Exhibition! And other things...

Here's the link to the information about our upcoming exhibition in Foyles Bookshop in London.  8th to the 15th of February! I am overawed by the amount of amazing work created by my fellow students.  I'm sure you will be too!

http://www.foyles.co.uk/Children-Illustration-Ruskin

Come!

I feel in a bit of a limbo at the moment.  I am basically trying to prepare and create work for the exhibition.  Any extra little bits that I can.  I keep flipping between drawing Victoria Stitch and doing general drawings that might look good in a portfolio!

Yesterday Henry and I went to town.  I was just browsing in Waterstones when I came across the drawing I did for Egmont in one of their young fiction books.  It's the picture of the guy holding up the Egmont Lucky coin. I felt rather proud I must say!  It's one of my first real proper commissions.  I think it's going to be in lots of their young fiction books.

Also whilst in town I went to to post office and bought some Roald Dahl/Quentin Blake stamps. They look awesome! How cool must it be to have your illustrations made into stamps!  I want to frame them in tiny frames and put them in my castle.  I think the Fantastic Mr Fox one is my favourite.

ALSO recently I have had a really good idea!  Well, I think it's a good idea.  This Christmas Eve me and my friends went round to my friend Brunos house.  It's kind of a tradition for us to meet up on Christmas Eve and do Secret Santa.  Anyway this year Bruno was very adamant that we all took it in turns to read 'The Night Before Christmas.'  I LOVE the 'Night Before Christmas' poem and so when Bruno suggested that I illustrate it for next years reading I was like YES!  I could imagine how I would do it in 3d with tiny coloured fairylights and glitter and things.  For some reason it really really attracted my imagination.  I think it's partly due to the fact that there are some really wonderful and evocative lines in that poem.  Like:

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.

and,

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

Anyway, THEN I thought how nice would it be if we all illustrated the poem as a personal project over the year.  So I suggested it to Sian and Dave and Bruno and Erin and they all said they would try and do it too.  In fact Dave has already finished his!  You can see it on his blog.

So watch this space for lots of different versions of 'The Night Before Christmas' come December.  (mine's going to take me all year to illustrate) And if you want to join in too drop me a comment! I'd love it if you did!

Hope you're having a nice weekend! Mine so far has been filled with walking up and down windy hills with the dog and tidying.  Last night Henry made  pie with a cat shape on it.

Love and Glitter

New Header!

So as you can see I finally got round to making a new header for my blog.  If you hadn't noticed, the one I had before was rather Christmassy themed and so I thought it was high time to change it!

Here are some photos I took whilst in the middle of making my header.  Everything (apart from the glass jar of glitter) is made from paper. Oh and there are a few sequins thrown in of course!

I had great fun making all the tiny fairy sized pink envelopes and the pen pot and the two little books.  

I hope you like it!  Let me know what you think!

Last of the Kitty Cat book

Here are the last two images from my most recent project. Little kitten and mother are... in a supermarket!

I wish this was really allowed in Tesco's...

These pictures are both created by building 3d sets from paper and then photographing them.  I made all the tiny boxes and tins of food myself.  Took rather a long time! Here (below) you can see them all laid out before I fixed them onto the shelves.

And these were the patterns I created and used to make all the little boxes themselves: 

Cute huh? I LOVE tiny things!

In fact I thought you might be interested to see some of the images I took whilst in the halfway/quarter stages of this project.  

This is the kitchen at the beginning.  At this point I had only done the floor and cabinets and curtains!  Looks bare doesn't it.

^but not for long!

This was the bedroom at the beginning. Bare again.  That cat bed took me ages by the way.  I sewed the little patchwork quilt by hand.

Also I made the wallpaper myself.  

Here's the supermarket checkout in it's full glory.  (that trolley was a NIGHTMARE to make!)

This was me experimenting with a sheet of rainbow colours and shining a light through it.  Didn't really work how I expected though!

This is the wallpaper I made for the hallway:

And finally here are some character designs for the little girl character!

So there you go! I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the processes this project has gone through.  It's been  real experiment, hard at times but very enjoyable.  I'm pleased with the outcome!

Also, I hope you've had a lovely weekend.  Mine was spent eating Lebanese food and seeing friends in London. We went to an exhibition all about lucky charms (called Charmed Life), the National Portrait Gallery, a really good art shop (spent a bit too much in there!) and 'Foyles' the bookshop. (I love Foyles! There are always such interesting books there.)

I also had a rather dramatic Saturday morning because my mum cut her finger badly and Henry and I had to take her to hospital.  But we won't go into details about that!

Love and Black Cats

 

p.s. I know I need to change my blog header as it's not Christmas anymore.  I'm working on it!

Baby Stitch

The day before yesterday was spent drawing Victoria Stitch as a baby.  She was once a baby you know! A little gothling.

What do you think?

It was a strangely emotional experience.  I looked at the pictures of her as a baby and then I looked at the ones of her her as a grown up/teenager and I thought MY BABY IS ALL GROWN UP!?

Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole

I'm sure by now you will have heard about the death of the great illustrator Ronald Searle which happened recently on the 30th of December.  I have always been a fan of his work so it was nice to see so many tributes to him on the internet.  They brought to light a lot of Searles work that I have never seen before.

'Les Tres Riches Heures de Mrs Mole' was something that particularly caught my eye.  (I'm sure it caught most peoples eyes so you probably know all about it already but I wanted to blog about it anyway because I found it so touching.)

'Les Tes Rches Heures de Mrs Mole,'  is a book of pictures that was never intended to be published.  Ronald Searle drew this pictures for his wife when she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  Every time she had a chemotherapy session he drew her a new picture of Mrs Mole. The pictures were intended to cheer her up and also to 'invoke the blissful future ahead.'

As soon as I discovered that these pictures of Mrs Mole had been compiled into a book I got straight onto Amazon and bought it right away!  It really is a beautiful little book.  The pictures are 'filled with light and illuminated in glowing colours, they are a moving testimony to love, optimism and hope.'

Also what really pleased me to find out was that Searles wife survived the cancer despite being told that she had only six months to live.  I'm sure this was helped by the positive influence of Mrs Mole!

Dillweeds Revenge: A Deadly Dose Of Magic

Today I want to share one of the books I got for Christmas with you.  It's a book that has been on my Amazon wish list for absolutely ages.  I don't know why because if I'd know what a beautiful book this was before I would have snapped it up right away!  There would have been no wish list involved.

The illustrations are all done in shades of brown and black with a hint of red and baby blue.  I just love this colour combination! I think it works really well. 

And the pictures are the kind of pictures that you want to look at and look at.  I love all the little details. I especially love the little blue monster called Skorped. What a weird, cute little guy!

If you love illustration I highly recommend getting this book.  Every single page is beautiful.

 

And the story, because I probably should mention the story, is dark and Gorey-esque.  Exactly my kind of thing.

Well I'm off to go look at the pictures some more!