Girls Who Draw present Marine Life

My summer was spent working on a new Girls Who Draw postcard book, although the preparations actually started in spring. It took quite a few emails to sort out the lineup of 12 illustrators for the book and get it confirmed. Some people said yes straight way, a few said yes and then forgot or dropped out, others said no or just didn't answer. I was worried it was never going to happen but in the end it all came together perfectly. The contributors are all illustrators I know or have met through selling work at fairs and that is really important. They all need to be reliable, professional and also self sufficient... they must already sell and exhibit their own work. I've been very lucky this year and everyone involved has been amazing to work with, in fact it's been the easiest book to do so far.

 



















The theme for the postcard book was Marine Life which was really an excuse for me to draw more mythical creatures. I've wanted to illustrate Greek mythology for quite a while and was spoilt for choice as there are so many ancient Greeks sea deities. There's Poseidon, the Greek king of the sea, Amphitrite the Greek goddess of the sea, their son Triton, aswell as Nereus the old man of the sea and his daughters the Nereids. It's not hard to find images of these characters as they are all represented on ancient Greek ceramics. My illustrations were inspired by these and I chose to use colours similar to the red figure style of vase painting. I decided to draw a hippocampus, which is part horse, part fish and some of them are even depicted with wings. For my second illustration I drew a Nereid or sea nymph riding a dolphin.

Now the Marine Life postcard books are finished and back from the printers I'll be adding more details about them and the illustrators involved to the Girls Who Draw Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/girlswhodraw