christmas shop

There are only 14 shopping days until Christmas. That's right - only 14!!! If you're anything like me you'll still have quite a lot of gifts still to buy. Why not make things easy for yourselves and visit my online shop. If you live in the UK and you place an order with me before Dec 19 I can guarantee your item will be in the post by the Royal Mail's latest recommended posting date for Christmas deliveries. I'll even throw in a gift tag or two! What are you waiting for?

illustration friday: pattern

christmas markets

I had a very festive day at Craftaganza yesterday - my first mulled wine and mince pie of the season! Oh and I also had a pretty successful day, with my new sumo wrestler tea towels proving popular. So, now I'm looking forward to two Christmas markets next weekend. On Saturday it's Art Junky at Phoenix (Waterloo Place, Brighton - at the bottom of Lewes Road) and then on Sunday I'm at the Big Brighton Christmas Fair (Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton's Grand Parade campus).

craftaganza

I've been super busy preparing for the Christmas fairs I'm selling at in the next few weeks. The first one is at the end of the month. I'll be at Craftaganza in Fabrica Galletry (Duke St/ Ship St, Brighton) on Saturday 30th November, where I'll be selling Christmas cards, wrapping paper and tags, tea towels, posters and more. It's free entry and there's homemade food and drinks - go on, you know you want to!

halloween

lake district

I just got back from a week in the Lake District. I climbed to the top of Scafell Pike....and came down the wrong way (it was very cloudy & I may have failed to check the map...ahem), extending what was already a nearly 10-mile hike by about 4 or 5 miles. Boy did I ache the next day!

I had every intention of doing some nice drawings of mountains while I was there but, what with all the mountain climbing, fell walking and cake eating, there just didn't seem to be a spare moment. Instead, here's a little mountain climber by the marvellous Spencer Wilson.

the paper cinema

The first time I saw The Paper Cinema was at in 2008 Toynbee Studios in East London where they performed East with live music played by Roger Eno - I'd never seen anything like it before. Founders Nicholas Rawling and Imogen Charleston manipulate cut out, intricate and beautiful illustrations in front of cameras creating a live animation that is projected onto a screen.

Last might I went to see The Odyssey, their new show currently playing at The Old Market in Hove. It's incredible and it feels more developed. They now use two cameras to create a multi-layered effect and employ clever techniques to create a sense of movement, speed, and distance, not to mention an incredibly effective atom bomb-like explosion. It's impossible to watch what is happening on screen without taking sneaky looks at what Nicholas and Imogen are doing in front of the camera to achieve the effects.

I can't conclude without mentioning the wonderfully inventive soundtrack performed live by musical director Christopher Reed along with Hazel Mills and Quinta. A violin cleverly mimics the sound of an outboard motor, a drill is a motorbike and gravel in a tray is the sound of walking. All alongside music beautifully composed specifically for The Odyssey. You can listen to some of the music here, and scroll down for a video clip.

shoreditch street art tour

I spent a day in London with my mum last week. We do a London day together every year and, aside from a bit of shopping, we're always looking for something new and different to do with our day. This year we went on a street art tour around Shoreditch. It was epic! It was brilliant! We spent 3 hours pounding the streets and alleyways of Spitalfields, Bricklane and Shoreditch. Our tour guide Dave recently set up Shoreditch Street Art Tours but has been into the scene for ten years (he is also a world renowned street art photographer), so he was super knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. We saw work in hidden corners as well as prominent pieces. What's really surprising is the amount of work that is in plain view but seen by so few people - we don't spend enough time looking up or looking down to the ground! I took a plenty of photographs - here are some of my favourite ones:

illustration friday: hidden

ale giorgini's movie posters

I can't get enough of these awesome movie posters by Italian illustrator Ale Giorgini. I love this style - simple lines but incredibly clever composition and the films are captured beautifully in a single image. Below are some of my favourites. Now, please excuse me while I go and have a look around his online shop. What's this? A credit card in my hand already?!.....

gemma correll

A new shop has opened up in Brighton near to where I live. Dowse on Western Road is a shop full of lovely things! Apart from an awesome handbag and some very nice earrings I'm totally in love with the cards by Gemma Correll. I've come across her work before but it's the first time I have seen the range on sale in Dowse. I'm a sucker for a good pun and these from Gemma are totally hilarious....

