Illustration Friday: Surrender

So the word this week is 'surrender' and all I could think of was army scenes which really is not my thing at all. And then I thought of Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo taken in Times Square at the VJ Day celebrations. Much more me!


(Or rather Jorgensen's version, since it's public domain :P)

Illustration Friday: Chicken

One of my new year's resolutions is to draw more, and I have decided that the best way to do this is to take part in Illustration Friday every week. This week seemed like a good time to ease myself in as 'chicken' is fairly within my comfort zone. It also means my mother can have another addition to our chicken-themed kitchen.

This particular chicken is of a somewhat nervous disposition. He visits a tailor on Saturdays but wears ill-fitting suits on account of being too embarassed to point out faults in the tailor's work. He is a hasty shopper and comes accross terribly self-conscious when he feels his decision-making is being watched. He makes a considerable amount of bad decisions as a consequence. I see a lot of myself in the chicken.

Christmas Cards

Recently I have been doing a LOT of Christmas cards of various sorts and it looks as though they may be complete (or at least nearly there) HURRAH! I am fond of both Christmas and cards, but will be glad to do something different now and have a break from festive things until the day arrives. Having said that, it looks set to snow very soon round this neck of the woods. EXCITING!

I will introduce my new creations in reverse order, because that's how I roll.


Happy yule, y'all!

Hallmark

I had to miss the last day of the Islington fair and send my father careering like a lost thing around London to find the gallery and take down my work, while I got the train oop narth (that's up north to us Southerners) for two weeks on a work placement on the Illustration team at Hallmark Cards. This was a good decision. While the Islington fair was good, and the journey was horrendous, this proved to be a very very enjoyable two weeks indeed. I learned many things, one being that if you want to draw Forever Friends bears you have to have curly hair, and another being that when you are plunged into an environment like this it can turn you into a trembling lost little kitten.

Anyway, I met some lovely people there and learned a lot about working to an actual brief. I EVEN found myself drawing pretty women with flowing locks and high heeled shoes. It's okay though, I have drawn plenty of awkward looking big-nosed funny-haired men since.

These are some of the cards I designed there.

Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair

The last few weeks have been rather busy, although that is no excuse for correspondence to have been so lacking as of late. Please accept my apologies.

I shall start with the Islington Contemporary Art and Design Fair.

This was the 8th to the 10th of October at the Candid Arts Trust gallery in Islington. I should quite possibly have told you about this while it was still on so that you could actually visit, but that is not my style.

It was very enjoyable anyway, and a nice little confidence boost having people say nice things, and even spend their hard earned money on my little creations :)


The exhibition was also the incentive I needed to finally get round to making those screen prints I was banging on about. It was SO FUN and I will definitely be doing more of these very soon.

Mademoiselle De Maupin

This is the third (and final for now) of the illustrations I intend to make into screenprints. This is Mademoiselle De Maupin, Theophile Gautier's take on As You Like It, in which the title character disguises herself as Theodore in order to experience the side of men that they will only reveal to other men. She gets herself in a bit of a pickle though as she finds herself in something of a love triangle, trapped between d'Albert and Rosette who both fall completely and utterly in love with her.

Anyway, here she is at her window looking melancholy and wistfully picking at the petals of a yellow tulip. Poor dear.

I'm making some screenprints

I have a few exhibitions coming up and it has occurred to me that since my parents run a screen printing business, I ought really to try my hand at the art and produce some nice limited edition prints to sell.

Since I have recently become rather enamoured with Victorian French literature, I thought a good place to start would be to make some screen-print-friendly illustrations for the novels I have been reading.

And so here they are! Starting with Huysmans' A Rebours and Zola's Therese Raquin. These are just photoshop mockups and I will post the screenprints when they're done, if they are worth posting!