EMELBI

Digital Artist and Illustrator

Making Layered Portraits – Horsington Church School

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I got a lovely surprise in my inbox recently. A group of year 5 and year 6 pupils from Horsington Church School in Somerset, had been following my Drawable ‘Making Layered Portraits’ resource on the AccessArt website. They sent me a handful of the images that they had made. I was thrilled to receive these brilliant artworks. They’re so full of energy and character. Inspiring creativity in young people is one of the most rewarding aspects of my own creative journey. I love to see how young people respond to my own creative endeavours. The wonderful artwork that they produce in response to the things that I create, always makes me smile . Check out their images below. I think you will agree that they are fabulous.

Thank you so much for sharing these with me. You should be very proud of your work as these are fantastic.

See the resource that they followed here.

Red Ed – Two Minute Time Lapse Illustration

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This image was made as part of a new series of two minute time lapse illustrations that I am embarking on for my YouTube Channel. I’ve called this one Red Ed.

As part of this journey, I want to explore a variety of different mediums again and become a bit more exploratory concerning image making. Way back in 1994, I did my Art Foundation where we were encouraged to look at all aspects of creative processes and practices. From Fine Art, Printmaking, Photography, Costume Design, Sculpture…

The list is exhaustive. But it was brilliant and ridiculously informative in terms of enrichment and discovery. One process informed another and thus the understanding of materials became constantly enlightening and ideas flowed in abundance.

It’s extremely easy to get bogged down in one set of processes and stagnate. Due to the fact that I have been working with digital images for so long now, I feel that I need to get in touch with real hands on materials once again and explore mark making in a very real sense. Im looking forward to this journey of discovery and challenging myself to use materials I haven’t used before or indeed materials that I’ve not used for a long time. My aim is to explore a combination and variations of paints, inks, pens, collage, print and whatever other new and interesting materials I can get my hands on. I will still be working digitally and where applicable, I will incorporate the two processes.

Much of my digital artwork starts off as pen and ink drawings and many of the textures I use are hand produced and scanned before using them as part of the digital process. So I am used to creating with real hands on materials, but for many reasons I feel I want to delve a bit deeper into the word of illustration and image making by looking at new techniques and trying out varied approaches to creativity. All of which will hopefully inform and enrich my established creative process. Let face it, it can’t be a bad thing!

365 Sketchbook 2021

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I have decided to undertake a 365 sketchbook. An illustration/sketch a day for a whole year. No rules, multiple mediums and any subject. I will draw whatever comes into my head on each particular day. Just for the sheer love of drawing and for the exciting journey of exploration and discovery.

To challenge myself, my first sketchbook has got recycled paper that’s quite thin and acts a little bit like blotting paper. This makes for some interesting ink spreading. When that sketchbook gets filled I will chose something a little bit different to carry on the project.

I will add new images to the gallery as and when I get time to post them up. These are all rough ideas and not finished pieces by any stretch of the imagination, such is the nature of sketchbooking. Some of them may well get turned into artworks, or characters in artworks at some other time.

Hands Up For Equality – Silkstone Primary School

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Here is an art project recently undertaken by the Year 3 children at Silkstone Primary School in Barnsley. They created some interesting illustrations based on ‘Equality’ using the outline of their own arms. The children made their images using words/text to form some strong detail for the inside of their arms. Adding various textures with pens, and colour from a limited colour palette, they came up with these striking graphics. The limited colour palette was used to form a modicum of uniformity throughout the images. The colours are also based on the school logo. This was a great project and I love the energy in the resulting imagery. They’re all so very unique.

Silkstone Primary School was a lovely school to work in. The staff and children were brilliant.

Unique and Equal – Silkstone Primary School

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These self-portraits were made by the year 4 children at Silkstone Primary School in Barnsley. This project was a creative experience that brought about some inspiring results. Based on their own portrait images, the children explored the line and structure of their own faces, through a series of drawing techniques. These techniques were devised to examine parts of the face that form the true character of who they are. By paying careful attention to the dominant lines, shading and using a limited colour palette, they formed these portraits over the duration of the workshop. It was brilliant to see how these characters emerged over the course of the day. I was particularly impressed with the strong and bold marks made during the painting process. The best comment of the day: “I didn’t know that I was good at art until today.”

I had a great couple of days working at Silkstone Primary School. A smashing little school. The staff and children were fab.

Chikket Imps

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This scrumptious bunch of impish lovelies are part of an ongoing illustrative project. I am interested in the uniformity of the illustrations. I follow a particular set of rules in the creation of each of the characters so that they relate to each other in a very particular way. Also in the way in which they have been placed in the exact same environment. That said, my aim is to make them as different to each other as possible without straying too far from the set of rules I have imposed upon the process. They are a lot of fun to create.

I will be adding more imps as they are created, so check back here for updates, and see how this little family is grow. Each initial drawing gets cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop and converted to an .eps vector file in Adobe Illustrator, after which they all get coloured on Adobe Photoshop. I have made three videos showing the colouring process. These are up on my YouTube Channel. You can find them at the bottom of this page.

