paint them for a while! I'm going to use this drawing to figure out some designs for them before I paint!

Desk of the Day - Clowns & Cats

I finished my first year of uni yesterday! So today I'm getting back to illustrating just for fun, and it feels good.
Obviously I started off with one of my fav subjects, cats. This is going to be part of my sushi cats series.

Desk of the Day - Origami Flowers

Today I'm working on some digital patterns and illustrations based on origami for my latest uni project. I think these patterns look a little geometric and crisp for the look I'm going for so I may have to find a way to re use them.

Desk of the Day 29/03/14 - Angry and Lumpy

It's been a long time since I did some illustrations just for fun, so today I'm having fun playing about with Illustrator and Photoshop. This illustration features two of my favorite subjects, can you guess what they are?

I just have to complete the background on this picture then it'll be ready to share with you guys.

Such Valentine Wow

The doge illustrations I was working on ended up turning into a valentines card. It's now available in my Etsy Shop to pre order as I'm waiting on the final printed cards.

More doge love // More internet memes // My illustrations

Sushi Cats in love

After months of trying to get some illustrations together, I've finally launched my first cards on Etsy just in time for Valentines Day. I'm still awaiting the final cards from the printers so there will be some proper previews soon! In the mean time, you can pre-order the cards now from my Etsy Shop.

These sushi cat cards will be available all year round, and there will be more sushi cat love to come over the next few weeks.

Wentle, Andrew & Hypno Elephant

I'm finally getting around to posting a portrait I made for my two of my fav people Wensdi & her fiance Andrew. I had fun using textures in this illustration, not to mention drawing their cute but evil companion, hypno elephant.

Check out Wensdi's awesome illustrations of a confused little boy here.

Desk of the Day 09/01/2014 More sushi cats

I'm back in London after a relaxing couple of weeks back up north. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with uni work, I'm so excited that I get to make my first whole pair of shoes this term! Today I'm taking a little time to relax and work on some personal illustration work. Yep you guessed it, more sushi cats!

Here's a close up of some of the details I've been working on. You can find my first sushi cat post here.

Remake & Remodel - The final design ideas part 2

You can find part 1 of my designs here. After discarding my heel designs I decided to focus on sneakers as I think eventually I'd like to go into sneaker design (Hello Nike? I promise I'll treat you good, I won't leave you for Adidas like Kanye did!).

I explored different ideas for the sole, the stitching, laces, materials etc before I settled upon my final design. My final design ended up being the bubble platform, I then had to create a 3D prototype of an element of that particular design which will be in the next post!

You can see more of this project here, more of my uni work here, and more of my illustrations here.

 

Remake & Remodel - Bacteria Pattern

Leading on from my post a few days ago, after a couple of days catching up on crazy dog and fat cat cuddles, I'm feeling up to going into more detail on my current project!

This project is called Remake & Remodel. Our brief is to be inspired by a shoe we were given to deconstruct (pictures of this to come!). Deconstructing my shoe got me thinking about what goes into a shoe and what isn't shown. So, inspired by designers that use functioning parts as design features, I started thinking about what is inside us that dosn't show. I ended up looking into DNA, viruses and bacteria, all of which have some fabulous visuals to inspire a project.

Pattern has been a large part of the shoe designs I've been working on for this project, I wanted to add some fun and bright PonyChops style to these shoes. Here's a pattern I've designed and decided on to be in my final shoe design. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, and think it works well with the style of shoe I've picked.

Remake & Remodel - finally a catch up!

Hey guys, long time no speak! I'm sorry last week was a little empty on the blog. This term at uni is whizzing past and I feel like I haven't even shared any of it with you yet! I'm hoping to organize my time a little better this next couple of weeks so I can share some more work and London life with you.

This term I have two big projects, one named "Remake - Remodel". I'm not going to go into any crazy detail with it yet as I've been sat at a computer for 12 hours today! So here's some dodecahedron patterns that I made for the project. Hopefully I'll get to explain the project to you some more in some future posts, but for now I'm off home to sunny Preston! I can't wait to finally get some fat cat and crazy doggy cuddles! Can you believe I've been away from them almost 2 months now?

