Edinburgh Fringe Festival

My daughter, Florence, is acting in this production of Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Round and round the garden’, so when the director was discussing publicity, guess who piped up with ‘My mother is a graphic designer…’ Anyway if you’re in Edinburgh between the 24th and the 29th of August I recommend you see it.

Fish - ing

An oldie, an editorial illustration for an annual report for Thamesmead Town, near London.

The present that keeps on giving

These lovely Red Riding Hood tulips were a birthday present. I’ve drawn them with a dip pen and watercolour to make a picture for a birthday card and now that the petals have fallen off I’m going to plant the bulbs to enjoy them in the garden next year.

SFG Challenge: Shut UP

Jeni Barnett's exchange with an MD caller to her LBC phone-in programme.

I also had a nudge to participate as it's been so long. I was going to use my lovely dip pen to draw an 'UP' drawing but I got derailed by fury at this ignorant woman broadcaster encouraging parents not to vaccinate their children. For the back story visit my blog. I don't generally produce caricatures and so I couldn’t think of the convention for drawing a speech bubble coming out of a phone. If anyone can point me in the right direction for finding out these conventions I'd appreciate it.

Storytelling magazine

A recent job.

Round

I know I’m being lazy putting up an old piece, but it does fit the challenge so perfectly. The illustration was created entirely from circles.
The perfect simple comfort meal – a slice of good crusty white bread toasted, buttered and topped with a poached egg, a sprinkle of Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper – yumm!

Black and White

This was an autobiographical illustration I created a couple of years ago. If you want to read the story behind it visit here

My new autumn masthead

SFG prompted me to update my blog masthead, using some autumn leaves I painted in my scientific illustration days. I rarely have the time these days to paint in such detail.

An old picture hauled up for talk like a pirate day

Back in June, after supper, Cap’n Skunkbeard (my 4 year old son) ordered me out into the freezing cold of the garden to play at pirates. As Sea Salt Sally I persuaded him that I needed to sort out all the messy green ‘ropes’ on the sides of the ship so that we were prepared for any battles – so that got a bit of weeding done. Then I convinced him that Cap’n Skunkbeard would need a portrait so that his enemies could see what a fierce pirate he is, so he allowed me to retire from deck duties to carry out my other duties as the ship’s artist.

PYBOT

My little Xavier’s first pair of ballet slippers.

PYBOT Hugo with wet hair

This is one of the pictures for my new year-long art/illustration project ‘A Family Portrait’. I will be doing a portrait a day of each of the members of my family (me, husband, daughter, three sons and the dog) for a year and have fun trying lots of different styles. The great thing is that they are used to my sketching and so are completely desensitised and don’t take it personally if the portraits are unflattering. This one is of my middle son Hugo after washing his hair.

Let me introduce myself!


Hello everyone, I’m delighted to find SFG and to have been invited to join. My name is Julie Oakley. I’m a self-employed graphic designer and mother of four living in a small village, just outside St Albans – which is about half an hour on the train to London. I discovered Illustration Friday and blogging two years ago and the above illustration (mischief) was my first I-Fri attempt. I have one blog, Julie’s Pictures where I throw in most of my illustrations and random thoughts and I have another year-long art/sketching/exercise project called One Mile From Home, which is coming to a finish soon, but will probably form the basis of a self-published book. Anyway there is such an abundance of wonderful work on this site, I’m thrilled to be in such illustrious company!