Goeiedag, Good News,

Hello hello hello, bonjour, guten tag and indeed goeiedag.

Reasons to be famous, completed projects and all sorts of illustrated high-jinks abound in this springtime season of newness and tidying.

A short while ago I made this first page of a comic about what Europe might be like in the future, and sent it along with a summary of the rest of the story to the nice people at Friedrich Naumann Stiftung for their Europe Fast Foward competition.

Along with six other comic artists I have been commissioned to complete the story and then go to Brussels for an awards ceremony and the launch of the book of our comics. Which is cool.

I'm not going to share the story with you, because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise of what European culture will be like in the future. Because I am that prescient and clever that I have figured out what that will be. 

ALSO, I want to tell you that drawing lace is really enjoyable and I want more excuses to do so.  

In other comic news you can see a review of the second issue of Meanwhile... featuring my found text comic (Loved and Found, the serendipitous love story) on the Forbidden Planet blog here. Which is quite exciting. 

Also and as well, a somewhat longer time ago, the magnificent Christopher Kear of The New Tabloids commissioned me to produce some collagey artwork and designs for the album Good News including a full colour 12 page lyrics booklet in the found text style.

It is now a real thing in the real world and I went to the launch party although I think I missed my shout out which is a little bit embarrassing. 

The music sounded really good tho, you should check it out. 

Here are some of the lyric pages

I love the mix of serendipity and intention that is in all creativity but comes out especially much in abstract collage. The materials and colours that I used related to the theme and mood of each individual song, with a theme of using newsprint and jagged edges throughout, relating to the idea of the band's name and ethos of fractured journalism, commenting on modern life seen through the bottom of a broken bottle, dancing in the wreckage of the scene. You know, that sort of thing. Right? 

I've been doing lots of other fun drawings for fun and profit, much of which I am not sharing yet. But here are some sneaky, cheeky, peeky work in progress (or #wip to those in the know, or #itk) pictures from the new edition of What Birds are Really Thinking I am working on. 

It is going to be so so so good. Probably.

Drawing live musicians is great, although it gets harder (and more exciting) the more mobile they are. 

A week or so ago I went to a gig my friend Cynthia of Sophecy played in King's Cross, but managed to catch only the last fading notes of her performance as I rushed from a Year 7 parents evening 

(I made a 12 year old cry, worth it). 

To console myself I drew two of the remaining acts, the Mumfordesque Narrow Plains and the very exciting Shockolady. The latter was an example of the harder kind of live drawing as she was pulling out a lot of sexy moves. 

Beauty of this kind does not come abundantly

just found this in the loft going through my bag of 'art fair' stuff. Early foray into collage work. Good times. 

priorities and sketch book highlights

Ok kids, so blogging has not been so high up my to do lists the last few years.

the lists, oh god the lists.

endless to do lists on post its, in notebooks, in sketchbooks, on word documents, in me head, lists of priorities, lists of strategies, shopping lists, must should and could lists, lists of friends i need to have round for dinner or they may no longer count as friends lists, lists of reasons not to give up making lists.

I'm sorry where was I?

But come September I am officially going to be a part time (3 days a week) teacher, which was the plan all along, which is a good thing, so priorities get to change.

Take into account I've been on the Summer Holidays sitting at my messy desk doing stuff for 4 weeks already and blogging has not yet happened. (One of those weeks was actually spent sitting on a sun lounger in the south of France, drinking cheese and eating wine, so three weeks really).

I will talk more about the priorities another day I think, and possibly ask for some help with them, because they are complex and confusing, and I am still going to be trying to fit to do lists into days in which they will not fit. It's the way it is.

What I wanted to share with you today was some sketches and such that I have drawn that you have not seen, I toyed with the idea of faking the dates on these and making it look like i'd been regularly updating them all year, because you can do that on blogger, though I've no idea how it would look on a bloglovin update or whatever, but I'm not doing that. I can't be asked. As children like to pretend they said.

