Sam Jones Illustration
Hello and welcome, I'm Sam and I'm an illustrator based in the North of England, I hope you enjoy having a mooch around here, You can contact me at sam.bedroomfloorproductions@gmail.com and find me on Instagram where I'm @bedroomfloorproductions
I'm thrilled to announce that Bear & Belle have been longlisted for The World Illustration Awards in the Children's Publishing category!!
So far this has been a personal project but I would love to develop this story further; if you would love that too do get in touch.
Bear and Belle's Snowy Day
Experiments with liquid charcoal monoprints. The monoprints were the starting point for this project. I layered several up and then looked for landscapes for Bear, Belle and Arthur to inhabit; a bit like looking for shapes in the clouds. It was lovely to develop Bear and Belle's characters further and take them outside to play. (See below for their first appearence!)
Skye & Earth
A picture book idea for older children exploring the intensity and drama of children’s play and the ambivalence of the big sister/little sister dynamic using Instagram’s FolktaleWeek 23 prompts. I remembered how stories I told my little sister were often quite scary and how hands could magically become a stag, a crow or a rabbit and that a sheet could be a world. Little Sister is also in each image. It was great to do some black and white images. They were made digitally incorporating some scanned in textures. I've put some of my sketchbook drawings next to them, I often scan in initial sketches and they form part of the final image, I like the looseness they add.
Pinocchio In Toyland
I've enjoyed making these, they are all based on the original Pinocchio story but I've used vintage toys as inspiration to create all the characters; the con merchant cat is from a Czech skittle set, the magpie was based on Japanese folkart pull along toy and the fish are inspired by celluloid Fortune Telling Fish - do you remember them? They were made as a concertina book so you see the left half of the image first, it stretches out to reveal a linked landscape.
Stories in the Making
I love vintage children's books and recently I've been enjoying re-creating some book covers. These are done with limited palettes based on just four colours
A Bear’s Tale
These were created for Folktale Week 22, with the idea to develop them into a bedtime story book. Made using liquid charcoal monoprints - a very experimental technique that I came up with to add unique textures; they were then scanned and worked on digitally.
Happy Place
From sketches made in Manchester City Library
This little girl was so absorbed in her book that she didn't notice me sketching her and the circular seat was such a good frame for these spots. I've tried to keep the spontaneity of the original drawings by using a limited palette and a very textured pencil line. Can you see what book she's reading? It's one of my favourites. Swipe to take a closer look.
I would love to illustrate a children's book in this style.
The Wonderful Pippi Longstocking A reinterpretation of a classic children's story
Pippi
Pippi is such a fabulous character, bold, brave, kind and unconventional; these illustrations were a joy to do.
Pippi arrives at The Villa Villekulla
All the children were sitting looking at Pippi, who was very happily drawing all over the floor
Pippi climbed up the old oak tree with the coffee pot in one hand
Red Riding Hood in the Words
These sequential images were done for Folktale Week, hosted annually on Instagram; single word prompts were given with the idea of freely interpreting them whilst referencing storytelling. I created simple pictorial puzzles using the prompts MOON, AWAKE, RIVER and DREAM that both illustrated the meaning of the word and actively engaged Red Riding Hood. Since then I have used these images to explore dyslexia - the latest image is confusing to read but contains the words WORD and WOOD.
Swipe to see of them all.