Jenny has been drawing a project, and stuff.

So the summer is almost over ladies and gentleman. It's a thing. Although it's very hot this week, if you are reading this in the future and want a window back into late August 2016. It's been moistened towelette on the forehead oclock in the RobinsGeorge household. I've been working on a few different things this month, but mostly I have been into making and posting fresh 3.52 billion drawings on instagram every day at 12tyish. I don't mean that I have been posting 3.52 billion drawings, I'm pretty sure that's impossible, but that as you'll know if you know me on the gram or indeed any of the other média sociaux, it is a project of me drawing lots of different women coming out of cookie cutters with little sentences under them that tell you something about them or their lives you probably couldn't tell by looking. You get the idea right? It's about diversity and intersectionality and people being awesome and carrying stories around with them the whole time. 

It's a thing. 

I wrote about how I was probably going to do this back in June, yeah? 

The plan is I'm going to eventually make this into a book with comics and stories as well, I've already done two and a half comics. But I'm going to be crazy busy in September, so progress is going to have to halt on that for a little bit. But I would encourage you all to keep an eye on my instagram feed, but here is a really long image with a sample of some of the colourful characters. 

I'm also posting them sporadically on the facebook. 

In other news I finished my personal sketchbook today that I've had going sinceMay 2012. So that's exciting. I plan to do a video, if I can figure out a way to suspend my phone appropriately strategically.

Also, I painted Julia Scheele.

And there are some exciting new listings and some fresh designyness in my Etsy Shop, I might talk about that another time. Maybe. 

Jenny out. 

Weddings are the new arts festivals, collaboration with dead poets and anonymous copywriters.

I have a two page poetry comic in this new anthology of poetry comics edited by Chrissy Williams and Tom Humberstone; Over the Line.

I went to the first launch party  at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden, and the second launch party at Gosh Comics. I'm happy I got to go to both, like coming at the hybrid from both directions, although my foot is probably more obviously planted in the comics camp than the poetry one. I met some very cool poetry people and some equally awesome comic people at both events. 

It was fab to hear perspectives of poetic creatives reading and talking about their work, and it got me thinking about a lot of things. Poetry, labels, contexts and the cyclical nature of creativity.

Words go round in circles, in our heads and in our cultures, so do pictures.

Like these photo collages by Matthais Jung which he calls “architectural short poems” and says that "The composition of the individual elements correlates to a logic, as if in a dream."

This seems to chime so well with Williams' concept of cut and paste poetry comics, a lot of the work that goes on at her poetry comic workshops is of the collage variety - it's quick, it's democratic, hey you already know how much I love collage probably. It also lends itself well to thinking about composition and rhythm, how the former ties the latter together, in poetry but especially in comics. We read images in not all that different a way to how we read words, and the introduction to Over The Line examines how the grammar and syntax of that reading is built visually in poetry and comics to parcel moments of time into nuggets of meaning.

At the poetry cafe half of proceedings there was much talk of 'in collaboaration with dead poets', whether in this literal way of cutting up and re-organising others' work, or as poet and artist Sophie Herxheimer did in her project 'Coffee with Rosemary' taking a dead poet's name as a jumping off point for a poem made entirely from the letters therein. 

Whereas my contribution to the book is more of a collaboration with living but uncredited journalists and copy editors, my poem was forged from my ever expanding collection of interesting words from magazines. I have been making excellent use of the puzzle carrier my mother gave me for Christmas to put together new pieces of found text based comic work. 

To see the other page of my poem and lots of other interesting and brilliant interpretations of the theme, you shall have to buy the book.

Talking to Chrissy, we considered the place of poetry in contemporary society and how for many people it's something that happens at weddings but which they wouldn't expect to pop up in their daily reality feed. Which made me think, yes of the bloated aesthetic hysteria of what the wedding industry has become (my wedding was amazing by the way), but also of how our outlets for creativity and celebrating creativity get squashed by adult life, and how that force springs out of the gaps in the mundane in full force wherever we give it permission to. Working in a school I am aware of how many opportunities for self expression are given to (sometimes unwilling) children every day - they HAVE to write poems in English lessons, and the HAVE to draw in art, at least until GCSE in this country, you also HAVE to go outside and run around. But unless you latch on to that as part of your identity and make it your career or your passion, those opportunities dwindle when we leave education. 

I really believe people need creative and physical outlets, and if a wedding is the only chance you get to choreograph an awesome dance routine, read a powerful poem, make a thousand paper cranes or wear a ridiculous hat, then I say we need more weddings. Although it would be good if people felt less self conscious about doing all of those things in their homes and local church halls and social clubs too. So I would recommend joining the mailing list for the Poetry Cafe and GOSH comics. Or find something local to you. Don't wait for your friends to get hitched, get out there and make stuff. Play with boundaries, explore new mediums and hybrids, look for starting points and inspiration anywhere and everywhere and don't be afraid to collaborate. 

