EMELBI

Digital Artist and Illustrator

Education

Woodlesford Primary School – Year 1 Portrait Illustration Workshop with EMELBI

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I have just had the pleasure of working with the fabulous children in year 1 at Woodlesford Primary School in Leeds. These children took part in one of my ‘Portrait Illustration Workshops’ and stunned me with their energy and creative talents.

Look at this wonderful sample of work below. These children are 5 and 6 year olds. They did such a great job and added their own individual bits of flare to their work. We explored line work, talked about the face structure and features, had a think about where light was coming from, discussed adding different ink to their work and then finally looked at shade and texture to finish off.

I enjoyed working at this school enormously. The staff where so friendly, accommodating and helpful, I felt like I had been part of the team for years. It makes such a difference to me.

The children were brilliant and one of them said that it was… “the best day in school yet”.

I’ll take that! (“,)

Look at these wonderful images.

Pleckgate High School – Digital Portrait Illustration Workshop with EMELBI 2023

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Brilliant work from the Year 10 students at Pleckgate High School.

Both the year 10 classes I worked with produced some lovely imagery. Working mainly in Procreate to build the initial illustrations, they further developed their work using various other apps, adding filters, colour treatments and textural fills.

It’s always nice to work across various apps, each one bringing a slightly alternative feel to the creative process. Once you have a solid image to work with you can make multiple versions of the imagery and have various outcomes.

If you know my personal work, you will know that this is something that I explore quite a bit.

Check out these lovely images from the Year 10’s at Pleckgate High School.

Student Sketchbook Examples – Based on My Work

Copmanthorpe Primary School – Character Illustration Workshop 2023

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I had a fantastic time at Copmanthorpe Primary School creating these fabulous illustrations with the year 6’s.
I love the diversity across the images that they produced.

The pupils were shown a particular process of drawing starting with a simple shape and then they looked at turning those shapes into weird and wonderful characters using a set of simple techniques. They added further embellishments like shade and texture to finish the process.

We talked about the characters and what they stood for, what their names might be and what sort of things they might carry in their pockets etc, if indeed they had any! Some brilliant ideas developed and interesting discussions ensued.

There are a super array of expressions and some really strong line work. It was a delight watching all these illustrations come together over the course of the day.

Terrific work from all the children who all worked diligently throughout the day.

Check out some of the fabulous images produced below.

Birkby Junior School – Y6 Digital Portrait Workshop with EMELBI – 2023

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I have worked with this school for a number of years now and the children always come up with the goods. There are some super, creative and talented pupils among the children at Birkby Junior School.

The digital portrait workshop that year 6 took part in this year brought some really striking results. Based on their own portrait photos, the children explored a set of techniques using the program Procreate on the iPad. The resulting imagery is bold and striking.

I am always fascinated in the results regarding individual style. Especially after the students are taken through the same set of processes regarding technique. Regardless of age, I find that people creating any type of artwork will always apply their own unique set of ideas or experiences to the process. This is what makes each individual piece of art diverse and unique and have its own energy.

Check out these wonderful images that Y6 created below.

Birkby Junior School – Beautiful Mundane Project – Y4 Digital Graphics and Photography Workshop with EMELBI – 2023

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The Beautiful Mundane Project – Making Graphics from Simple Digital Photography

Working with the year 4 pupils at Birkby Junior School we looked at taking photographs of really mundane subject matter in order to make some striking graphics.

Using the Snapseed app on the iPad, the pupils manipulated their own photographic images, taking them through a series of treatments in order to enhance the imagery and create a set of striking graphics from simple beginnings.

Here are a sample of the fabulous images that they created during the workshops.

Bridgewater Primary School – Digital Portrait Workshops 2023

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Creating Self Portraits in Procreate with Bridgewater Primary School

This lovely school booked me in to deliver my Digital Portrait Workshops and I got to work with years 2, 3, 4 ,5 and 6.

I will never tire of these portrait workshops. Young people always come up with the most fabulous and diverse imagery. The children at Bridgewater Primary School in Manchester were no exception. Some really expressive work came out of these sessions. I especially love some of the colour use and the exploration and treatment of form.

