A dream project for me as a life long nature lover, Naturama and My Naturama Nature Journal were a joy to illustrate. I got to work on researching and drawing Irish wildlife throughout the seasons and I’m so happy with the result. The books were co created with the writer Michael Fewer and published by  Gill Books.

Naturama came out first and is a beautiful introduction to Irish wildlife, regardless of whether you live in the countryside or in the city, there’s lots of things to learn about and get you started as a nature enthusiast.

My Naturama Nature Journal has projects for children to do outside and field guide notes sections to write and draw in. It gets everyone outside turning rocks upside down looking for worms :)

Click here for all the latest Naturama related news….

A post shared by Melissa Doran (@goradiate) on Nov 29, 2016 at 9:23am PST

Visit Benson Street in Dublin 2 to see my 55 metre long illustration – commissioned by Dublin City Council for a hoarding around the building site for a new park. The drawing moves through the four seasons and is packed full of native flora and fauna, and features some local landmarks too. Here is a timelapse of me drawing one of the foxes from it, and below is a simple animation I made to show you the full thing…plus more photos here….

Like all my work I did most of the drawing by hand in my notebook, then scanned it in and developed it in Illustrator. I collage hand coloured work with vectorised, digitally coloured elements.

November 18th/19th 2017: Digital Illustration workshop in Fumbally Exchange, Dublin, book here.

Develop your digital illustration skills over one fun weekend using Illustrator in Dublin. Learn how to combine digital drawing with hand drawing and bring your skills to a whole new level. 11 CPD point for Architects. I am an Adobe Certified Expert with 5 years teaching experience and my classes are just great!

The two days are jam packed and very hands on but I create a very relaxed atmosphere and give lots of encouragement and one to one help. I work from the latest version of adobe Illustrator so that you can get the most out of the features but I also reference older versions and what slight differences you might need to look out for.

There is a maximum of 6 participants so everyone gets lots of attention. Find out more here.