Katharine Nicholls

I've been trying to make 'happy accidents' occur in digital painting, in the way they do with natural media paintings.  It helps to not be completely familiar with al the tools and to just keep on adding new layers, locking them and adding masks, changing the layer order and mode every now and again to see what happens. The more I use the tools, the more mistakes are made in these doodles, then it's a case of seeing what there is and taking away what doesn't work. camping in the rain around the garden doodle 5 beginnings  camping weather

I just found more some more images from The Gardener, the book I did a few years ago with the jeweller, Alex Monroe.  Alex's story was about a little girl who discovered the delights of an allotment in the city and he made a beautiful collection of jewellery around the idea.   I thought about the story recently when I heard that councils are selling off allotment sites for development, in some cases land that has been used for this purpose for hundreds of years.   The illustrations were deliberately loose and dreamy in their style. Here are a few of the development pages from my sketchbooks

Here are some images I did for a picture book earlier in the summer in collaboration with the jeweller Alex Monroe. He wanted to produce an illustrated story around which he would theme his exhibition of jewellery at Penhaligons, the perfumiers in Covent Garden. The book was called 'The Gardener' and was about a little girl who discovers the delights of city gardening on a friendly old man's allotment. Style wise it allowed me to work towards the kind of illustration I admire which is fresh and immediate. I'm putting together a younger children's version of the book at the moment.