Here are a selection of images from across the year groups. Brilliant work from all of them.

Year 2

Year 3

Year 4

Year 5

Year 6

Making Layered Portraits – King’s School and Nursery, Devon

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I have had some wonderful feedback from a school in Plymouth, who have been creating their own fantastic illustrative portraits following my Drawable ‘Making Layered Portraits’ resource on the AccessArt website.
The images below are some examples of the terrific work that the Year 6 children have produced during their creative sessions working on their class topic of Diversity and Identity.

It is always such a pleasure and honour to have inspired young people to embark on new creative journeys and learn new artistic techniques. Sharing the creative process is a gift that opens up new opportunities in a multitude of directions. It is almost impossible to know of the fruits that will grow from the seeds that we sow as creative professionals and creative educators. It is such an important thing to have sown those seeds.

Thank you so much to King’s School and Nursery in Devon for sharing these with me. These images you have created are fabulous. I hope it has given you some interesting ideas to go on and create some more fantastic artworks.

See the resource that they followed here.

The Hill Primary Academy – Portrait Illustration Workshop with EMELBI

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Here are some fabulous images made by the year 6 children at The Hill Primary Academy in Rotherham. Using photographs of themselves, the children made some super line illustrations using pencils and pens. Looking at certain aspects of the portrait process, year 6 focused on dominant aspects of their features and looked to capture a true likeness of themselves using a certain set of techniques. Afterwards, the children coloured their images using a limited colour palette of acrylic paints. The results were absolutely fabulous. I had great fun working with them all and the work that they produced over the course of the day, was brilliant.

East Ardsley Primary School – Space Illustration Workshop with EMELBI

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One of the most important skills in art, is drawing. You can create wildernesses, vast landscape, detailed cities, fabulous creatures and just about anything your imagination can muster. Allowing yourself to be free to ‘JUST DRAW’, no matter where it takes you, is a freeing experience and it will always throw up surprises in term of what is created.

So many people say to me “I wish I could draw, I’m rubbish at drawing!” and I always ask, “Well, how ofter do you draw?” to which the answer is always either “Never.” or “Not often.” We get good at doing things by doing those things. You will never get good at anything by not doing it. Except perhaps, doing nothing.

This workshop has been devised to make the drawing process really free, where mistakes are encouraged and exploration is the key to making a collaborative piece of art. It’s always fun and the overall effect is fabulous, as a huge pice of cartridge paper is filled with wonderful and incredibly detailed drawings. The workshop is always fun and all the participants are always fully engaged and excited to create more and more.

This particular workshop at East Ardsley Primary School was based on the theme of Space. Below are a set of images taken from the collaborative piece of work that the children created over the course of the day. There are some fantastic characters and wonderfully brilliant and  imaginative spacecraft within this imagery. When you make a process fun, inhibitions always seem to dissipate, leaving you with pure creativity.

The children also took photographs of the collaborative artwork and made digital edits of the imagery using various apps.

Birkby Junior School – Y4 Digital Graphics and Photography Workshop with EMELBI

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Making digital graphics from simple digital photographs with Year 4 at Birkby Junior School.

This workshop was all about making striking digital graphics from a really basic set of digital photographs. Using iPads, the children were encouraged to take a series of photographs of every-day, mundane objects. Objects that would usually seem humdrum and perhaps largely taken for granted, like sinks, radiators, window cills, light switches, air vents, skirting boards etc.

Using the apps Pixlr and Snapseed on the iPad, the children manipulated the images, taking them through a series of treatments in order to enhance the imagery and create a set of striking graphics from those mundane beginnings.

Here are a sample of the fabulous images that they created during the workshops.

Birkby Junior School – Y6 Digital Portrait Illustration with EMELBI

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These fab images are a sample of the digital portraits recently created by the Year 6 children at Birkby Junior School. They worked with iPads and the program Procreate. Using their own portrait photos as reference, the children were taken through a series of processes and techniques in order to make these beautiful illustrations.

