New Horizons

What a year 2016 has been already! Personally for me more than anything, but also I have put a lot of effort into nurturing the style of own, authorial work. It has been hard when I have been on deadline, but I set out to achieve a real sense of ownership over my life this year, with a more honest and fluid core. I am currently going through a huge personal transition, so my energy has been away from my work for a while now and hence no posts since Sept! I am looking forward to the time when my heart and mind are not distracted by the logistics of life, and I can get back into the studio and get out sketching again, find focus and get my creative life back on track.
So, partly inspired by my friend and fellow creative Jo Bradford of Green Island Studios,  I started by setting myself a goal of creating an image a day for a whole year. 365 days, (366 days for 2016). It started off with painting objects, but this became tricky when I wasn't inspired and really struggled with a sense of continuity, and interest, if I'm honest. So with my abstract, fine art work I constantly have paint pallets and bits of card with paint marks and lots of textures on, so I always feel as though that's not the end of the story for them, so I have started using them in my illustration and started cutting them up. Houses just came out of the scissors to paper, so I went with it and then made a print out of them, and that inspired the collage a day from then on.
After a couple of weeks of painting, I continued the task with just collage and so it continues today. I am on day 167 now and some nice bits have been coming out. It has been hard to create them while I have been away, or just having tricky times, but if I know I am away and have no way of doing any collages on location, I will cheat a little and do a couple more at one sitting and post later. I don't do that very often and find it very hard when I'm tired, and sometimes you can really tell, through quality and connection, but there are some nice bits coming out of the project, and I have a new body of coherent work for my website, which is very rewarding. I will have an exhibition somewhere fitting and may even try to get an agent with this work. in January 2017.
I have sold a few pieces to Instagram followers already and a piece at the Newlyn Art Gallery called New Horizons, which for me sends a message that it's all going in the right direction. I hope you enjoy them too and you can see the best of the bunch here and the whole works from the very beginning here and just collage here. Please do comment if you have anything to offer and share away if you feel so inclined as long as my copyright and name is next to it : ) Thanks for reading, I'm off to do day 168! More up to date posts to follow.

First mixed media illustration made from paint palettes

First collage print made from paint palettes

My Instagram account

160ish days in with a few faves

Website screen grab

One of my latest faves, day 135

Day 82

Day 138

My updated website

More recent work

Evening Course Loveliness

I have been running an evening course over ten weeks from Sept-Dec this year at Plymouth College of Art. I was signed up to do the whole year of beginners through to advanced but sadly living in Falmouth and teaching in Plymouth all day and night meant the journey home was too much and was impacting on my professional work, so I had to step away and let someone else take the mantle.

The students were incredible, in that they were all eyes open and ready to give anything a go. They turned up each week, showed their sketchbooks and homework tasks set each week and generally got stuck in. Some were more advanced in their practice and had more to show each week, but those who had less time and a less developed practice equally had so much to show, maybe not in quantity but in confidence as the weeks went on. It was like watching a caterpillar unravel into a beautiful fully fledged butterfly. Everyone showed so much more than I had imagined. There was vulnerability, laughter, sharing, caring, exploring and more than anything a curiosity and drive to create and be inspired.

It has been a learning curve for me also, as I have never crafted a 10 week course on my own and after a few misdirections and a few misunderstandings in the lead up, I met the students on the first night with a workshop from the previous course and promptly scrapped the schedule and started again, with only them,their abilities and needs in mind moving me forward. Knowing then that I had to teach what I knew and understood Illustration to be, from the ground up.

Each week was sketched out and then homework and workshop task sheets were designed and written up the week before in order to keep it fresh. I realised that it had to start with the basic development of what they had already. To encourage and enhance the foundation of their own individual practices with workshops that I thought would generally appeal to all, but offered them tools and new techniques to take home and develop into their own practice and in their own way of working. They did not disappoint. The results were brilliant.
Their homework was great, their sketchbooks full and their faces smiling.
I set them one homework to produce one black and white image in proportion to A5, so I could get them printed so we could bind them into our own books, helped by Mel Brown, who showed us a lovely Japanese stab bind. Below are some of my favourite pieces of work I managed to get photos of, inc the book we made. I will add more when I get a chance.