lizzy stewart

Lizzy Stewart was one of the first artists I fell in love with when I started taking illustration seriously and looking at what contemporary illustrators were producing. Her dreamy characters and works inspired by people and things around her, as well as folk culture and music still captivate me today. I'm not sure why I haven't posted about her before! With the warm, sunny days still hanging around (just a brief two-day interlude of grey skies and rain here in Brighton), I am finding myself drawn to bright, colourful images. Here are some gorgeous, vegetation-filled paintings by Lizzy....visit her Flickr for more.

hot town, summer in the city

The summer finally made an appearance!To mark this momentous occasion here's a lady sunbathing by Naomi Wilkinson. Do go and check out her Tumblr for tonnes more terrific images.

joe todd stanton

I can't remember where I came across Joe Todd Stanton for the first time but I saved a link to his website and had a proper look for the first time today. A large number of the illustrations in his portfolio are characters and I love a characterful character! His have a lot of personality, along with quirky details that make them stand out. Here are three I particularly enjoyed, all with a maritime theme:

rca show 2013

I went to see the Visual Communication and Animation work at the RCA show last week. I was pleased to see they had put all of the animation screens in one room at desks with seats. Last year the format wasn't very user friendly with screens set into walls and spread throughout the exhibition. My favourite animation this year was Montenegro by Luiz Stockler. A simple but engaging tale of a man coming to terms with his impending baldness. You can view the teaser here on vimeo. And here is a cool matador from his website:

Another stand out was illustrator Yeni Kim whose stunning pop up book was one of the best things I saw. I enjoyed the minimal colour palate of black, white and red alongside the complex and imaginative paper structures that sprang from the page:

And last but certainly not least, I must mention Minho Kwon. His impressively rendered, and wall-sized, Neo Tower of Babel combines architectural features from the Classical, Medieval, Industrial and Modern periods. It is a breathtaking piece with such minute and precise detail it was impossible to take it all in in one go. Sadly there are no detailed images on his website. Instead, here are some illustration that won him a runner-up accolade in the V&A Illustration Award:

brighton degree show 2013

Degree show season seems to have come around so quickly. It also marks a year of blogging for me! I started last year with an entry on the University of Brighton's degree show so it seems fitting to mark the occasion with an entry on this year's show.

I've picked two favourites. I thought this photograph by Tom Calvert was stunning. There's a fantastic sense of scale and depth that almost makes you feel that you are standing there on the mountainside. I visited his website and picked a couple more from the series 'Finding Tom Calvert'. The photographs were taken in the Lake District - one of my favourite places in England.

From the graphic design and illustration room Hoi Shan was the one that caught my attention.  Her black and white animals are paired with simple, off-beat statements that made me curious to know more while also making me smile. I also loved her 3D models. See them and some more of her work on her blog.

  

gangsters a-z

My Gangsters A-Z poster is for sale in my etsy shop. It features gangsters from history and from film & TV. There's one completely made-up one as well ... it was impossible to find one starting with 'X'!

illustration friday: sweet

peter rhodes

While I was at Pick Me Up back in April I made a note of the illustrators I wanted to check out online when I got home. I was disappointed to find that I hadn't noted the name of an illustrator whose work I had particularly admired and I couldn't seem to find out who it was via the Pick Me Up website either. Then, earlier this week, while sitting in my local cafe writing a blog post, my husband suggested I might want to have a look at the list of names he had made at the show. To my delight the first name on the list happened to be the one I had been searching for before. It was Peter Rhodes, and it was his image 'Day Job' which had so caught my attention. In black and white, with just a very minimal touch of red, he has illustrated his day job as a biscuit-icer! I love it! On his blog he says it's less glamorous than it sounds, but it certainly makes for a more exciting illustration than my day job would! Feast your eyes on the tasty delights that surround him as he works and check out some of his other stuff here.

creative action network: recovering the classics

We all know the adage: don't judge a book by it's cover. But, I always reach for the most interesting designs on the shelf before any others. Who doesn't? Creative Action Network has just launched it's latest campaign Recovering the Classics, which aims to capture the excitement and vibrancy of classic works of fiction that often suffer from poorly designed covers. I was fortunate to have been contacted by one of the founders and asked to participate. From their list of 50 classics I chose to illustrate Gulliver's Travels and had a lot of fun doing it. The e-book and paperback can be ordered via the Recovering the Classics website. There are some great covers to browse - here is mine (click to enlarge)...