Well, I have to say, I thought this weeks Illustration Challenge would be very uninspiring… Numbers? How am I going to illustrate Numbers I asked myself? After coming up with a complete blank, the idea for my little Number characters actually came to me while pushing my trolley around Woollies doing my weekly grocery shop. It was a little lightbulb moment and I couldn’t wait to get home, pack away the food and get my drawing pens out to get my ideas onto paper! It’s turned out to be one of my favourite themes, I loved creating these little characters, and it’s quite addictive. I’m now seeing the whole alphabet in the same style….

Until recently I have barely touched pen to paper since college; most of my illustrative work has been created completely digitally using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The Illustration Challenge is fantastic for me as it appears to be getting me back to basics, and back to good old-fashioned sketching. The downside of course, is that I’m used to having an “Undo” button – don’t like what I just did? “Apple Z” it and it’s gone. Not the case with pen and paper, so I decided to keep track of each stage of this drawing, so that I could learn from my mistakes, or look back and realise that perhaps I should have stopped before adding the background, or that last bit of detail, before announcing Ta Da, it’s finished (to anyone who might listen).

So, here is my work in progress, and the finished result….