The North West Passage

These are the finished pieces I came up with for my latest uni brief. I'd been given the letter 'L' and had to pick something from the Brewer's Dictionary. My choice was Last of The Mohicans as you may already know but the project soon turned a corner and became about the North west passage, a fabled shortcut for ships to get from Europe to China via the icy waters of Northern Canada.

For hundreds of years the Europeans searched for the route, often employing natives for their knowledge of the land. I wanted to go for a 1950s travel poster look, and think these have that feel. Also, it was a good chance for me to try something quicker than my go-to scalpel and painted paper resolution. I drew most of the parts for these, and made some as simple papercuts. Then I spent the rest of my time on Photoshop using lino print texture from past projects. There are still bits I'd change but I'm pretty happy.

And I learned what a Narwhal is. A fun project!

Mohican research

I'm in the middle a new project for uni which started off being about Last of The Mohicans. It's now changed direction a bit, but I'm excited to see how it will end up. In the meantime here are a couple of experiments I did in the early stages of research. The hand print is meant to be the Human Hand of Mica, and I like it (despite terrible photo). Perhaps it would make nice wrapping paper?

A weekend in pictures

I've been really enjoying Gemma Correll's Daily Diaries and thought I'd tell you a bit about the weekend I've had.

On Friday night some friends and I went to our local pub that was celebrating Oktoberfest with lots of German beers and sausages. We even had coconut beer that you could drink out of half a coconut! Not so much German but fun nonetheless. Isn't the Bavarian flag pretty - seen here in napkin form?

On Sunday we went to fish restaurant for lunch and ate whitebait. And today I'm trying out a new (vintage) printing set I found on ebay.

I hope it carries on being sunny, it's lovely outside. Here's to a productive week!

Up up and away!

I really want this poster. In A1 size please. An original print of it is currently in the gallery at uni and it's beautiful. It was designed by Enid Marx for London Transport in 1965 and I pretty much love everything about it.

Did I tell you it's my birthday in two weeks?

Feeling jaded?

Not me! Because I have all these jade green goodies! I bought the angular milk jug and sugar pot for £1.05 yesterday, the teacup weeks ago and the glass object when I was charity shopping with Lucie. I might add that we discussed whether or not it looked like it was off somebody's grave, but I decided it liked it anyway... I think it's to hold flowers upright. Isn't the colour dreamy?

The book is by Salvatore Rubbino who teaches on my course and the MA in Children's Book Illustration, and it's absolutely lovely.

Excitingness

So this morning I'm packaging up a nice big lot of posters, prints, collages and a teaset to send up to a shop in Norwich. I'm very excited as I've not done consignments for ages and not with my illustration work. Yonks ago I used to have altered clothing and jewellery in a few shops around Cambridge but this is different. And mega exciting!

You can see the shop that will be stocking my stuff here. It looks gorgeous.

Wampum

A little side-project of my current uni brief which is about Last of the Mohicans.

These little watercolour paintings are of wampum, the beadwork made by Native Americans of the Eastern woodlands.

The beads were made of the insides of clam shells and are a lovely shade of purple. They were often made into geometric patterned beaded belts to be given as wedding or engagement presents. I was inspired to try my own patterns and I have to say that painting all the little rectangles is kind of like needlepoint - very relaxing!

These three are now in my shop.

A Commission!

This has been a really fun project, working with the organisers at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Central Library in Cambridge. It was rather daunting at first as I knew the trail would be the basis for the whole Big Draw event. Now it's done I'm just really keen to see what the kids will make of it, but most importantly what they end up drawing themselves!

The trail will be printed at A2 size - double sided - and the posters will be up around town for the first few weeks of October (that's the top image by the way). I can't wait for the big day!

My Summer Project

This was not particularly well thought out on my part but what it lacks in strength as a coherent sequence of images it made up for in being fun to do. Apart from an achey hand from cutting all those letters out! But that kind of detailed, slightly mundane job is my favourite especially if I've got some nice music on or re-runs of River Cottage on my laptop. Sad but true..

I wanted to show Grenuille (who has no smell of his own) as a negative, defined by the things he smelled or perfumes he created as a disguise. I enjoyed making 3D stuff for a change and photographing it as it's like my usual cutty-outy stuff but a bit more interesting and unpredictable.

Funny day

Today I have mostly been trying to think my way out of the creative hole I'm stuck in.

For a summer brief, we were asked to illustrate a book. We had a choice of a half dozen or so, so I read three of them and decided on Perfume by Patrick Suskind - not easy I hear you cry - but the alternatives were equally abstract and challenging. With two weeks left of the almost-five-month holiday I decided to get my rear in gear today!

I decided that I'd like to do something a bit 3D and use photographs as my illustrations, so I set to work making lots of coloured paper cubes to illustrate this line:

"And during that same night, at first awake and then in his dreams, he inspected the vast rubble of his memory. He examined the millions and millions of building blocks of odour and arranged them systematically..."

I then cut out the shape of a man and photographed through it to the inner workings of his brain. Not 100% successful but quite different to how I normally work.

Istanbul drawings

I wish it had not been *quite* so hot in Istanbul as I didn't get any sustained drawing done while we were there. These were all done either in the hotel room from my camera or since we've been back, and as a result I don't have any of the attachment that I do to the drawings done in Belgium.

It's an interesting problem and is something I'll be investigating for my dissertation which is looming this semester. I'm basing my research on travel illustration but it strikes me as a universal problem for illustrators. Obviously you can't sit and draw all night on location but is drawing from photos cheating a bit?

I love lamp. I think.

Well, even if it is a bit of an odd one, I still quite like it. The lampshade was from a charity shop on our last trip up north, and the bottle was in the "hardcore" skip at the recycling centre a couple of weeks ago. I swapped it for some sheets of horrid non-reflective glass that I wanted rid of since I've decided to stop picture framing. Bottle lamp kit was £3 from ebay and hey presto!

I remember my auntie having a bottle lamp when I was little that she'd filled with yellow periwinkle shells like these. I loved it!

Any thoughts on what I should fill mine with? Or leave it empty?

Belgium

Another photo pairing project - en Belgique.

Sketchy sketch

OK, these are slightly awful but they were fun and got me back on the old drawing horse this week. I just love having books of drawings to remind you of a place you grew fond of. They're so much richer than photos and I'm sure the bits that I cringe at now will be remembered in a good way years from now.