2014 highlights - trips, events, drawings, fun times and adventures.

Can it be 2015 already? It seems like only a year ago it was 2013. 

In factuality I tend to think of years in the academic sense (September to August), so I am always confusing people with my use of last years and next years. THIS year though, I definitely did some things that are worth recalling in blog form I'm sure, even if I have to triple check the dates to make sure of what actually happened in the year of two thousand and fourteen. 

It's been a busy year and a number of those things I didn't even get around to blogging, so there should be some surprises too. I shall be vaguely chronological. 

A quick look at my calendar tells me that in January of 2014 I went to see the Light Princess, the brilliant alternative fairytale musical by Tori Amos

It was awesome.

I also went to Budapest. That was also awesome.

Alex had a beard at the time. 

I also ran a little valentines competition to help choose which of my long running series of collage cards got printed, culminating in 8 favourites becoming commercially available 

(and I'm sure I'll be shoving them down your throats again in no time as I still have some of the stock left you lucky lucky people).

In February, I made my first visit to Jumble and Pearls, who I revisited twice over the course of the year, it's such a lovely bunch of creatives to work with I can't actually believe it's been less than a year, and hope to do more events with Rosalia and co this year coming. 

Also in February I saw the estimable Sir Quentin Blake talk about drawing beyond the page and wrote about it for Amelia. The best part of this story which I'm not sure if I mentioned at the time, is that the legendary illustrator himself actually sent an email to thank me for the post - that's pretty amazingly cool right? He said I was a good listener. 

Also in February I saw War Horse

Joooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

In March I turned 29 (avec cocktails) and did some fashion illustrations

Cocktails.

Vita Gottlieb A/W 2014 

According to my calender I was reading Bourdieu at the time, or at least, I needed to return some to the library. 

In April I went to the MALDIVES. 

For mine and Alex's official honeymoon. It was pretty ****ing idyllic. 

As soon as we got back I was full tilt into preparing the first of two events organised by StoryHands this year - our workshop at Tate Modern with Tate Collective, which took place on the 3rd of May.

Myself, June Sees and Antonia Parker (fellow StoryHands veterans, I've known both these amazing ladies since the early days of my London illumastrating) organised a tour of the Matisse Cut Outs exhibition for groups of young people, then got them creating with a series of activities based on the themes of the show. For me this was as much about a fluidity of process as it was about colours and shapes, Matisse's work in his later life shows such sensitivity to the power of simple composition and imaginative serendipity. It was also a fabulous opportunity of course to work with such a prestigious organisation and with such exciting artwork. The vibrant and varied work our young collaborators came up with was fantastic and I think we were pretty successful in evoking the spirit of Matisse's Vence Studio. You can read a lot more about the event in my write up for the StoryHands blog here.

Here's me, pontificating on my own productive processes. And here's just a small selection of some of the work that got made on the tables, walls and windows of the inspirational room Tate provided us with for the workshop. 

I always have to make something with a bird. 

(no really, ask my students. ALWAYS.) 

So I made this bird, seen here with the Globe and the Walkie Talkie. 

In May I did live drawing at a burlesque and variety night in Hoxton, and completed work on Katie and Elliot's wedding stationary, both of which I have blogged at a decent length recently, so I won't elaborate, except to say that both were very satisfying and fun commissions. 

One thing I don't think I did mention here was this other cool thing I did for the lovely couple's big day - a watercolour portrait in front of the church used as a guest book at the reception. I needed to put this together from a number of fittings and hair rehearsal photos in the week before the wedding, so it was all a little manic and last minute. But it came together nicely, and happily the weather on the day matched the sunshine I painted!

A lot of the summer was taken up with thesis writing as I came to the end of my MA in Art and Design Education, but I did manage to fit in a few weddings, some portraits, visits to shows and exhibitions including a late night viewing of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition at which I drew this sketch of  Gabby Young and her band performing amongst the artworks.

At the same event, my sister Hazel and I experienced our first silent disco. Which was excellent. 

In August, and sensibly just before my thesis deadline, I went to the Green Man Festival in Whales. We slept in a really cold tent and ate a vast variety of world cuisines out of disposable containers and saw bands and stuff. I took quite a lot of mirror sunglasses selfies. 

In September I started a new part time art teaching job working in North West London which is going well.