It was fabulous to work with them all and the images that they created are striking. I am always stunned at the diversity of image and the variety of different outcomes that young people come up with. Even though the creative process is the same, each individual artist brings all of their own ideas, experiences and flare to arrive at each unique outcome. This is the beauty of the creative process.

Pleckgate High School – Digital Portrait Illustration Project

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The illustrations that the year 11 students created at Pleckgate High School in Blackburn, are outstanding. I worked with them for a day looking at portrait illustration techniques using the iPad and the Procreate App. I often work with young people delivering creative workshops in order to inspire and share the skill set that I have acquired and developed over the years. The beauty in sharing is watching young people pick up those skills and do something completely different with them, often with brilliant and stunning outcomes. In turn, I end up learning a thing or two from them in the process.

This is the beauty of creative learning. Through the shared experience of creative exploration, so much is learned on a myriad of levels. I really enjoyed working with this school and the artwork that they produced in such a short space of time, was nothing short of brilliant. Check out some of their work below.

St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School

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Procreate Portrait Workshops

I recently had the pleasure of running a weeks worth of workshops with all the children in St Mary and St John Catholic Primary School in Wigan. Working with Reception children, right through to Year 6, we used an app called ‘Procreate‘ on the Apple iPad. Many of the children had never seen or worked with Procreate before so there was a steep learning curve regarding some of the technical aspects of using the app. I am pleased to say that they all took to it like ducks to water and the strength of creativity speaks for itself.

The project was tailored to look at self portrait illustration, to think about the structure of the face and what it is that makes us look like us. Working form their own photographs that they took themselves, the children explored their face structure, examining strong lines and also the negative spaces in the construction of their imagery. Working over multiple layers they eventually finished off by delving into the world of colour where we discussed colour palettes and what sort of hues worked well together. The emphasis was always based around the notion that ‘less is more’. This was a deliberate exercise throughout the workshops, simplifying the process of the illustration in order that the students ended up with the strongest lines. There are key, dominant marks that are the critical elements that make up the character of the face. They inform the viewer about certain expressions and the overall personality of the portrait that they are viewing. The children went through the process of learning to identify these elements and incorporating them into their illustrations.

The students and staff at this school were a delight to work with. I was with them for a whole week and was able to work with every student in every class. The work that they produced is exemplary. Fun, bold, really exciting and full of energy.

Years 5 and 6 also got to work with me in the production of some hand drawn portrait illustrations. They photographed their finished line images on the iPad and worked into them digitally using and app called PIXLR.

Procreate is an app that runs on the Apple iPad. It is an exceptional bit of kit used by many illustrators working in the creative industry. It is intuitive, powerful and exciting to use.

Check out some of the work below from each of the year groups and also some photos of the children working.

RECEPTION

YEAR 1

 

YEAR 2

 

YEAR 3

 

YEAR 4

 

YEAR 5

 

YEAR 6

The Beautiful Mundane Project – Birkby Junior School

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This was such a fun project with years 4 and 5 at Birkby Junior School. All the children were introduced to the process of making striking digital graphics from really basic digital photography.

STAGE ONE – THE PHOTOGRAPHY

Using iPads, the children were encouraged to take a series of photographs of every-day, mundane objects that would usually seem humdrum or of a dull subject matter. Things like light switches, radiators, air vents, skirting boards etc.

STAGE TWO – THE IMAGE TREATMENT

Using various apps on the iPad, the children then took the images through a series of treatments in order to enhance the imagery to make it a little less dull, introducing textures, colour overlays and light leaks to name but a few.

STAGE THREE – THE TEXT LAYOUT and GRAPHIC DESIGN

The children were then asked to produce a poster for a mock local event using one of the images that they had made as the background. They were given the choice of either:

1. A Music Festival

2. A Technology Convention (Tech Con)

3. A Horticultural Show (Flower Show)

4. An Art Exhibition

Using the same apps that they had used in the creation of their graphics; but this time using a different set of tools within those apps, the children created some wonderful work based on these mock events.

