Don't quote me on it.

I did a little illustration this week (between Christmas wrapping and eating) about misquotation. I'm enjoying playing with books in my work, they're such simple lovely shapes.

What good books did you get for Christmas? I got The Help by Kathryn Stockett, I bought my Dad Salt by Mark Kurlansky and my chap The Worst Journey on Earth by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. I'm now settling into Vanity Fair, which is brilliant. It does have nearly a thousand pages of bible-like paper though, so it's going to take me til next Christmas to finish, but I love it.

What are you reading this winter?

Merry Christmas

Thanks so much to all that have read my blog or bought from my Etsy shop this year. It means the world to me. Have a wonderful Christmas and an energetic start to 2012!

Lots of love,

Anna

Closure

A little self-set editorial that I worked on over the weekend about 'Closure'. You can read the article here.

Omnicrom

 

Have you ever heard of, or even used this stuff before? It's a shiny sheet of colour that you put ontop of a photocopied image then apply heat. In the 80s of course there would have been heated rollers for this, but I made do with an iron. Where there's carbon, the colour will stick. Isn't it great?

I am now the happy owner of a whole pile of it that was going to be thrown away at uni. The colours are fab, and now I just need to think of an interesting way to use it. Any ideas? I think I need to experiment with getting a really dark photocopy as these were copies of quick pencil drawings, and the colour hasn't fully stuck. I like the texture though.

Dinosaur disco

Yesterday was my birthday and I decided I wanted to do things differently this year. Cambridge is in the middle of it's brilliant Festival of Ideas, so my friends and I attended evening openings of five museums in town - each brought to life with music, light and alcohol. The Museum of Zoology is a brilliant place during the day, but lit up and with the addition of a DJ, it was like the coolest nightclub EVER. Such a good time! 

3D lettering and 60s ski slopes

So I have a new brooch design in the shop and wanted to show you a little of my thinking behind it. I was looking at a 3D full stop that I saw on a vintage business card that my grandpa was given on a trip to Europe in the 1960s. You may remember the project I did on his travels a while back, and this was the drawing I made from said business card. He filmed some of the skiing he and my granny did on the trip too and I thought it was rather wonderful. Aren't their outfits funny? 

The District 'Project Yellow'

My new job working at design agency The District has been very yellow-themed so far. We've recently set up a collection of yellow objects in the exhibition space, The Front Room, for which I am now booking new artists. 

The Front Room has been host to a wealth of interesting people setting up special exhibitions often unique to the space. You can see past events here, and the rest of Project Yellow on the flickr set here.

If you are interested in using the space please get in touch!

Fedrigoni Commission

I recently did a lovely little job for paper company Fedrigoni, to promote a lunchtime event they are holding. It was an open brief and had to include something about lunch. I'm a big fan of olives, so it started from there. Yum.

Pop of colour

The amazing sunshine we've had this week in the UK has had me ogling my vintage paper stash. And here is the result, new zingy collages for the shop.

Walk like an Egyptian

I made some camel brooches for a customer and decided to do a few extra for the shop. I like what a weird shape camels are. I drew this one whilst watching some amazing footage my grandpa took in Egypt in the 1960s. He travelled allover the place selling tobacco from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and went to over 100 countries in his life. Amazing! This snippet was from a trip in September 1965. I love it.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend.

Mailers, Vermeer and internships

Well hello! Long time no blog.

I thought you'd like to see some promo cards I've had printed up to send out to prospective art director types. I decided to do two versions, one for editorial and one for narrative/book illustration stuff and am happy with the way the colours tie together across both.

In other news, I've been working at the Fitzwilliam Museum on a catalogue of Vermeer paintings for the upcoming exhibition for the last two months. It's been really interesting. I've also been interning for the same time at The District  which has been lovely, especially as they're re-branding and I got to paint lots of thing yellow!

I hope you've had a lovely summer and that it doesn't yet feel long ago. I hope to be a more blog-active from now on, so see you soon!

Genova

We spent a lovely few days relaxing in Genova, this week. The weather was warm and perfect for strolling around in the evenings by the harbour. 

Genova is a small town in northern Italy with few English-speakers, so we got to practice our rolling Rrrrs lots. We also went on the double-decker train to Sestri Levante,  a pretty beach resort and visited the Aquarium - one of Europe's largest apparently. 

The photo at the top demonstrates the amazing 3D paint effects many Genovese buildings are decorated with to look like dressed stone. I found them fascinating.

So back to Blighty, and to work, but first a long weekend to recover... Hope you're having a happy summer.

Kettle brooches

I managed to get a couple of hours on the laser cutter last week and made these new kettle brooches. Available in the shop in red and soft white for now, but I have just received a package of turquoise perspex - so who knows what might appear soon!

New Designers

Hello! What a long gap that turned out to be... 

My classmates and I had an amazing time at New Designers in London at the beginning of July - I can't believe how quickly the last few weeks have gone. It seems only yesterday that I stayed with family in Islington. It was so much fun, I had a gorgeous ten-minute stroll to the exhibition centre each morning, so was very spoilt.

I'm now working at The Fitzwilliam Museum and interning at The District which is keeping me pretty busy. I really need to do some new work of my own though. Any tips for a jump-start? I'm thinking of doing some book covers as a nice exercise. What have you read and enjoyed lately?

Hope you're all enjoying a bit of a summer break. We just booked a cheap holiday here for the end of August - are you jealous? I'm going to eat my own weight in olives!

Look after the pennies

I found this lovely little elephant bank at a car boot sale today. I've always wanted a Carlton ware moneybox but they're a bit out of my price range, so this was rather exciting. We're going to use it to save up for something special.

Good things!

This week the results of the YCN's Student Awards were announced and I was commended for my entry! My classmate Dom was also commended for his work on the Open University brief, so we'll both be off to the ceremony in London in September where (I think) an overall winner of each category is announced - correct me if I'm wrong on that. Last year's event looked great!