Christmas Market 10th December!

On the 10th December I have a table at a Christmas market at Soup Kitchen in Manchester. The market is being run by the very talented Lisa Stannard (see links below for her website) and will feature a wide variety of stalls selling clothing, prints, accessories, food, vinyl, cards and gifts, perfect for Christmas presents. I will be selling my usual stock; bags, cards, prints, badges plus some special new Christmas cards featuring new designs (see previous blog entries for a peek at the designs) everything on my stall is priced under £6 and it's all original illustrations by me so you can pick up a bargain!

The stall starts at 12pm and ends at 6pm. All the details can be found on the poster below though:


There is also a Facebook event page for the market: https://www.facebook.com/events/285521118154215/

and you can visit Lisa's website here: http://www.lisastannard.com/

'Tis the season....

Over the past couple of weeks I've been working on some Christmas card designs as I'm doing another stall in a few weeks (more about that soon!) and I wanted some Christmassy editions to add to the rest of my stock. As I have quite a predominant animal/bird theme throughout a lot of my work it would seem weird not to continue with that so I chose some Christmas themed birds as my starting point. I wanted the colours to be festive without being forced and luckily all of the birds had very warm coloured feathers. I developed them further as I wanted something a bit more fun and more obviously wintery so I added some hats and scarves to the little birds. Here are some screenshots of some of the patterns I'm considering for my final card designs:


The cards that I'm printing using these patterns will be miniatures (approx 7.5 x 10.5cm) if you're interested in buying any of the cards please don't hesitate to contact me! My contact details are on my website.

Mill Co Annual Exhibition

I've been unbelievably busy for the past few weeks which is why my blog has been slightly neglected but I'm back with some new work!

During the end of September/beginning of October I created a piece for the Mill Co Annual Exhibition which is currently open in London at the Mill Co Project (Vyner Street, London E2) the brief was a huge challenge for me as it was purely typographical as the exhibition is part of a collaboration with Monotype. The brief was basically to do whatever I wanted with a choice of 3 typefaces: Akko/Akko Rounded, Rotis II Sans and Neue-haas-grotesk. Each typeface had a description by the designer and various weights and the rest was upto me! I chose to work with Akko Rounded and concentrated on creating something that encapsulated the designers view of the typeface through illustration. The final piece was a series of 4 A5 illustrated pieces based on a poem entitled 'The Feather' (by Lilian Bowes-Lyon) which I believe united the typeface, its description and the imagery. I wanted to create something soft and delicate that used the type as an extension of the images. The piece is currently for sale on the Mill Co website and is being shown at the exhibition until November 24th. Here are a couple of the pieces from the series:



Shop: http://www.millcostore.co.uk/category/illustration
Mill Co: http://www.millco.co.uk

Another Whitby Drawing

One more Whitby painting/drawing:

Whitby Drawings

Some more paintings/drawings from my photographs of Whitby. I'm really enjoying working on greyboard with watercolours and pens, the paint and ink spread into the board because of the texture and I love the muted colours that it produces.

The Mill Press

Last week I did some work for the new issue of the Mill Press journal, a publication produced by the Mill Press which is an independent publishing house based in Manchester and London. The theme of the issue was Nude, I won't reveal what I did but I have a couple of snippets of the pieces to tempt you to buy the issue when it comes out! I'm also involved with the Manchester Print Fair which is being organised by the Mill Press. It takes place on the 25th September at Night and Day Cafe in Manchester. There's going to be stalls and an exhibition (I have half a table booked so the Emma Brown Owl goods will be for sale!) so have a peep at the website for more information.

http://www.themillpress.co.uk/

Here's the previews of the new work:

Whitby Drawings

This week I had a few free moments so I decided to do some paintings/drawings from the photographs I took in Whitby earlier in the year. I found a few bits of greyboard in my drawers and thought I'd use them rather than paper, I think the rough texture works well with the seaside imagery. Here's the 4 that I've done so far, I might try and do some more in the future but from tomorrow onwards I am BUSY so it'll have to wait.

Postcards from Europe

Today I sent off my postcard for Postcards for Europe, a project my good friend Kat is involved in, the brief was to create a postcard based on the place where you live and work. I was a bit stumped about what to do, most of my time is split between home (Warrington) and Manchester where I work part time and spend nearly all of my free time, I have to do my creative work at home though. I wanted to try and capture the two 'worlds' in 2 simple images, the tracks for all of the travelling (this is probably when I think the most!) and the old garage is the view from my desk. I've never used it in my work before but it's something that I've always been fascinated by since I was a little girl and I have a really vivid memory of being told off by the owner of the garage for playing behind it. As I always find myself staring out of the window at it willing for something to come and inspire me, the garage seemed like the perfect item to sum up my working home. Anyway here is the postcard:


I just hope it arrives in time!

Here's the project blog: http://postcardsfromeurope.tumblr.com/

Fantastica

The prints that I designed for Fantastica London are now available to buy! The Spring collection is available here:

http://www.fantasticalondon.com/NEW-IN%282373112%29.htm

The drawings are all fruit based and really fun, I absolutely LOVE the strawberry so get buying!

Inky Goodness Totem

I took part in the Inky Goodness Colour Me Totem project this week and created my own Totem creature based on their template. After my recent trip to Whitby I was inspired to use a nautical theme and combined a seagull, octopus and walrus to create my character. I think he's quite sinister looking really. Here's a small version of it:

NEW WORK

Website update!

I just added 2 new projects to my website;

'The Outsider' - the illustrations that I created in response to the novel 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus

plus an animation that I made for Waggledancer and WD40 last week.

Take a peek at both: http://www.emmabrownowl.com

OWT 'Reflections' + update

I have updated my website with the new work that I produced for OWT Creative's zine 'Reflections' which is on sale now: http://owtcreative.bigcartel.com/product/owt-2-reflections

The zine features work by the OWT team plus various contributors and is only £5 so it's well worth the money!

Also I'm currently doing an internship for Fantastica, a wonderful independent clothing brand from London: http://www.fantasticalondon.com I'm working hard on lots of drawings for them for the future so look out for those!