Maneki Neki-NO - Grumpy cat and his buddies

Today you're finally getting to see where my obsession with internet cat memes and why I was doing so many Cat Meme Treasuries. 

A few months ago a customer introduced me to Maneki Nekos (Lucky cats) which lead to me having the idea to combine this with my fav famous cats; Grumpy Cat, Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat and Lil Bub.

It's been a while since I've been able to work on a project for myself, and I've loved doing these cuties. I'm thinking of making them in to stickers and greetings cards, what do you think?

Happy (super late) Birthday Ginge!

It was Ginge's Birthday last month, and I forgot to share this until now. For her present I painted her some special Cosmos and Crayons themed converse (I'll post pictures of these soon!) and I made this derpy illustration of us both. You can tell I've been watching too much Adventure Time, because I can't stop doing AT style mouths.

I miss this girl a whole lot, she's the derpiest and bestest friend a girl could have. Check out her blog for her science facts and other creative goodness.

If you'd like your own derpy digital illustration you can get one here, just mention you want it in this style when you order. Contact me at ponychopsshop@gmail.com or message me at my Etsy Shop with any questions.

The Bridesmaids - Digital illustrations

A couple of weeks ago I got asked to do some of my digital illustrations for a lady who's getting married soon. She wanted an illustration of each of her bridesmaids to give them as a gift. I have the say, these girls are probably the coolest bridesmaids ever. I've really enjoyed illustrating their fun hats, hair styles and make up.

Each of the frames was based around an object that represented the relationship the bride had with each bridesmaid.

You can see the work in progress of a couple of the illustrations here.

If you'd like your own custom illustration, check out my shop. I also do completely custom wedding invitations.

More of my illustration work.

Alex & Arthur

 Remember my Desk of the Day from Sunday? Well here is the finished illustration!

This has been my absolute favorite digital portraits so far. It's for Alex & Arthur, one of my fav blogs! I actually did some Arthur shoes for Alex a few months ago too. It never feels like work when you get to look at the adorable Arthur for reference pictures!

This felt like a super easy portrait to do because I already felt like I knew Alex's style and the kind of colours she likes. Alex asked me to include her dinosaur necklace, which I think works well. I wanted to find a way to make it a feature but not to over power the illustration.

You can get your own custom portrait here. Or if you don't have an Etsy account you can contact me about custom orders at: ponychopsshop@gmail.com

Pink on the Cheek

A couple of weeks ago Lauren from Pink on the Cheek asked me to do a digital illustration to go with her new blog design (above is the banner she used the illustration in).

Lauren wanted something pretty simple, a blonde lady with rosy cheeks and no background. I usually tend to keep my illustrations busy and bright, so it was really nice to get back to basics and work on a simple illustration. It gave me space to really think about the skin tone and hair colour.

I couldn't decide between a more yellowish blonde or an ash blonde tone, so I let Lauren choose. She ended up choosing the more yellowish tone which works really nicely with the pink font.

If you'd like your own digital illustration, check out my custom illustration listing in my shop or email me at ponychopsshop @ gmail.com

Here are both the ash blonde and the yellow blonde finished illustrations:

Ginge Russian Dolls

Ginge is one of my best friends in the whole world, so I figured it's about time I made her some Russian Dolls! She already kind of looks like a mermaid so I wanted to include her as part of my mermaid series. She's also a fellow avocado enthusiast so I couldn't resist fitting some little avocados in the design! Ginge is also a science geek, so I thought some geeky glasses would fit in well with the theme.

Check out Ginge's Instagram & Etsy. She does amazing doggy portraits.

Want some of your own customised Russian Dolls? Contact me at ponychopsshop @ gmail.com or through my Etsy shop

And here's a picture of Ginge with her dolls:

Portfolio In Progress

Remember my post on Tuesday about Dr Martens and LCF? Well, I've been crazily preparing my portfolio for the last few weeks. I'm hoping to get some decent pictures of my portfolio soon, but for now, here's some of the work in progress.

My first attempt at live trace. I draw the Dr Marten on some paper, scanned it then used live trace in Adobe Illustrator

 

Here's a sneak peak of a collaboration I'm doing with one of my fav artists - Laura Manfre