New Watercolour Butterfly Designs for Next Girlswear

Here are two handpainted watercolour designs I have done for Next Girlswear available here. Its tricky to produce artworks which have a true watercolour quality that can be commerically outputted with standard screen inks. I've developed a way of creating this kind of design which gives it a true painterly quality while only requiring standard output process with a limited number of screens.

More directional ladies fashion placement prints

Well I finally got all 4 complete, here's the other 3. I would love to be able to really indulge in briefs like this, and lavish time and care on each design but they really have to be thrown together to an extent as I'm expected to produce 4 in one day at least.

This week is really hectic as I have projects for 3 different clients all with back to back deadlines so there's no room for overlapping. It's starting to feel like the super-busy days when I started freelancing full time back in Jan 2008 and I was doing 70-80 hours some weeks. Its not quite at that level just yet though!

Back to the tribal brief tomorrow, but for baby this time...

Directional ladies fashion prints

I'm working on ladies fashion today which makes a nice change from kids and nightwear. The brief (and I use that term loosely - when I do ladieswear, I rarely get a nice clear, specific brief) calls for etherial, ambiguous imagery with hand sketch and paint techniques. I always struggle when I'm faced with this kind of project as in essence its got to look like nothing, but its still got to be something and that's a real challenge.

I'm enjoying splashing the paints around and doing some hand rendering though, and the eagle design above it the fruits of this mornings labours. I've got to produce at least another 3 in that vein though so I'd better get on...

Britain's Got Talent brief nears completion & more work for Adams

Sometimes I'll enjoy a brief so much more than others and find it really easy to complete, and theres no obvious reason why. the Britain's Got Talent project has been one of these. Perhaps its a combination of a good client, who in turn has a good client, both really decisive and constructive. Above is a watercolour sketch design for boyswear based on the one I already did for girlswear which they loved

Hopefully this latest round of amendments and recolours is the last and the project will be signed off.

I had a lovely email from the designer at Adams with some great feedback on the recent watercolour designs I completed for her and a request for lots more work from me. Adams is another good client, with concise design briefs and clear design direction, and not too unnecessarily picky so I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks working with them.

Watercolour designs for Adams

I'm back to the days of burning the midnight oil again. Which is no bad thing considering. This week I've been working on a real mixed bag, fistly some branding and World cup Ts for Tu Clothing, and today I've been splashing the paints around to create the watercolour print above for Adams girlswear. The rest of the week I'm back to Britain's Got Talent, the boys range this time. And there was I thinking that with the downturn I'd finally get chance to enjoy working on some self directed projects. Maybe next week...