Serco prize 2013

I have been quite quiet recently as I have been very busy working away on my entry for the serco prize. It will be the biggest piece I have ever painted in gouache, it is taking me quite a long time but I am happy with how it is going so far. The stories that I chose to represent was the Tower ofLondon menagerie  as it meant I could add in many fun elements. Here are some progress photos so far. 

An audience for a fashion show...

With this project i really wanted to stay away from the stereotypical response of a runway and as i specialise in children's illustration i wanted to have fun with it. Whilst doing some research I found some garden fashion shows which i really liked the look off and thought how would children respond to this, and this is what I have done in my image. The piece that I have chosen to do would be page from a picture book. I have also included some of my initial sketches below for this piece. 

Rough plan

After lots of sketches here is a plan for my final piece, I think only I'm going to be able to understand these scribbles but it should give a general idea of the piece.

Secro prize

This year as part of my uni course we are entering the serco prize which is based on london stories :) I didn't know that much about London but as I did my research I started with one of the main buildings that I knew about and looked into stories surrounding it. I found out about the tower managerie which is great as I love an excuse to draw animals and create stories.
The tower managerie had many of the first animals of their kind in England and many of them had interesting stories as to to how they got there such as gifts etc. I decided to create many narratives in one image and as it is the secro prize based on london transport I decided to use this transport to get to london and I'm going to incorporate many landmarks of london into the image And make it decorative. The piece had to be 20x30 inches and I have never worked that big so let the challenge begin....
Here are some initial sketches and very rough ideas.