Frangipani and The Magical Letter!

My book has a name! and a cover! and its finally going out of my hands and into the press this weekend.

I think im going to miss Samina and Skinny terribly, they were such good company these past few weeks!

Ive discovered ( through a dear friend) some pretty lovely indian blogs and been poring through them - feeling completely overwhelmed, and now I think I really need to stop being so lazy and do more! People can be so awesomely creative.

This here is my very very own frangi pani plant. Ive never owned a plant before and its soo beautiful and is flowering so beautifully (touchwood) that Im absolutely in love with it. My green thumb is anything but, so im really hoping it stays happy ! The other plant i bought, a beautiful bird of paradise one, has gone through a hard time and looks like a corpse. But its magically reopened one leaf ! So i have hopes for that one too, Ive been trying to talk it out of its gloom.. maybe it worked :)

Skinny Scribbles!

I've really had a hard time keeping this leetle bit of excitement from all of you, but Im doing a childrens book with Scholastic :D And as you know, I have reallly been wanting to do one, so Im thrilled to bits to be covered in ink and paint drowning in a gorgeous story about a little girl called Samina and an envelope child called Skinny Scribbles and their whole adventure. Its funny, it makes you go aww sometimes and I love how dreamy the whole story is. It goes into production in April me thinks, I will let you know when its out!

So yes, I love it  and I love illustrating it. Its also in black and white! Im so used to spending hours with my colours that its a refreshing change to play with black and white again. I hope you like it !! Here are a few illustrations from the book :)

Im also off for a very exciting sounding trip to Bikaner, to be part of the Kabir yatra ! check out kabiryatra.org. Hoping to be filled with Sufi wisdom and all the love they sing about. So Ill see you next in March! much love.

Magic Monks and a Ruby

a slightly closer look

I just about finished this illustration, which is going as the header of a website..would love to show you how its going to look but I do believe my client might not be happy if I launched their site before they did :) so lets call this a sneak preview! I'll let you know when it launches!

Sketching a Dream World

Another sample (my sample portfolio is growing). The story here is about a child reading a book and entering different worlds. This one still needs work, but then I decided to sketch it from another angle.

I really liked the way this sketch was going.. it seemed to involve the viewer more, and had a lot more breathing space around it. The magical world is the biggest thing in the picture as well..so I start to colour it in

The final sketch . colours and all :) The whole thing is done with pastels and colour pencils. I really love using chalk pastels, they are the nicest medium. Ive got a whole lot of little sketches waiting for me to work on them and finish them so I can share them with you, especially my deadly ego series which havent seen the light of day in absolutely ages. So im making solemn vows to do some of these before the year comes to an end! 

This work by amrita is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License