|Copyright 2014 Lily McDonnell| |MyBeautifulMonsters|All Rights Reserved|


Best Friends Biscuit & Potato Plushies

I recently had a very sweet custom plush order request to create a biscuit and a potato holding hands.

The story behind it is that the client gave a card to her friend about ten years ago that she has treasured with a cartoon of a potato and biscuit holding hands and the words “Friends: The Biscuit would only dare be just a biscuit when it is with it’s true friend the Potato”

The plush pair were ordered as a gift inspired by this card.

Approx 15cm tall plushies made of soft fleece with black plastic safety eyes.

Machine sewn with hand stitched details – felt sugar pieces and knotted potato ‘eyes”.

Filled with cuddly polyfil and plastic pellets for weight and balance.

Their hands are sewn together so they will never be separated 🙂

 

 


“Narrow the Dragon” Custom Plush

This dragon is probably one of the most complex plush toys I’ve made and I am so happy with the result!
The design is based on the customer’s partner’s character “Narrow”, transformed into a chubby cuddly plushie.Narrow the Dragon Concept Sketch

He is made from soft grey, black and dark red fleece with matching red felt appliqué and embroidery details.

The squeezable fat belly is weighted with plastic pellets and the wings are wired to be poseable.

The left horn has 4 black metal hoop earrings – shown in the last image.

The plush ended up being slightly larger then I planned – approx. 14 inches nose to tail (36cm)


Year of the Fire Monkey – 2016

Year Of The Fire Monkey 2016

Happy Lunar New Year!

Wishing everyone a joyful and successful Year of the Fire Monkey! This year I missed going to the festivities in the city but did get to have a great BBQ with my family.

Saying good bye to the year of the Ram (or sheep)…

Year Of The Ram - 2015


Month of Love – Heros : Princess Mononoke

MonthofLove_PrincessMononoke_LilyMcDonnell

Joining in the “Month of Love” February weekly art challenges this year – Just scraping in to this weeks challenge “Heroes, Protagonists and Idols”.

To Hayao Miyazaki – one of my real life heros.

For my grandfather who I watched Princess Mononoke with for the 1st time as a child. He pretended not to be interested but sat and watched the whole thing.

And San as a great hero herself – strong, protective and loving.


Gravity Falls Dipper Pines Small Plush

More fun Christmas time plush commissions! Gravity Falls is one of my favourite cartoon shows at the moment, so I was pretty excited to be asked to make a Dipper Pines plush toy!

This character plush was challenging because of its size – approx. 8 inches (20cm) tall – to include all the details and the correct proportions.

Made from fleece and felt with embroidered details – including constellation birthmark (under his hair)
Filled with cuddly polyfil.
Clothing and hat are not removable.

As an added Christmas bonus I made a mini Journal out of printed card and watercolor paper scraps to send with the completed Dipper 🙂


Witchsona Sketch 2016

My Witchsona ( = witch persona) sketch for this year 🙂

I would totally wear bad-ass coats and boots with too many laces. Also featuring my beautiful black rescue kitten, Kuro 🙂

Witchsona 2016


More Drawings in 2016

The end of last year I was busily making plush toys for Christmas orders and working on on going freelance jobs. Without much of a break from work 2015 blended right into the start of 2016. And I’m happy about that – there was no creative lull or loss of momentum. At the start of January I made a list of priorities to tackle this year. I do this every year but this years list is far more focused thanks to the excellent advice from this article.

I also involved in a fantastic online course for Art Business – which is turning out to be just the help I need and filled with a wonderful group of artist.

One fairly important priority for 2016 for me is to do more traditional work. Digital has so many positives but I truly love working in pencil, ink and watercolor.  I convinced myself that digital was fast, easier (as in no set up/clean up, my computer and tablet are always right there waiting), less stressful (unlimited undos). But in actual fact tradition is more natural to me (its what I’ve done from the very beginning), therefore its faster and less stressful then working on a computer! And not having undo makes the work better – if I really mess up I start again from scratch and the piece is always better for having done it twice.

So with that in mind I bought some new paper and started drawing in ink again the quiet time over Christmas/New Years. Slightly missing white Christmases inspired this pin up girl.


Vampiress Comic

Silly experimental inked comic page inspired by José “Pepe” González ‘s Vampirella comic style. Micron pens on 300gm cold press, text added in photoshop.

The page with and without text.


Custom Plush Dog “Portraits”

I was recently commissioned to make some plush dogs based on a friends greyhound Zac and jack russell Maggie as an anniversary present 🙂

“Portait Plushies” designed from photo reference, simplified and translate into cute toy form.

Made from soft fleece and filled with cuddly polyfil with black plastic safety eyes.

Small but squeezable size plushies:
– Zac approx 30cm long  – All back with white chest spot
– Maggie approx 17cm long – Gold and white with circular spot at the base of her tail

 

 


Rhea of Brisis – Confrontation Miniature Concept

I’m very proud to announce my first character concept to be released as a miniature!  The projected headed by Kevin Goh was to create a re-imagined, limited run miniature of Rhea of Brisis, Matriarch of House Brisis, from the Limbo of Acheron from the discontinued but still loved Rackham Confrontation tabletop game.

My concept (black & white only) was translated into a sculpt by Lee Jae Chi of Zealot Miniatures. The finished product is made of resin and stands roughly 32mm high. Only 100 were produced and sadly with the master sculpt damaged by the casting no others will be made.

I decided to quickly add some color to my original concept to work out how I would go about painting her as a miniature. I would also like to make her a custom base like the one in the concept. I hope to have time to paint her soon and I really look forward to seeing how other people interpret the design!

Official miniature painting by Leigh Carpenter inspired by my color concept.


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