In October and November StoryHands hosted our second great event of the year - a sketchbook scavenger hunt in the City of London as part of the Big Draw festival. 

June and I led groups on a little walk from the Monument to the Great Fire of London to Postman's Park, with stops in between taking in some hidden gems of the city and challenging our guests to discover and draw there. I've already done three write ups of the event and I'm getting a bit repetative, but if you're interested you can read ALL about it here on the StoryHands site, and see LOTS (and I do mean lots) of pictures. If you do follow me on some of the social medias, you've probably heard all about it already. 

Here we are beginning the first walk with some spiel on looking and on appreciating our great capital.

I had a lot of fun doing these walks and it was so great to see our planning and preperation pay off in all the brilliant drawings made by participants of all ages. Although the decision to have two walks on each day - one family friendly one in the afternoon and one adults only with added pub crawl in the evening meant those two Saturdays were certainly long and exhausting for us, I think it was a good decision to do both as it really gave us the opportunity to meet and work with a great mix of people, including old friends and illustrators, but also new friends from lots of backgrounds and professions. We didn't change the tasks or the approach much in each walk and, while there were a lot of individual approaches, everyone embraced the challenges and made great drawings. 

After the success of our first Saturday of drawing, we attracted the attention of the director of the Campaign for Drawing, Sue Grayson Ford, who came to our second family walk to join in with our activities - what an honour! I've also been invited to write a piece on the experience for AN Magazine, so I think that we can safely call this event even more successful than the first. 

Also in October  I attended a conference on drawing at the British Museum, dressed as a bat for Halloween and took a sneaky trip to the Red Sea. In November I took a large number of children on a trip to the Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museums in Oxford. I could actually spend a week in that building (a cathedral to science, FYI) looking at all the things, it's so good, you should definitely go there if you have the chance. 

The Natural History museum is full of amazing animals and natural forms, while the Pitt Rivers is full of astonishing cultural artefacts. 

In the last few months I have been working on revamping my website, which is ALMOST FINISHED. Honest. That will be the next thing. Also I have completed a four page comic based on a collaged found text story which is in the new issue of Meanwhile... from Soaring Penguin Press. I don't think I'm allowed to publish it all here but here are some sneaky pics. 

Clicky the links if you would like to buy a copy. 

It's a fancy dress love story. With zombies.

Also in the last few months I was working on an epic musical collage project creating lyrics pages and design work for The New Tabloids new album Good News. This was a bit of a departure for me because the work was almost totally abstract rather than figurative, but a lot of fun because for each song I was able to work on communicating the themes and feel of the music through the use of different colours and collage materials. Again at this point I can only show you a sneaky peek, but keep an eye out for the imminent release of the entire album, I'm sure I'll be bigging it up on the media of social.

To conclude the triumvarate of recent projects combining text collage and imagery, I also did this poem about the enduring mythical image of the witch in popular imagination for Amelia Gregory's new book That Which We Do Not Understand. This is a fabtasticly beautiful publication with luscious gold foil printing and lots of exciting artwork, so I definitely recommend getting your hands on a copy. If that is still possible, of which I am not sure. 

Well that was quite a lot of stuff, but then I guess a year is quite a long time really. 

Here's a few of the many sketchbook scavenger hunt pictures to finish off my yearly round up. 

Anna and Fran!

Hopefully 2015 will have as many adventures as 2014, keep your eyes open for my imminent website relaunch, and here's wishing you and yours all of the good things and success in your endeavours. 

Happy New Year.

Coasting

My Christmas season has been fabulous so far, I have watched a LOT of children's films. 

And saw lovely friends and family and ate tasty food of course. 

As is traditional I decided to make a portion of my gifts this year and I decided to make a selection of coasters. 

After umming and ahhing over various tutorials on Pinterest, I bought a job lot of wooden and felt circles from ebay and then began covering them in collage designs. 

Some were in sets like these almost obligatory map and bird designs

and roses

and others were one offs. 

In all a good crafting activity for giftage, although beware of taking up a lot of surfaces in the home when many are drying at once.

If you are thinking of making some coasters and you want them to be functional as well, make sure you consider the waterproofness of the materials you use - I used found printed papers and book cutouts for a lot of the designs (woo serendipity etc.) but where I did use pictures I'd printed from my own designs I made sure to print them on a photocopier with heat sealed ink, and not on my inkjet printer. I also sprayed the finished coasters with two coatings of varnish, but early results indicate the brand I used might not be particularly heat resistant, so do more research than I did. 

