Tea Time

 

  

  

  

 

This menu was one of my project final pieces.  I used the research I did on cakes ect and put it all together to make this. It was a concertina book.  My favourite pages are the third and fourth.  What do you think?  Looking at it makes me hungry though, I could do with a frog king cupcake right now.

Lipstick Monster

 This is Marselina the Make-up Monster.  She's very small, lives inside a lipstick tube, leaves pink footprints wherever she goes...

A spot of fairy dust

Tomorrow is the hand in date for our Dissertation.  I did mine on Tinker Bell.  It was interesting to explore how her personality and image has been influenced by things such as feminism over the ages.

 

I think Disney definitely did it best in the original Peter Pan film.  Not really a fan of the new CGI Tink, or of the one played by Julia Roberts in 'Hook.'

 

I reckon the best live action Tink is the one from the 2003 version of 'Peter Pan.'

Still... none of them beat the Disney version:

 

What do you think? Are you a fan? I Can not wait to get this essay handed in!

Glitter

She had a commitment to magic, Tim thought, as he watched Gemma brush her hair; a commitment to glitter and sparkle, to pretty clothes, and looking pretty, and to the manufacture of pretty pictures. In his own way, he too was committed to fantasy and fabrication. They had little else in common, but that suited them. “We’re not going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, you know,” she had said several weeks before. “I know,” he replied. “I haven’t got time for a boyfriend; it just complicates things.” Instead they had sex, animal and meaningless, regularly, at weekends usually.

It was Saturday morning. Her hair had recently been the colour of candy floss, and before that, shocking pink, but had since faded to the bleached milky hue of evening clouds. Several strands of it clung to the brush. She turned.

“Are you still here?”

It was a joke.

She plucked a tangle of hair from the brush’s plastic spines and nonchalantly let it fall from outstretched fingers into the bin. The previous night’s nail-varnish, chipped in places, still clung to her nails. She was beautiful; he was her audience.“What shall you do today?” he asked.

Her reflection began to apply eye-liner, its eye very wide open, lashes fluttering slightly.

“I suppose I’ll meet friends in town, or I’ll do some drawing.”

The mirror was set into a dressing table that must be old, but he did not know whether it had come with the room or she had brought it from home.

“How about you?”

She put the eye-pencil down on the untreated pine, where it rolled against a pot of lime-green nail-varnish. She picked up a tube of mascara. The dressing table was integral to her, symbolic of her. It often appeared in her candy-gothic illustrations like a signature. In the drawings it was less cluttered.

“Write, or play videogames.”

He shrugged. Beneath his bare elbow the sheets were still warm, but he could not tell whether from only from his own body-heat, or from hers as well. They smelled of her, and when he moved, the scent was disturbed. Above the bed’s head was draped a line of unlit fairy-lights.

She looked at him, smiled. When he left they did not kiss goodbye. They only kissed when they fucked.

(To read the rest of this short story please go here)

Story by H. Benjamin Petrie (www.hbenjaminpetrie.com) 
Illustrations by Yours Truly

living inside a cake

There was once an old woman who lived in a shoe,

she had so many children she didn't know what to do,

so she packed up her clothes and her bath and her bed,

and went to live in a cake-house instead.

I've always wanted to do a cut-through drawing of a house. I made the stars and chandeliers all sparkly but you can't tell from this scan.

Black Cat Kitty Kat

I've been sorting out all my work because we have assessment on Monday and I found these cats that I drew way back in summer.

I like drawing cats a lot. These remind me of a book I used to read when I was little called 'It's Raining Cats and Dogs,' about well cats and dog falling from the sky. But they were all spotty and stripy and patterned and multicoloured. How cool would it be if animals really looked like this! I want a smarties cat!

Naked

'It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.' - Marylin Monroe


I'm not sure about the lack of black line in this. Always a dilemma!

Sorry it's been such a hideously long time.

Tea with the Queen

I went to Sandringham the other week to visit the Queen! Or the Queens estate in Norfolk anyway. I was hoping she would be there to have tea with us but she wasn't. Maybe next time! The rooms and furniture inside the Palace were SO beautiful, all gold and white and jade and rose quartz. I want to live there! There were clocks everywhere, and a gold sword encrusted with rubies.

I've been drawing in a lot of very very nice posh places recently to gather research for my book. I want to get as much detail as possible! Here are some of my sketches:You know what I've been watching lately, In preparation for Christmas? The Grinch! It's one of my absolute favourite films! I love the way that the Whos live inside a snowflake. But my all time best best bit is where Martha May Whovier stands outside her house and starts firing a gun at it. She's wearing this really cool sexy santa outfit and lines of fairylights shoot out of the gun and all over her house! Apparantly they sell fairylight guns in Cyberdog now but I don't think they're quite the same!What's your favourite Christmas film? Mine's a tie between The Hogfather, The Snowman and The Grinch!

Rag Boy

I've been working on character design for my kids book that I am illustrating at the moment. I don't really want to write too much about it because ultimately I want to get it published (I've been working on it for three years now! It's my baby!) This is why I haven't updated much lately because I'm wary about putting it on the internet. Here's a teeny tiny sneak preview of the first draft for one of the characters: On Sunday I went to Starbucks in Norwich and sat at the bar thing at the window where you can see all the people sitting outside. Had to draw them quite quickly because they kept moving and leaving. Here are my top three favourite looking people that I saw:
I love deep deep brackets, wish I had them:
This guys friend left a WHOLE peach and pomegranite frapucino on the table:
It's weird, these people will never know they're immortalized on paper from that morning. It's like photography, I always wonder how many random tourist photographs that I'm in the background of without knowing.