I once had a cordial exchange with Valerie Pezeron on a similar topic, where she posited that carnivals were an equivalent of performance art in other cultures, and I thought it was the other way around. Performance art is what modern western culture had to invent, to make up for a lack of carnival. If you've got an extravagant outfit wearing and political slogan shouting creature singing in your soul, it needs somewhere to come out. But sometimes we need an impetus, a spring board, a prompt; an excuse.  

Whether we're collaging to trick ourselves into becoming poets, starting with words and adding pictures, starting with pictures and adding words (many of the works in the book are actual collaborations between artists and writers, and some of their processes are this simple, though more are not); barefacedly pastiching our favourite creators and calling it a conversation, or lying to ourselves about the postmodern condition and claiming originality. I mean. Aren't we all collaborating with dead poets really? Not that that stops us from making brilliant art. 

I've been doing some more facebook portraits recently by-the-by, I've now completed the Johns. Here's the inimitable fellow StoryHandser John Riordan doing a scary face.

I'm also imminently moving house, so I've begun sorting through old boxes and files and have listed some old original illustrations on Etsy and some old (and new) bird paintings on Artfinder - more to come I expect as there's a whole stack of sketchbooks I haven't been through yet. Watch the space that is here.

I've never seen the Dead Poets Society, but I did hear some interesting stories about the Secret Cinema screening of the film, from some of the poets involved, in the pub near the Poetry Cafe. 

What Birds are REALLY Thinking...... 2!

Although I am trying to buy a flat in London with my husband and am therefore filled with a constant gut tearing terror and dispair, there are good and exciting things happening which are good and exciting. 

Mostly I am happy and excited that I have finished the second edition of What Birds Are Really Thinking. Here exclusively and for the first time I will show you some pictures. 

This has been in the pipeline for a while, moving between back and front burners to make way for aforementioned housing angst and other exciting projects such as those detailed in my last post.

The first edition of What Birds Are Really Thinking, including spoonbills thinking about Britney Spears and starlings thinking about soft furnishings is my all time bestselling thing that I have made (apart from the Magpies print). In addition to being one of the very first things I made after moving to London to seek my fortune as an illustrator back in 2008.

 And this edition is soooooooo much better.

 I decided to revisit the topic in 2015 as an excuse to make some multimedia work and draw birds (my favourite things) and as a promotional follow up to the launch of my new website (jennyrobins.com). Much as I have a fondness for the original zine, this second issue really does show how far I've come in terms of skill and design. I will be sending these out as a mailer in the next month with a few postcards I also have in the pipeworks. 

 If you fancy owning your own copy, they are available here, or pop me an email if you can think of a good reason why I should send you one for free.  

In other good news, the event June and I organised for the Big Draw back in October/November 2014 has won a runners up award in the Drawing Inspiration Awards. That's good eh? We are going to the awards ceremony and will probably wear nice dresses, definitely do some live drawing and possibly make a speech (appropriatness of speech not yet confirmed.) I've announced the news officially on the Storyhands site here. 

This is me taking a short break from running the Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt in my F(Art)S T-shirt. This is what it looks like to be AWARD WINNING. 

so as you may know I am starting my new teaching job in September, which is exciting and scary.

Till then tho I am illumustration central (and planning central of course) and pretty much broke of the pockets. So with the time and the poorness I thought I would have a bit of a

STUNNINGTACULAR ACEMAZING AWESOMEABULOUS

SUMMER SALE

UNTIL 21ST OF AUGUST

first 4 orders of sale will also receive a limited edition pink love zine

including not to be missed offers like

David

portrait commission for only £15 (that's very cheap you know, I'm good at portraits) - style and content of your choice.

30 by 30cm prints of my iconic Magpies painting for only £9.49

yes that is a weird price, it is because it is translated from dollerz on etsy

and most exciting of all a bumper suprise pack of awesomeness that will fill your life with joy. Made up from extra and special stock that I have about my person and some original art and things I found in my pockets.

Once upon a time me and Ellie Cryer used to fantasize about having an online business selling mystery boxes of STUFF. This is the closest I have come to date to fulfilling that dream.

If you buy one I promise it will be AMAZING

That is all.

ANOUNCING!!!!!!!

super special exclusive limited edition postcard set WHOWHATWHEREWHENWHYHOW


available NOW to coincide with Two Magpies Find show at The Mill House in Windsor.

apologies for abnormaly high number of capital letters in the above.