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.

Competition entry

I got back from Belgium last night after a brilliant week drawing. The weather was really weird, unbelievable downpours one minute, clear blue skies the next, but we had such fun.

In Antwerp we watched a car chase being filmed for a TV show. It all materialised right next to us as we sat outside a cafe having lunch. Make-up artists, camera men and directors descended within minutes and an hour later they had their shot and the whole square stank of burnt rubber! So exciting! We partied in Liege with Erasmus students, soaked up the atmosphere in beautiful Bruges, ate chocolate in Pierre Marcolini's shop, went to a flea market and drank lots of beer. Photos and drawings to come...

In the meantime, I thought you might like to see my entry for a wine label competition. I cut the lettering and images out of coloured paper then added logos etc on photoshop. A worthwhile exercise (especially as the prize is a week's holiday in San Francisco!).