The graphics that they produced and the subsequent posters are full of colour and energy. They have vibrancy, great structure and beautiful detail. The whole workshop was to show that you can create beautiful graphics from bland imagery with a bit of imagination and technical know-how. The workshops were a great success and the children really enjoyed that whole process.

Best comment: “I didn’t know that you could create amazing things from nothing!”

IMAGE MANIPULATION DAY

GRAPHIC DESIGN DAY

Ash Croft Primary Academy – Digital Lift Off Day

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In this recent workshop, the year 5 and 6 children at Ash Croft Primary Academy made some strong graphics from hands on illustrative beginnings. Starting with their own portrait photographs as reference material, they made some detailed portrait illustrations of themselves using biro pens on heavy cartridge paper. Exploring a series of techniques, these images were then worked into with thicker pens honing the major detail. Special attention was paid to the areas that make characters and features stand out.

Once this stage was finished the pupils then photographed their images using an iPad and worked into them digitally using various creative apps, exploring and experimenting with textures, colour overlays, light bleeds and numerous other layers. The outcomes were a series of strong digital graphics based on their initial drawings.

The school and staff were fantastic and a pleasure to work with.

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.

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.

Codsall Middle School – Portrait Illustration Workshop 2018

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Here are some of the images that the pupils at Codsall Middle School in Wolverhampton produced during a recent portrait illustration workshop. The images are derived from their own portrait photographs. They learned to look for dominant parts of their features to pull out their true character. These are a handful of the images that were produced on the day. It was hard to pick the images for this blog as they were all so very good. There were 138 year 6 pupils that I worked with on the day. The workshops were a lot of fun and I always love to see young people creating great imagery and learning new skills. I’m sure you will agree that these images are just fab. 

Gomersal Primary School – Creative Workshop 2016 #2

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This has been a wonderful project where the children have explored a wide range of mediums including photography, pen line portrait illustration, textured mark making with a variety of tools, paint blending experimentation on canvas, digital illustration and layering techniques and then bringing all these things together for the final pieces. The finished artworks are absolutely fabulous and so wonderfully individual. It was a pleasure to work with such a great bunch of talented young artists.

Gomersal Primary School – Creative Workshop 2016

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Here are some of the images that have been created by the children at Gomersal Primary School in recent creative workshops. These will be added to the canvases that they have been working on for the last few weeks. Can’t wait to see the finished items.

I really love their use of blended digital textures incorporating their hand drawn portraits. Brilliant creativity.

Birkby Junior School – Personal Story Telling Project

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This was a super day long project working with a group of talented creative children on a personal story telling project. The artwork produced was towards part of a community art exhibition with many other schools being involved. The children rolled out a large piece of paper across the school hall floor and each of them worked on multiple areas of the paper creating illustrative self portraits of themselves and embellishing the portraits with images that related to them and their lives.

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Afterwards the children extensively photographed the images that they had made using ipads. That done, they further worked on their imagery digitally manipulating the images using specific apps in the ipad until they had a made a large amount of usable media. The resulting posters were the results of their hard work. A super project with a fab bunch of children.

Here are some photographs from the workshop

Gomersal Primary School – Experimental Portrait Workshop

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This was a really fun and creative art club. From large A2 printed portrait photographs the children traced their own images paying particular attention to the shapes that exist within the human face. This made for some really lovely and unusual drawings. The second stage was to make another tracing, but this time from the initial line drawing so that there was some extra degradation of form though this process.

Using a limited palette of colours, the children then inked the second drawing by almost block filling the shapes that they had discovered within the lines of their drawings.

I love how these beautiful images started to appear on the paper. We later scanned the images and went on to do some digital image manipulation with them. Great fun.

Line and Ink Work

 

DIGITAL MANIPULATION

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WORKSHOP PHOTOS

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Shelly First School – Digital Urban Mural – Digital Illustration Workshops.

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Using Dazzle 03 pupils created funky character designs to use in the production of a Digital Urban Mural. Further graphic experimentation had them exploring various tools within the Dazzle 03 software package where they used multiple layers and learned to transfer images from one document to another.  The pupils then combined many graphic elements to form the finished artwork exploring colour, texture, image placement, small graphic additions and much more. I love how busy these images are and how they have come together as a group of images.