So in approximate chronological order, and please forgive blurriness where my sketchbooks fail to sit flatly on scanner beds, here is some sketchbook stuff and things that I did;

I saw exactly two professional plays this year, at the old and young vic respectively, though not by design,

Noises off was very funny, especially the bit when his laces were tied together

We also went to see Patrick Stewart in a play called Bingo which was pretty odd and mental, and about Shakespeare being a senile socialist. or something.

We went on a brief holiday to Amsterdam in the chilly cold, it was awesome.

One of the good things about being a teacher is you get to go on school trips for free, if you don't count paying with your sleep and your sanity, so I went to Disneyland Paris with Year 7,

and just recently went to Chessington with year 8, where i spent a deal of time drawing animals in the zoo

I got to go see England play football, in a friendly manner with Belgium, and I did some sketches

And then in just the last few weeks, I did some sketching at the only Olympic event I got a ticket for - the first day of Dressage at Greenwich park,

sketched at a few musical events, a concert in Arundul Cathedral seeing the Sussex Festical Choir,

and a Radio 3 chamber prom featuring the wonderful L'Arpeggiata,

then had a lovely holiday in the South of France

blog blog blog blog blog

obviously I am a bad person and have not blogged recently. I could post-date and fake it now and be all like, oh you have not read my blog? well it was here, full of stuff. But because I have respect for you, and myself, and because such a rouse (sp?) would require some planning to hang together, I'm not going to do that. However. stuff has happened. so prepare for epic stuff. And probably I will forget something so will have to post again anyway.

firstlymost here is a recent TheyDrawAndCook.com design I did, I am particularly proud of the fig leaves, although why I decided to include the rhino I honestly couldn't tell you. It must have been due to some tacit knowledge (that's a pedagogical theory joke, well, not really).

In February I went to visit my darling sister Hazel in Lisbon where we were blessed with optimal tourism weather. I recommend it. Here are some drawings I did of some Fado we went to see in a restaurant in the old part of the city, where these sorts of things traditionally take place. It is a cultural thing where everyone is very depressed and grumpy and moved to sing about it.

Before this, I had some London Fashion Week fun, which I wrote up in some more depth on Amelia's Magazine here. I drew pretty things and met fashiony people. Below are some of my favourite illustrations and sketches from my A/W 2011 haul. For the non-fashionistatastic among you, that means clothes what they invented last year for next year that you can't buy yet but should be the only thing you are thinking about apparently. All for Amelia's Magazine.

Bora Aksu also featured the above illustration on their facebook page

I got to see the Jasper Conran show where I sketched at lightening speed - see my write up and sketches here, my favourite works in the show were def. these sturdy jumpsuit sort of things.

I'm pleased with the atmosphere in this Clements Ribeiro piece

Live sketches of Edward Finney and Nicole Murray with their dresses.

This is Eun Jeong, elegant innit?

In Facebook Project news, I did this manga style portrait of Danni, because she just looks like an Oh My Goddess character, and everyone is all over it. Which is nice. But, not to sound whingy, I am not a manga artist. This is not my thing. Do not expect more. Unless specifically requested. They warned me about this at illustrator school. Why it's not good to be flexible. Which really begs the question why I am posting about it if I don't want people to notice. Um. well I've written it now.

A while ago I promised to draw a free commission for my 750th twitter follower. probably a little prematurely tbh, as the flurry wasn't really going to happen till I was pretty close. Although I plan to do something similar for my 1000th follower, watch the space of hereness. The lucky winner was Acronia Lyubov (not her real name, apparently) - I lucked out here as she is stunning! (see below) and wanted me to draw her in my favourite style, so this was a joyful undertaking.

In other news, my illustration will be included in the amazing memories project, an art book about the experiences of poetic cancer survivors (when I got the story to draw from through I proper cried, this will definitely be a worthwhile purchase when it comes out - chock full of beautiful art and heart rending true stories) to raise money for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.

