Postcard Swap

Yesterday I received a collection of postcards by Carol Chien as part of the Postcards From Europe project. I was pleasently surprised when I opened the package as I was only expecting one card and Carol had produced 5 plus there was one sent by the exhibition as well. The cards are lovely and it was a great way for me to be introduced to Carol's work. I particularly like the garden postcard and that will be making it's way onto my wall. It's exciting to think that somewhere someone will be opening up an envelope and finding my postcard, I hope they enjoy it!

Here are some photos of the contents of the package and a link to Carol's website:

Carol's Website

Life Drawing

During September and October last year I attended a life drawing class in Warrington. I'd never actually done any life drawing before, somehow the chance never came up despite the fact that I studied art at GCSE, A Level and Foundation. I thought it would be a good way to practice and improve my drawing skills; drawing the human form is something that I feel quite intimidated by and this fear is something that I need to conquer and move past in order to further my work.

The class was quite hard but it was really good to be back in an environment of shared learning. After being away from education for a year it felt quite strange to be part of a lesson and to work alongside other people but it was very relaxed and I think I benefitted from being able to look at the work of the other members of the class and see how they approached the task. I went to about 5 classes, all of them started with quick poses and then progressed to 20 minute and half an hour poses. I think I improved slightly with proportion but I still found it quite hard to let go and work in a looser more expressive style. I've become accustomed to working in small spaces and with tiny detail and I think it's important to be able to work quickly and loosely as well. Below are some (very quick) snaps of the drawings.

Mull It Over

I'm currently showing some work at an exhibition in Brighton called 'Mull It Over'. The exhibition was organised by Collate Presents a curatorial team made up of two creatives from Brighton; Gem a furniture designer/maker and features editor and Carly a sculptor and artist. The exhibition brief was to send in some work that hadn't really had much exposure so I chose 2 pages from my Grow Your Own sketchbook from 2009. I'm really excited that the work is on show and hopefully it will be well received. The exhibition contains the work of 83 2d artists and had approxiamately 200 pieces in it, all of which are for sale. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the private view (and won't be able to see the exhibition at all in fact!) due to travel/time issues but I was able to enjoy a video of the private view (see link below) and even spotted a piece of my work! If you're in Brighton any time in the next few days it's on until the 17th January at Artist Residence in Regency Square.

To see the here and read a bit more about Collate Presents click below!
http://www.collatepresents.com/mull-it-over-jan-12.html

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/

Grotto

Throughout December I have some work for sale in Grotto Shop at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester. The Grotto is a pop up shop selling work by local artists, designers and creatives including prints, t shirts, bags, cushions and various other handmade pieces. I'm selling my Crufts print, the Curious Streets print, the fox bag and 4 different badges. All of my items are under £6 so perfect for stocking fillers for Christmas! The centre is open 10-5 Tuesday to Saturday so pop down to see what else is for sale, there's some really lovely work available.

Here are some images of the items that I have for sale:


and here's a link to the Grotto Facebook page: GROTTO

'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.

Yorkshire

Last week I stayed in a cottage for a few days near Settle in Yorkshire. It was such a lovely holiday as I was outside so much walking and enjoying the countryside. It made a great change from sitting in my studio (my room) all cooped up with about a whole house worth of stuff in one room with me.

I took some photos to hopefully use as a bit of inspiration for some drawing, the colours alone make me excited to do something based on the images. I love the dark and gloomy looking grey skies contrasted with the burnt orange and murky greens of the hills. Here's a selection of the photos, I started to use a giant roll of paper as a new sort of sketchbook today so hopefully I can use it to capture some elements of from the photos, I've already been playing around with some inky dry stone wall paintings.