Blog – Page 26 – Jo Cheung Illustration

New Work and a Belated Update

Hello all! I hope you’ve all been well and not been stressing out with Christmas… I have no excuse to be slacking with blog posts, but lately I’ve been caught up with things so updating my website hasn’t been much of a priority. Juggling daytime work and fitting in illustration/blogging sort of takes its time from my daily schedule… I guess I still need to get the knack of blogging and to start planning out blog posts in advance- all in good time though!

Lately, I’ve been pretty busy with private work: I recently designed a good friend of mine her wedding invites and RSVP cards; they look amazing as well and I’m so happy with the way that they’ve turned out too (photos coming soon in my portfolio section). My cousin asked me to do an art print for her friends as she went travelling with them almost a year ago (see below).

I like the way the artwork has turned out and it’s made me do something slightly different, but with my own style to it. My plan is to start drawing more real life objects, buildings and people- still focussing on animals too- but I feel like I need to expand my portfolio i.e. showing a range of skills and techniques.

Think I’m going to stop here as I’m off to bed pretty soon.. yes, it’s an early start… 6:00am to be exact!

ByJo Cheung

December 12, 2016

Illustration

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New Christmas Cards!

Super pleased to announce that I have some new Christmas cards for this year, which are now in my Etsy shop. Woohoo! Free shipping also applies as well so that’s a double woohoo!

New Workspace!

Apologies for the lack of updates as I’ve started work again, so I’ve not had the time to do any new work. Actually, most of my time has been spent scraping paint off the staircase and repainting it again. I had no idea how long it was going to take until I started the whole process, which can be pretty boring if you’re like me as I can only spend a maximum of 15 minutes before having a tea break! Before the semi destruction of the staircase, we had a new hand built desk running across the three sides of the loft and it looks pretty stunning as well! Thanks to Sam’s dad, who is a complete genius on all things wood work related, he built us a desk so that we can use the loft as a workspace. I often don’t show my work processes nor do I document my workspace(s) as I was either working on the dining room table or on the floor, which I don’t think anyone wants to really see…

Ta da!

Mario looking pretty happy with a new place to do lots of climbing and looking out of the window.

Of course the cats approve! It probably took a few weeks to get things set up but other than that I’m so happy that I have somewhere I can work without having to constantly shift things around. I’ve set up my computer area (thanks to Sam’s mum who gave me a 27″ iMac!) and I have a drawing/shop production area as well. There’s also loads of natural light throughout the day thanks to the large windows, so it’s great for taking photos.

There’s some other things we want to do like build two more shelves so that we have more storage area. I’d also like an office chair as the current one I’m using isn’t exactly comfortable.

I’d love to see where you work: do you have a studio or do you work from home?

Home Improvement: House Update

Hello folks! Hope you’re all well. Apologies for the lack of updates lately as I’m still slowly sorting the house out- mostly decorating- what with less than a week and a bit to go before I go back to work. This post isn’t going to be illustration related as I still don’t have anywhere to do my work, or at least set up a work area. So far, I’ve spent most of the summer holidays indoors and being a busy bee painting/swearing away at spilt paint (and stepping on it).

So my parents are helping me out with the decoration side of things as there’s no way we’d be able to get this much done without their help. I didn’t want to do any painting/ DIY stuff during the weekends or after work, so it made sense to get as much done before the term starts again. We painted the living room a rather nice shade of white (who knew that there were loads of shades of white…) and complimented the skirting board and the picture rail with a brilliant gloss white.

Mario enjoying the sofa…

Ta da!

It makes such a difference even with a lick of paint. Now the room looks much bigger as before it looked really old and tiring (plus random DIY within areas of the room).

We’ve managed to finish the kitchen, which is now looking rather nice and fresh, painted all the ceilings; finished painting the loft and ceilings; now onto the dining room skirting boards. So… what’s next? Well, we’d like to strip the floor boards and get them nice and polished looking again as the laminate flooring is starting to come off, in terms of that wooden edge thing. Then, looking to upgrade the bathroom as it’s really dated and needs modernising.

My post ends here as I’m about to YouTube some more DIY skills! Bye for now and enjoy the sun while it lasts!

House Update

Hello folks! How are you at the moment? We’re slowly but surely getting the house sorted out and now that I have a couple of weeks off work, I thought I might as well make use of the time and get on with decorating the house. My plan for the summer was to paint the walls as well as stripping the wallpaper as it’s starting to bubble, plus it looks a bit ugly! I thought I should just bite the bullet and crack on with it…

It didn’t take us that long to go with a colour scheme for the house: white, grey, and black. Oh, and more white! We wanted to keep it nice and simple and perhaps use some other colours for an accent wall, like a deep rich blue for instance. We’re also total newbies when it comes to decorating so it was pretty much looking stuff up online (thanks Youtube for DIY hacks). I spent half a day washing down the walls to get all the grime off- needless to say, it was rather laborious and I had to take breaks in between the process!

Once the walls were dry we taped the edges of the skirting board, around the ceiling and the edges of the doors so that we’d get a nice clean finish with the paint. What I thought would be less than an hours work ended up taking us both about two hours just to paint one section of the hallway…

Once the first layer went up I painted the second layer on my own the next day, which took about an hour and a half! Today it took me about another hour to take the masking tape off and to retouch some areas that had peeled away. Tip for you all: peel away the masking tape once you’ve finished painting (as in immediately) otherwise you’re going to end up with uneven edges if you leave it the following day. I ended up having the score away some of the masking tape, which was an absolute pain in the arse!

Anyway, this is what the downstairs hallway looks like (courtesy of the cat posing):

I have to say, we’re really happy with the colour as the hallway is always light so the colour really suits the space. I’ve started painting the loft so photos of my (slow) progress will follow.

I’m really enjoying spending a bit of time and making our house our home, I’ve never had to decorate anywhere I’ve lived before so this is a first for me. It’s nice seeing the hard work you’ve put in, albeit wonky paint lines but it’ll do for now!

That’s it for now- have a super nice week and take care!