Showing and Telling - Recent work

This is a piece that I have been working on recently. I was reluctant to post it as I am not at all happy with it (yet).
I have been playing with these organic forms in my work for ages now and I'm beginning to find them stiff and unexpressive, is it just me?

I began this piece with the aim of combining my life drawing style and my illustration style, which, are strangely miles apart.

I would appreciate any feedback you have.

Autumn palette - work in progress

A bit of show and tell here.
I want to finish this strip with watercolours.
:] elida.

Mantaviva [lifeblanket]

We entered this strip to an EU competition, which theme was living in the European Union.
The comic has three panels where you can see a sequence of action. Most of the actions revolve around removing borders/walls and making something different with it. The panel distribution is a variation on a map of Europe, turned 90 degrees aCW. I drew the characters, Eoghan defined the colours, the black frames and half the actions. There is exchange of culture, people fishing in someone else's waters, a new country/person springing from nowhere, someone eating fruit from their neighbours' tree, a ganja closet-farm, a huge love story, and a lot more going on in Europe. My favourite is the pair who go from hachet war to coffee and chat.

storytelling - book of beasts

My initial idea came from the 'medieval beasteries' which were illustrated manuscripts that were based on parables about animals. There was one called 'the book of beasts' which I like the sound of. The parables were based on the behaviour of the animal, but because they had only ever heard some of these animals described they got creative with their descriptions of them. For example they thought there were such things as unicorns, dragons and sea monsters called 'sawfish'. They're full of random stuff like this: "The wolf may not bend his neck backward in no month of the year but in May alone, when it thundereth." You have to love it.

My ideas branched off a little and my illustrations became portraits of people dressing up as these animals, seeing as the animals themselves were metaphors for human behaviour. There's lots more I want to do with this whole thing but it might take a different form or style when I approach it again. I'm not quite done with it yet... yes, that means more human/animal stuff, I apologise in advance : )

Denise