Christmas Fundraising!

Hi everyone, I'm trying to raise some money over Christmas for the charity I work for, READ International. If you'd like to own one of my 50 handmade and hand-printed Gocco Christmas cards - please donate to my justgiving page, message me your address and I'll send one to you! Thanks!

Les Bande-dessines

Some sporadic posting I'm afraid! I'm just going to post a couple of nice discoveries for now....I know summer seems forever ago, but I went to France for a couple of weeks (lovely thanks for asking). Whenever I visit France I am always impressed by their comics scene and varied styles. I stumbled across a great publisher called manolo sanctis, which prints mini comics from new talent (or as far as I can tell, it's all in french!). I bought a really beautiful comic called "Princesse Suplexe" about a girl wrestler! Even though I can't properly read it, I can make out what is going on, the joy of comics! I wish we had more independent comics publishers in the UK. Whenever I go into my local/not so local comic shops, there are never enough (or no) homemade zines and not enough homegrown talent showcased!

THE BOOK EFFECT

So in case you didn't know I have just started working for READ International. WATCH THE VIDEO!

Scribbles before bedtime

Have also been doodling before bed this week....I don't know what people with stuff coming out of their heads means, maybe it means I am stressed or something.

Cut it out!

Ages ago I made these cut-out-pop-up cities for a book based on Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" for my art foundation, I was thinking about making some more, probably much smaller though! Maybe make some little foldout books. I'm experimenting a lot at the moment with lino printing and different ways of using print. Anyway, I feel a bit unimaginative at the moment so I thought I'd blog a bit before doing a bit of scribbling. Its hard to switch mindset when I have so many other jobs to do!

New goccos!

GOCCO

So after several hiccups and mishaps, I have FINALLY managed to make my first successful gocco print! It has been a bit of a time consuming activity (also because I foolishly decided to make my own screens) but it paid off in that first moment when I made the first print and it looked beautiful! So happy....I'll put up some photos later.
Squeee!

Mushroom girl

More bees

Taken at Hampton Court flower show. They had little fields of sunflowers and were pulling them all up at the end of the day, so I quickly went to take photos. Also by the way, I have not photoshoppped this even though it looks like I have! (Click to view all the fibonaccial glory)

I shall wear midnight

Some new sketches

Ladybird

Uninspired title

Our garden is full of loads of amazing flowers right now so I took the opportunity to do lots of sketching and painting. I made this one into a birthday card. I've just put up a collage of random sketches below and also a picture of "Clubs lady" (she makes up the set of Queens that I drew previously but I had been meaning to redo the clubs one for aaages, I finally got her right).

Je suis tres heureux!

I have been waiting so long to see Sylvain Chomet's next work of art and it is showing right now at the EIFF. Watching the trailer made me feel all homesick for Edinburgh and it looks so lovingly made. I know he lives in Edinburgh so I'm glad he loves it as much as I do!

Another amazing little animation that I am excited about is an adaptation of Shaun Tan's "The Lost Thing" . It is good to see some really good 2D animation and more traditional art techniques in with the CG which I'm hoping is going to have some sort of vogue some time soon.

Bee

Cool beans

I wanted to make a series of time lapse pictures of some seeds I've grown, but my lack of commitment and the need to move the plants around alot got in the way! So here are some random pictures I took as they were growing, some of them are pretty big now so maybe I'll update so you can see how they look. I'm too scared to move them out of the pots for fear of slugs/snails eating them, its like they are my babies and I don't want them to go out into the big bad world!!!

(Courgette, Pumpkin and Beans)

Elephantine

Check out this cool new illustration blog set up by Lauren for us all to collaborate and have some fun. We're going to be illustrating a new thing every two weeks so it will be exciting to see what everyone comes up with!

Colouring in

So I am not very good at using photoshop and I thought I'd have a practice colouring in session from a random sketch. I find it very frustrating and i much prefer colouring in the normal way. If anyone has any tips for me PLEASE tell me! I like making things that look they have a painted texture but instead mine looks like I coloured in using paint or something. bah.

Behemoth

A drawing of a tiger moth I did this weekend. I suddenly wanted to draw lots of moths.

Mother Swordtail

A small drawing I did for my Mum for Mother's Day. The fish is from observation of our mother swordtail fish in our fishtank, whom I love for being a bit ditzy and greedy.

Beautiful photos from Irene Suchocki. How gorgeous are these lanterns? Her blog is called "eye poetry" and it is so true.

A picture I did today. It scans really crappily so I photographed it instead, might have to fool around in photoshop to make it look better. Its like a seaweed girl thing. I just thought of joke that I used to think was hilarious when I was little, ahem:

Why did the lobster blush?
Because the sea weed....

If only I still found that entertaining.

Some great things

Have you seen the Winter Olympics advert on the BBC? Its amazing. It was made by Studio AKA (who also made Lost and Found) and Jon Klassen, who makes beautiful, textural images. How does he make them look like that? I need to pick his brain. Incidentally he also contributed to a lovely book called "We are the Friction" which is full of imaginative stories and illustrations.

Just as I was leaving Canada back in October, promotion of the Winter Olympics had just started and there were soooo many cute cuddly versions of the Olympic mascots, I LOVE them. It took a lot of willpower not to buy one.

(spotted in Toronto)

Also whilst in Canada I discovered a cool artist called Sam Weber. His posters were up around Toronto and are haunting and surreal.

Has anyone else been watching Glee? I got the soundtrack today and it is amaaaaaaaazing.

Lo Siento

Oh fail! I keep leaving big gaps in posts.

I have been busily job hunting but meeting a lot of dead ends. Being at home doing nothing was driving me to a slow death, so now I am part time working at my Dads computer shop, spending a lot of time hiding from customers who ask me things beyond my knowledge. I feel a lot better when I am keeping busy, I was getting lazy and apathetic.

Anywhoo, do you like the t-shirt I made? Should I make more? I'm hopefully going to post more art for you to comment on and you have to tell me if it is rubbish or not.

Tomorrow I am going to see Imogen Heap, so excited! She always has really inventive shows so I am looking forward to what magic she will create! I'll update with pics hopefully soon.

Anyway, I promise to be back.

#hhh

Currently listening to the Help Heal Haiti drive that the HP Alliance and other podcasters/comunities have organised, its amazing what they are doing. Did some sketching whilst listening.

(sorry, really bad photo)

There are some things that you can't fix with a Reparo charm

If you are a Harry Potter fan you will probably have seen these, but if you haven't, they are HIGHLY amusing.

Overheard in a bookshop in London

Girl: "Where is Russia?" "Is Russia in Europe?" "Or is it in Asia?"
Boy "I don't know where it is but it is BUFF. I know two people from Russia and they are soooo buff"

A person without imagination is like a teabag without hot water

Every year when it comes to making resolutions I always say "draw more". This never happens. Whenever I have spare time to sit down and be creative, it always seems to be after a long period of time and I spend all my time worrying about what to draw. The longer I think about what to draw, the less inspired I get and the more pressure I have to draw something that I feel should look "good" as I have spent so long thinking about it.

Obviously this leads to very little result. I took a leaf out of Eric Orchards book and drew a couple of things inspired by The Sartorialist, a blog I follow daily.

Neil Gaiman is too cool

Neil Gaiman says it better than I can.

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

"I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind."

I'm know I will be reading at least one fine book this year as I got his book, American Gods, for Christmas. Anyway, excellent sentiments from him, I wouldn't be able to say it any better so I will leave it at that.