I've been doing a lot of readings of 'When When When Will it be Christmas' recently and giving away Santa hats with signed books. Happy Happy Christmas everyone!
I've started creating this year's Christmas card - it has a 'donkey' theme. Just a sketch, some hessian pieces and the beginnings of a linocut!
With Halloween coming up, I've been doing a few spooky workshops at Wokingham/Woodley libraries. Following an interactive reading of my picture book 'Spooky Spooky Spooky', the children enjoyed designing/collaging a spooky character/Halloween costume, like the characters in the book. They came up with some amazing designs! Happy Halloween everyone!
I've been gathering loads of wild flowers this Spring to use in artwork or for cyanotypes. Lovely colours and shapes - can't wait to use them.
I meant to share this last month, but it was pretty busy! I joined 1500+ illustrators, inspired by the fantastic illustrator Emma Reynolds, in a virtual protest, supporting the youth global climate strike on March 15th. Here is my illustration/contribution.
I so enjoyed World Book Day week this year and was lucky enough to visit quite a few schools to do book related workshops. As always I particularly enjoyed the painting workshops - the children are always so enthusiastic and free with their creativity. Here are a few of their wonderful butterfly paintings, inspired by my picture book 'Bunny Bunny Catkin'.
This week I attended an amazing colour theory workshop in Cambridge, with fellow illustrator Layn Marlow, taught by the incredibly knowledgeable and talented Juliet Docherty. It was a real revelation and as we worked through the whole process, inspired by all kinds of illustration/art references/observations, quite a few pennies dropped for me, in terms of mixing colour and looking at colour. It was a great day and I look forward to making some new palettes of colour when I work in the future.
During this snowy weather I find myself working with my cyanotypes printed back in the hottest summer days of last year, which seems bizarre. I am continuing to create pieces for my 'Half Memory' series, this time making a textile piece using cyanotypes on fabric, a dyed vintage cloth, bits of lace, a poem, pressed flowers and other ephemera. The old photos in this piece were donated by artist friends and I'm trying to create a teenage, scrapbook feel but from the perpective of someone much older, remembering times past and how they felt then. There is a lot of detail and it has taken a very long time to create - so many stages, but it is now complete. Next up in this series, a photographic piece and then I'm hoping to use papier mache to create a three dimensional piece.
My first piece of art this year - a postcard-sized work to raise money for Edinburgh based charity Art In Healthcare. The postcard will be displayed, alongside a further 999 original pieces of art on postcards, and hopefully sold at the Twitter Art Exhibit exhibition, starting in May 2019 in Edinburgh. More details later on. I decided this year to concentrate on saleability, so went for something appealing, using my picture book illustration style. I came up with a watercolour of kittens in a cardboard box entitled 'Meow Meow Meow!'. Here it is from thumbnail sketch through to the final watercolour. Do hope it sells!