Me and my friend Bruno (who does 3d animation) are going to make a book about a little rag boy who goes on some kind of adventure round London. We havn't quite decided on the story yet. This is a really quick first sketch I did of the little rag boy while we were talking about ideas over msn:
I really like the colours orange and black together at the moment. It's probably something to do with Halloween just gone and all those pumpkins!
This^ was my favourite carved pumpkin I saw this year! (by Rebecca Poole) Cat shapes are cool. I love them.

Cake Anyone?

Yes it's more cake, I need to start drawing other things. Cupcakes are so in fashion at the moment though and to be fair this is only a very small part of another much much bigger project. (which ISN'T all about cake) You will see at the end of the year!Anyway, as you can see (above) I have been practicing drawing things NOT using black line because usually I outline EVERYTHING. I'm quite pleased with some of the results :)These ones (above) do have black line. You can see the difference. I have been experimenting with it, seeing what looks better. I'd be grateful for any comments on this subject!

Have you ever been to Candycakes in London? It's an amazing cupcake shop! This is the window display there:They have flavours like lemon poppyseed and chocolate fudge and everything is brightly coloured- it's an explosion for your eyes! You get them in a box like this:(Actually to be honest the second time I had a cake from here it wasn't that great but I think it's worth going to just for the window display and colours. Its like Willy Wonka land!)

On that same day we also went to Fortnum and Masons in London and walked past a load of patisserie kind of shops:The window displays in Fortnum and Masons were wicked!Inside the shop though I was shocked to see they were selling OVEN ROASTED TARANTUALAS!!! They looked horrible! And also chocolate covered ants and scorpians inside lollies. Weird. Everything was already decorated for christmas. There were boxes of crackers for five HUNDRED pounds! Haha bit out of my price range!
Designer cupcakes, frog king cupcakes, halloween cupcake, flamingo cupcakes...

And here's another example of where I have been experimenting with not using black line. You can definitely see the difference where i have done the tray of hearts at the bottom with and without:I think I prefer the ones without black line. What do you think?

I promise my next post will not be as sickly as this one!

The Cursed Tattoo

(All images are copyright to me)

This was something I did for a competition over the summer. I've never done anything like a comic strip before, didn't really have a clue what I was doing, don't even read the things. Anyway I gave it a shot and this is the result!

Some people understand it when they read it and others can't work out what's going on! Let me know if you get it! As I say, I've never attempted anything like this before.

I think I'd quite like to have a tattoo that moved round my body, would be like a little friend haha, as long as it was nice to me and didn't scratch! What do you reckon? Moving tattoo, yay? nay?

Five Tiered Pink Cake

I think it's very important to draw things from life, especially cake! (Then you can eat it afterwards!) I wanted to draw a cake house, so me and my housemate went to Tescos and bought a few of those 79p sponge cakes and some butter and icing sugar and silver balls and food colouring and liqourice allsorts and swiss roll and mini swiss rolls and created this:Five tiered pink cake! Fit for a cake lady to live in. I'm gonna paint a picture of it and then everyone can EAT it!

Cloud Nine

Cloud nine gets all the publicity but cloud eight is actually cheaper, less crowded and has a better view- George Carlin

Hello pink rabbit! Hello tutu closet! Hello glitter shakers! Hello Unification!

I've been back at uni for three days and already we have been given a MOUNTAIN of work. Literally. Dissertation, projects, proposals, presentation, lectures, competitions to enter... eek!

woosh, breeeathe...

Violet hair

Violet will be a good color for hair at just about the same time that brunette becomes a good color for flowers.

Fran LebowitzI have to say that I totally disagree with this statement.
I think Violet is a fabulous colour for hair!
Along with lilac and lavender, pink and baby blue,
and rainbow!

I miss having pink hair :(

I DO believe in fairies!

Londonnn baby!
One of my favourite places to be
so busy and inspiring

A few weeks ago me and my good friend Bruno went to see Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.
Peter Pan is my all time favourite book/film!
So I was extremely excited.

Me and Bruno drew each other on the tube.
A random man randomly judged our pictures.
This is my picture of Bruno:Peter Pan was AMAZING!
If you havn't seen it you must!!
It's going to hit the O2 soon I think.

Anyway. Tinkerbell was wearing a PINK TUTU and had FAIRYLIGHTS in her hair!She was played by Itxaso Moreno and was absolutely perfect for it! She was very fiesty and rude and funny but also quite cute.
How Tinkerbell is meant to be.
It's a shame you can't really see the lights in her hair in the picture.
They were so cool.

This is a Starbucks in London......where we had coffee suprisingly enough.

On the subject of plays and films I saw Dorian Gray last night.
Has anyone else seen it?
What did you think of it?

I found it quite scary but it was one of those films I found my self thinking about all next day.
Really dark, and I didn't like it WHILE I was watching it but looking back on it I think it was a good film.
Interesting, disturbing, gothic.