Merry betweenchristmasandnewyears

In praise of felt tips

Felt tips can get a bad press, Mostly because if you use them badly, they look, well, really bad.

But if you use oil paints badly....  yeah they look really bad too. und so weiter. 

I don't know if the quote is a bad workman or a poor workman who famously blames his tools, a poor workman at least has more reason to own low quality tools I suppose. 

And I could easily go on a sadly un-sponsored (but welcome to offers!) praise singing bent about the virtues of Promarkers, or Sharpies, or Kuretake Brushables. Or reminisce about this really amazing set of felt tips I bought in a french supermarket in my late teens (Ultra-lavable) which just bled perfectly on cartridge paper and blended so nicely. But I think that's only half the battle. 

In fact sometimes rubbish felt pens can be even more satisfying, getting that scratchy half tone with a perfectly uniform colour? yum. 

I've been using felt pens, and yes, specifically but not exclusively Promarkers and Sharpies, in a lot of my live drawing work recently, because they are quick and colourful. And for the tonal work (the shadows) too - yes for realsies, in fact I often like to start with the tones, and add details after (because even with posh pens, dark colours can sometimes bleed into lighter colours if you go over the top, and because as well, it makes people go oooooh). As can be seen in these pictures herenow.

I just drew the brilliant Jen Conroy in this very style and thought to cunningly scan the process in three simple stages, so that you toooo, can ooooh. If you like. 

Negative Space first!

Tones!

 

Detail, and some whimsical pattern.

Here are some portraits I did a few weeks ago at the Jumble and Pearls Christmas Fair.

 

In the summer, I used felt pens for a few other more exciting live drawing instances, which I did not get around to blogging about at the time, due to excess of thesis.

In September I went to an OffLife quick draw event at The House of Illustration, a newish graphic arts gallery in that newly developed nice fountany bit at granary square across the canal from London St Pancras. Which I like to call London St Pancreas and pretend I'm a tourist.

We were given a theme to illustrate every 15 minutes, so we literally did have to draw quickly and think quickly too. I sat with the always excellent value Gareth Hopkins aka GrthInk, he did a blog of the event (in a much more timely fashion) here.

I like having to think on my feet, or perhaps with my fingers in this case, and I had a great night, although not all of the drawings I did are ones I'd necessarily want to show you. One I'm holding back because I want to do a properly worked up version for my portfolio when I get time. I left the original drawings taped to the wall, so apologies for the phone photo pictures

The first topic was 'How I'd get my five minutes of fame', I started straight in by drawing a newscaster standing in front of a TV frame, hopeful that by the time I'd drawn this I would have come up with a good idea. I didn't really come up with a good idea, but I'm happy with the image because of this early attention to framing and composition innit?

Here's my drawing for the brief brief 'What I'd do if I had only one day to live'

I've always wanted to become an epic street artist and commit nefarious acts of beauty, but I've never had the balls. This is also one of the many answers to the question what would i do if I had Bernard's Watch. But that's another story.

I really do not know what was happening in my brain when I drew this in response to 'What's really down the back of the sofa'

Off Life actually run an online Quick Draw every Thursday, if you're interested in getting involved with some speedy illustration.

Now on to the final felt tip adventure I want to chronicle. Way back in May I pitched a live art idea to an events manager I've worked with a few times doing live portraits with Cult Events, what I ended up doing was not exactly what I pitched (I'm keeping that one under wraps still, I'm going to make it happen sooner or later) but was possibly the most fun I've had with felt tips.

Over the course of an evening at Dive Bar beneath Hoxton Seven titled Peep Show, I filled two enormous boards with live sketches of the performers of the evening, amassing together to make one large record of the event. 

Did I mention that a large number of these performers were burlesque and drag artists? 

Similar to my cowardice in not so far becoming an internationally renowned street artist, is my persistent lack of dressing up in feathers and face paint and shaking my thing. The spirit is willing but the flesh is lazy. I adore anything OTT and sparkly and tongue in cheek, but realistically, I'm not going to be the one on stage singing about my sexploits. That would be inappropriate. 

Because I am a teacher. 

