Something a little different

After the success of Freddy the Frog my Dad asked me to do another piece for him, this time from one of his ex-work colleagues.   I don’t normally do pictures by adults but I’m always up for a challenge so I thought I should give it a go.   The story behind the picture is that it was drawn while Dad and his colleagues were on one of their work team-building trips to the south of France.   One of the days they were split into teams and had to do tasks throughout the day.   This drawing was the final task and won the contest for my Dad’s team.   The colleague who drew it gave it to my Dad as a memento and he has always treasured it, putting it in a frame in his home office.   So, he asked me to make a textile piece from it so that he can send it to the original artist.   Here is the result:

Happy Father’s Day (a little belated!)

This week I have a special picture to share with you.   This is the gift that I gave my dad for Father’s Day.   I asked my 5 year old daughter and her 6 year old cousin to draw a picture of their grandad and they did not disappoint.   As soon as I asked my daughter to draw him her excited response was “I’m definitely drawing him in shorts because he always wears shorts!”, my nephew even managed to include his ever-present flip-flops!

The picture that my daughter drew was in colour so I honoured her colour scheme but my nephew’s drawing was in pencil so this gave me some artistic licence to choose the colours.  

My nephew is very much into Marvel superhero characters and I happened to be gifted some superhero fabric from the lovely Jen at Little T’s Haberdashery so this was the perfect fit for grandad’s t-shirt and was a good way to differentiate that the two drawings were from the two children.

Here is the finished picture:

Dad was very pleased with his picture and within minutes of opening had hung it in prime position on his office wall.  😊

If you like this and would like a similar picture making please contact me via one of the links on the right-hand side of the blog page or email me at annamaltoys@gmail.com.

Mini-rat

.... And, today's inspiration is Lauren Child.   If you have never come across Lauren's work you really must visit her website or do a Google image search - her illustrations are just beautiful.   I have been slightly obsessed with Lauren's illustrations, books, magazines, merchandise and animations ever since my sister introduced me to Charlie & Lola.  I love the way that she layers details, uses a combination of drawn and photographed images and the patterned fabrics and prints that she uses are just gorgeous.  I have many of her books and one of my favourite characters is That Pesky Rat:

And here is my (slightly naked) version:

See you for the next installment tomorrow.... x