Coin Design: HRH Queen Elizabeth II

The official coin design and bas-relief sculpture of the late HRH Queen Elizabeth II for all UK coinage on behalf of the Royal Mint.

Queen Elizabeth II was the longest reigning monarch in British history. The coin design is on all UK coins, that’s over 2,733,140, coins. My design also began to appear on Australian coins in 2019.

A mixture of traditional and digital design skills were used for the coin design and some early drawings (pictured) shows one of the traditional sketching of the HRH Queen Elizabeth II as part of the early design process I went through. I then utilised digital sculpting to refine the coin and 3D modelling to create the bas-relief coin design.

Unlike some of my predecessors whose designs can be found here, I did not have a sitting with the Queen.

I worked with an array of reference imagery provided by the palace and then took my own interpretation on how I wanted our longest reigning monarch to be represented.  In addition to the reference imagery, I looked online to find pictures of HRH Queen Elizabeth II in a more natural setting. It was important to me that I create a little bit of warmth to her expression, not a wide smile, but just a subtle upturn of the lips.