Poppy Cleopatra has featured my live portrait of her in her blog banner, looking lovely.

Also, I have been dieting. Which I have a lot of complex feelings about so I might write a blog post about that when I have finished. I'm not sure how I'll know when I've finished. I might not last past Easter. Or maybe I will just stop when i am a size zero. ha.

illustration of Vessels, for Amelia's - don't think it's posted yet, it has shiny collage and ink. yum.

I want to talk a bit about some cool stuff.

one of the good things about the PGCE (the bad things include it being super exhausting and confusing - but there's more good than bad) is that it's making me expose myself to a load more art than usual. This should continue when I'm teaching which is super cool.

Most of the big galleries have special private views for teachers where you can see paying exhibitions for free, yes please.

Also, I'm like, burrowing into the internets looking for hot examples of tonal graduation or reductive lino or aztec patterns or whatever that I can show to the kids and be like, check out this awesome use of tonal graduation. do that. I am happy that I know about awesome art blogs like brown paper bag, Ballad Of featured, Illustration Rally, to name but a few.

I've seen awesome new inspirationstuff like Liesl Pfeffer's awesome photo collages
Lulu Allison's slightly creepy but beautiful papercuts
Anna See's lovely bird lino prints (i loves the birds you know)

I also went to the National Gallery yesterday on an inset thing, and fell in love with Van Gogh's Two Crabs. Little bit more famous. Check out those colours and tonal definitions tho. hot.


While I was there I saw the temporary free instalation of Clive Head's London paintings - if you like London I thoroughly recomend it. super awesome. Makes the point properly that painting wins over photography really, and that London is awesome also.

alright Chickens?
feeling friendly? feeling comfy? feeling flat?

this is still my all time favourite song to stop what your doing for a few minutes and recharge your batteries by jumping manicly around the bedsit



can't wait to see what he does for this year.

Here are 2 pictures I did when I was feeling naughty enough to enter a competition, it's to coincide with the comics of my favourite ever book (and film ) the Last Unicorn and the winners will be in the actual comic so I could be reaching many whimsical geeks like me worldwide. so fingers crossed for that.

I am thinking about a realatively major website overhaul. In my copius free time of course, but watch the space that is here.

adventures

this is me writing on the ceiling at the Pop up Pirates launch party last week. large and less large exciting lettering all over the shop and hipsters a go go.

photo by Amelia Gregory from http://yfrog.com/f/1szrkj/

I snuck in with the alternafashionistasuperethicalsocialite herself, which is to say Amelia, and I introduced her to Derek from the AOI, then we hung out like a load of grumpy old cool kids, complaining about how load the music was. it was a fun night for me, I also met some cool people when i pretended to network after. Including the exciting Klaus from the book club, hopefully I will go see his exciting project next week then I will tell you the story he told me.

Then this week I went to the Oh Comely Launch with Caragh, my lovely illustrator friend who I just drew for my facebook project (yes, I'm on the Cs). I was not feeling the networking so much, probably not enough adrenaline in my bloodstream, but I was definitely feeling the cupcakes, and the band that played who I drew
they are called the foxxbandits, go check out their twinkly tunes.
I also did this drawing of some of the unsuspecting event hipsters, the bearded boy in the top right was the DJ, I don't know his name but if anyone does let me know and I will link to his DJ page or something. If he has one.

In other exciting news, I am featured today on the Ballad Of Magazine Website, it's a really awesome magazine with scary pretty stuff, i mean, do you know what i mean? like, creepy lovely. how good is that? it's pretty good actually. I might even do something for their next issue.

Here is a picture of ME, that I drew. Its a bit pink. It's for online bios and stuff, there should be more of them about in the coming weeks. justsaying.
Yes.

here is a picture of Barny from the facebook project. you may remember I met his brother. well I am going to his not wedding next week. that is all.

I am listening to the Younger Younger 28s to get me in the mood to go dancing, whatever happened to them?