 

 

The Christmas Imp

 

 

Super Quick Illustration

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My wife asked me to do a quick continuous line illustration for a presentation she’s doing over Zoom. It had to be a self portrait and done quickly, almost without thinking. (Fig 1) She then asked me to take that initial drawing and embellish it with texture shading and form etc. Again, I had to make these graphic additions really quickly. (Fig 2) I then photographed the resulting image on my iPhone 11 Pro, sent it to my iMac and ran it through the usual clean up process eventually converting it to a vector graphic so that the line was nice and clean. (Fig 3)

Then in record time gave it my usual graphic, texture and colour treatment to get a finished outcome. Very rough, and extremely quickly. I quite like the outcome. (Fig 4)

This whole process was done in about 40 minutes.

What I most love about the creative process though, is that fact that this image didn’t exist when I woke up this morning. Out of necessity; helping my wife out with a graphic she needed, I now have this little illustration. I love what I do.

Here are some other versions of the finished image after having run them through the filters in the app RNI Films on my iPhone 11 Pro. Just for a bit of variety.

The Day I was Vincent van Gogh

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Yesterday, I was mostly being Van Gogh. I created this version of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ for my wife’s art classroom doors, ready for the new school year to start. It was a lot of fun to do. In doing so I felt that I got a taste of the energy and vibrancy that Van Gogh painted with. The mimicking of the technique and style was a lot of fun and it was interesting trying to interpret such a masterpiece. Certainly a lot of energy and verve within each brush stroke. Quite a limited palette too. That said, there is a lot of warm colours that aren’t immediately apparent when you gaze upon the actual painting. Anyway, I hope that I did it some justice. The funny thing is, I can also see my own style in there too. Hard to avoid to a certain extent. It’s amazing how much you can learn through the exploration of someone else’s technique. All good fun.

Beardyman – God Damn I Look Fresh

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A quick sketch of the Vocal Beatbox and Musical Noise genius Beardyman.
He posted a video this morning on his Facebook page running a little competition for fans like myself to get involved with. I freeze framed the video and made this image from the freeze frame.

Never heard of Beardyman. Why the chuff not? Check him out here… www.beardyman.co.uk

Art and creativity is everywhere. You just need to look for it.

Beardyman - God Damn I Look Fresh

Mr. Scoper

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His name is Scoper.
He has just been hit by cupid’s arrow and is about to fall in love.
Maybe he will fall over first.
It’s hard to know.

Scoper

Nous Trois

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Found this the other day. It’s a triptych of characters painted on board that I did back in 2007.
I’m not actually sure what happened to them or where they ended up, but I have always loved these characters.

Acrylic, Emulsion and Permanent Marker on Board

Hue Too

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Face illustration on A2 cartridge paper.
Berol Pen, Quink Ink, Posca Pen & Biro.

Berol Broad Pen, Quink Ink, Posca Pen and Biro Pen face illustration on A2 cartridge paper.
Berol Broad Pen, Quink Ink, Posca Pen and Biro Pen face illustration on A2 cartridge paper.

Hero Boy

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New Illustration

Cartoon line boy, a super hero boy, equipped with a cape he’s a gold tooth boy.
He’s an out there boy, a real hero boy, a fine and dandy do it well and for the people boy!

Hero Boy

Youth

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New Illustration
Messing with the tablet, textures and using a limited colour palette.

This image is derived from a photo that my father took of me when I was about 8 years old.

EMELBI_YOUTH

Eco Warrior

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Also a musician, juggler, stand up comedian, carer,
culinary genius, father, husband, teacher and all round good egg!

Eco Warrior

Just Bea’

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This is a quick tablet drawing/illustration of my little girl.
She watches me like a hawk when I am doing anything arty or creative.
We have been doing some artwork together which I will post up at some point.
She’s really rather good too.

EMELBI - Just Bea'

Colour River Flow

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Art is in fact EVERYWHERE!

When you take a good look around, you can find beauty in the most mundane of places.
It’s all about keeping your eyes open and being willing to look at the world just that little bit differently.

Here is some beauty that I found in a sink.

Colour River Flow

Colour River Flow

Colour River Flow

Colour River Flow

Oi! RUG

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emelbi Oi banner

‘Oi!’ – Hand Tufted Wool Rug – Collaboration Artwork

Not so long ago I teamed up with Andrew Warburton of Area Rugs www.arearugs.co.uk

Andrew is a highly skilled and experienced carpet maker using hand-tufting methods in the production of his carpets and rugs. He has been designing and making unique and exclusive hand-tufted rugs and carpets since graduating in 1988 with a first class honours degree in carpet design.

He was intrigued by the style and technique of my illustrations and thought that they would transfer well into a carpet design. He had seen an illustration of mine called ‘Oi!’ that he thought would work well and that would be both quirky and impacting. Andrew set to on interpreting the image with pure wool. The results are below.

The design is first sketched out to scale.

The wool is then worked into a type of man-made muslin cloth!

When the tufting process is finished the topside is then cropped to get an even pile.

This is done with a machine that works a little like a lawnmower.

Rugs can also be carved and sculptured by using a carving machine a little like the clippers used to sheer sheep.

When the rug has gone through all these processes it is then backed with a natural latex and hessian.

Rug Entitled: Oi!

Size: 1.7 by 1.2 Metres.

The result was absolutely outstanding. Andrew made an incredibly accurate interpretation of the original design, I’m sure you will agree!

Oi!

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

'Oi!' - Hand Tufted Wool Rug - Collaboration Artwork

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