Shelly First School – IF I WERE KING OR QUEEN – Digital Illustration Workshops.

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This was a fun project with Shelly First School where the children got to make King and Queen portraits out of their own faces as part of a whole schools creative arts week. The theme for the art produced during the weeks creative activities was all based around and celebrating the fact that Queen Elizabeth II will become our longest-reigning British monarch on 9 September 2015. A massive amount of artwork was produced during the workshops and a lot of fun was had along the way. Here are a few from the pile. I think they all look positively regal.

Gomersal Primary School – Digital Portrait and Digital Urban Graphics Workshop

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Working with KS2 art club I did a quick photo shoot with the children during their first session to get some source material for their illustrations.

Once that was done we loaded all the images into the computer and started the creative process.
Using Dazzle 3 the children were shown how to use the different layers to derive illustrated images from the photographs. They were then encouraged to experimented with colour to create their finished portraits.

Creative Art Workshops

Once these initial images had been finished I wanted the children to do something different with their portrait images. We looked at further developing the children’s ability to manipulate their original images in Dazzle 3. Using different layering techniques and a bank of texture images, the children added experimental textures and
graphics to form their final piece of work, inspired by the urban graphics that are akin to my style of work. Here are some of the final images…
Wonderful work I’m sure you will agree!

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Digital Urban Graphics

A mixture of photographic and illustrated materials.

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Gomersal Primary School – Funky Character Designs

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A fun workshop working with Key Stage 2 children exploring drawing skills and character development. The children got to try many new drawing skills and techniques before starting on their final images. They were also able to experimented with vibrant coloured inks trying out different mark making techniques before adding the fine detail with POSCA pens once the ink had dried. I love the energy in the finished artworks. They are all very bold, bright and a lot of fun.

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Creative Art Workshops

Rowley Lane JIN School : Digital Urban Illustration Workshop

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Using Dazzle 3, the children at Rowley Lane JIN School explored portrait illustration using multiple digital layers. When they had finished their main images derived from their own photo’s, they made tome funky textured canvases in which to place their illustrated selves. The workshop was a lot of fun and their finished artwork is just super. I love the expressions and colour work.

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Creative Art Workshops

Creative Art Workshops

Salendine Nook High School – ‘I CAN’ Street Graphics Project.

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In 2013, Salendine Nook High School won the Guardian Newspaper’s ‘School We’d Like’ competition and was awarded £5000 in prize money to revamp the Blue Tunnel, which is a key linking walkway between different buildings in the school. See the initial post from The Guardian… The Guardian – Salendine Nook: graffiti art project transforms old walkway.

Creative Art Workshops

I was approached by the school in the summer of 2013 and was asked to facilitate a creative project consisting of a series of workshops based around the title ‘I CAN’. These workshops began in autumn term 2013 and ran through to March 2014.

The initial workshops explored the history and culture of street art and graffiti and looked at the myriad of artists whose work adorns the street of the world’s urban spaces. Particular focus was placed upon methods, techniques, colour use, image placement and characteristics concerning each individual artist’s approach and style.
We looked at everything from the huge typographic scrawls and intricate lettering styles of graffiti and the continued development and evolution of graffiti culture, to Wheat Paste posting, the Knit The City phenomenon, Banksy, The London Police, Shepard Fairey and many more.

Creative Art Workshops

Creative Art Workshops

The creative workshops were designed to produce a range of strong graphics, which were either hand drawn, painted, developed from photographic elements, made using collage techniques and indeed a mixture of all these modes. Strong emphasis was placed on different drawing techniques designed to loosen up the creative process and produce an unexpected quirkiness in the resulting graphics.

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Students also explored the use of the light box to trace images in order to develop quick and strong graphic styles and to experiment with composition. There was also an emphasis on the significance of mark making, constructing textures using paint splats, printing with inked bubble wrap and other interesting found materials.