The past couple of months have been super busy what with one thing or other and with Christmas just around the corner everything is busy busy busy beeeee!!
I have been doing a lot of sketching lately, I've been really wanting to improve on how I draw people and faces. Looking through my old work I see a lot of my illustrations held the characters in poses where the face was obscured or turned away, which compared to now is the complete opposite. I really think you have to put yourself in a position of being uncomfy with your work. To begin with it might all turn out rather dire but the next try and the try after that will show a marked improvement and then a couple of months down the line to compare the first with the most recent will show a dramatic difference.
[© Laura Ashford, 'Cinderella']
[© Laura Ashford, 'Vampire']
What style are my illustrations based on? I really do not know, I tend to garner inspiration from a variety of sources and I hope my own style is created the process. I don't sit down and copy other peoples work, I tend to look at what they've done over time and when I sit down to do my own work I do not look at anyone elses at all. I just create what I can, what my hands will let me.
More recently still, the last week in fact, I have been concentrating on fairies again. My aim is create the fairies in triptychs with each triptych being on a slightly different theme. With Christmas soon and snow and winter in general the first set will be based around snow and snowflakes.
I would say the biggest body of work I have finished lately is the 1-10 project which was quite a bit more demanding that I expected but equally as fun and very skill pushing. I draw the master copies out and then, like a deck of cards, mixed them up and tackled each one in turn that way. This also allowed for the monotony of 1, 2, 3, 4... to go out the window. I was asked which one is my favourite recently and if I had to say probably numbers 5 and 6 just because they were so fun to do. Number 9 was the first one I completed and number 7 was the hardest. Maybe I like number 10 the best just because it is slightly different, the character is posed face on instead of profile to mark a change from single to double digits. In fact, I enjoy them all equally I feel thinking on it properly.
[© Laura Ashford, '1-10 Preview']
So all in all a hectic few months but exciting none the less and more so now than ever. The bubbly feeling that if you put in all the hard work, don't cut corners, don't take breaks, don't sit on your laurels, don't holiday, is finally starting to kick in and everything is exciting!
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