And afraid. 

But I can DRAW them. 

This is what I drew that night.

I started with the mirror ball, and added atmospheric light splashes with the square end of my Promarkers.

Of especial note was the mesmerising musical performance of Kristal Sisodia,
I almost captured her elegance.

Also in evidence were several members of The Family Fierce, some of whom you may have seen on Drag Queens of London. 

Including but not limited to the enigmatic and effervescent Mx Ruby Wednesday (centre, Jokeresque makeup), the compère par excitement Rubyyy Jones (singing and pink opera gloves, bottom left) and I'm pretty sure (should probably have made notes) that the figure top left is the ineffable art queen Bourgeoisie.

I also enjoyed meeting Fairyprincessmermaidbarbie  although I didn't get to draw a detailed picture you can see her here in profile.

Have I convinced you that felt tips are brilliant yet? Or perhaps of your future career as a drag artist?

If not me, then why not someone else, here are some other awesome artists I like using felt tips. 

Holly Wales

Ellie Cryer

Lucile Prache

Philip Dennis

Maya Bee

Ahh the wonders of felt tippery. Next week: why I really like filing cabinets.

Not really. 

Maybe.

I mean. I do really like filing cabinets. I just might not blog about it.

Magpies

Back in 2007 when I did this ink drawing of magpies (or more accurately magpie as it's technically the same magpie from different moments in a video), I didn't know it was going to become the best thing I ever did and an inspiration to a series of other black and white bird paintings over the years. Of all the pictures I've made before and since this is the most consistently complimented, and the style I've been most often commissioned to reproduce. 

I've never really been able to put my finger on it's appeal, the looseness and liveliness of the drawing are not the only factors, it's something basically pleasing about the repetition I think, and the sort of half-rhyme rhythm of that repetition. Maybe. And it reminds people of the song that inspired it, you know, one for sorrow and all that. 

Back when this piece was featured in the AOI images exhibition and book in 2008, I made an edition of 20 digital prints at a nice print shop in Brighton. They've been trickling out of my portfolio over the intervening years via etsy and artfinder and at fairs and exhibitions. 

And I posted one today and I realised there are only 2 left. 

If I understand artistic integrity correctly, it would be inappropriate for me to reprint them in the same size as that would invalidate the limitedness of the original 20 printed. So if you want one, act now. Or forever hold your peace. 

Unnatural love of photocopiers.

So I started a new teaching job, which is really exciting for lots of reasons and I'm looking forward to lots of the things that I'm going to do and teach and learning all the new things about my new school. 

But really I am honestly most excited because in the department we have one of those photocopiers that prints in single colours.

Oh. The. Fun. We. Will. Have.

Elegant kitsch

My long summer of thesis writing is finally over, (I done a Masters).  I'm back in the saddle as it were with a typically long list of things to see and do, but some of the pressure off.

When you're, you know, artzy, creative typy, a person that is driven to make things, there are definitely more people like this than just me, when you're that - it can make you a bit sad and crazy when you don't have time to make the things you want to. 

Last weekend I took all the postits around my desk that had things on them like 'remember to connect cultural capital back to Bourdieu', and 'check reference to Ullman - Polyvalancy! - happenstance!', 'pop art is outdated nostalgia not contemporary critique in the classroom' and 'remember to eat' (at least one of these is genuine), and put up in their place all the postits from the side of my desk of ideas for drawing and artworks that i'd scribbled down during the last few months when I haven't had time to draw them. 

And tonight, I sat down and made one of them a reality. 

And it felt really good.

It isn't for anything really, and I'm not even sure if it's about anything. It was just a picture in my head I wanted to get on paper. 

Soon I will do more proper blogging and tell you about other things I got up to over the summer with wedding portraits, live burlesque drawing, flyer designs and other stuff. Probably.

And exciting things coming up in the soontimes too, like a Big Draw event I'll be running with Storyhands in October, and the hopefully not too distant relaunch of my website. And some comics stuff. Probably.

If you are curious about the postit, this is it:

A few hours after I drew it I went back and feverishly scribble the phrase 'elegant kitsch' (misspelled) along the bottom, but on reflection I don't actually know what I meant by this. Deadline delirium. It's possible it was meant to go on one of the thesis postits.

And don't worry mum, I did remember to eat. A lot.