They all said they had nothing to offer, I beg to differ and I hope you do too.

Chez

Belita

Sandi

Tommie

Matheus

Jenni

Belita-I can't draw

Frances -never painted before

Susie -loves detail

Ethan

Marion

Marion

Ethan

Chez

Marion

Marion

Compulsion

I’m in my studio working on my own work for the first time in months. With no reason other than to follow my intuition and the drive to make. I feel an urge that will not be satisfied until I have created something of worth. This of course could happen today, tomorrow or in months, years time. But still I continue, without real knowledge of when, but strongly with the faith that it will happen. I feel almost overwhelmed by the urge I am feeling to chase a feeling of joy and fulfilment in my work. Sometimes I get close and even feel like it is here, finally, I’ve reached the ‘Holy Grail’, and then it fades and it starts all over again. The quest to follow, to find, to search, never dissipates. And when I am tied up in life, in work and have no time for myself, the feeling is pushed into my heart like a hamster stocking up for winter. I can’t help but feel this intense pressure boiling up inside.

But today I am working, and the feeling is intensifying like no other day I have had of late. I feel like my body and mind are suppressing my heart but in the same breath allowing my hands to feel the way forward, through the dirge of my mind. It is through my hands that I must make sense of a situation. Listening to Eno, erasing all distractions of words, of form, or reason, my hands are talking and creating once more… they are home. My words flowing through my fingers, I must get back to my hands, to breathe, to create, to colour my world.

It's been a good year already

 Well 2015 has been busy already, with a few more bits planned for the rest of the year. I decided to go solo to Paris on the way through to Bologna for the children's book fair, which was incredible. It was a sketching trip for me and a test to see if I would enjoy it and get anything from it also...and I did. So meeting up with a friend of a friend and spending the evening with her. Drinking cocktails, chatting, laughing, walking, having dinner, seeing the sights at midnight, and drinking some more. What a treat! and in Paris! I spent one whole day traipsing the streets of Paris looking at art. It was just lovely, and tiring, but a real reboot to the senses. Les Cahiers Dessines at Halle ST Pierre. The YIA show in Bastille. The Picasso Museum was stunning, and just general arty goings on, along with a visit to the Shakespeare and Company Bookshop over the river.

Bologna was more than I imagined in an emotional way. I was tired after the close fitting flights and delicious late night eating and drinking of one night, but to see Monty and the Little Tiger team, and to get to know them all over dinner over two nights was so much fun. They looked after me, and I appreciated every ounce of my journey to Bologna. To see my work up among all the talented illustrators in the whole mammoth event that was the Bologna Children's Book Fair was so rewarding after always being shut off in my studio at home. To travel into the city for a few hours, to sketch, to have an Italian ice cream, to speak to the Italian bus driver who was so willing with his sign language, to have lunch with a beer, to have sun shine on my face in March and to get a little lost on the way home, finding the small streets and hidden gems. To end with a midnight feast in great company, to then get up a few hours later to start the journey home. It floored me for a week afterwards, but it was so worth it all. A memory I will repeat soon I hope. Maybe somewhere new, some other time.

BLOG TOUR 2014

Last week I was lucky enough to get a message from the lovely John Kilburn. I was asked to join a blog tour by John who was asked by Amber Hsu. Amber is the driving force behind the incredible artzine Tiny Pencil and a multi-talented designer, illustrator, editor and writer.  The idea of the blog tour is for authors/illustrators to answer the same set of four questions, then pass it on to few more people to do the same. So Amber passed it on to John and Alexis Deacon, Amber was nominated by Katriona Chapman who in turn was nominated by Jessica Lopez and also nominated Dan Berry. ..  but here are my answers.

What are you working on right now?
Right at this minute I am designing a book for my next exhibition. I have decided to make a catalogue of every show I do.

 Catalogue front cover

This month I have been working hard on starting and finishing a children's book and getting two more started, so little time to do my own authorial work. I'm also back at Plymouth College of Art, teaching on the Illustration course one day a week. My full-time job is as a commercial children's book illustrator with an authorial / fine art alter ego that comes out after dark. It is the alter ego voice I will be using for this purpose but that also means that the work I am doing for myself is minimal right now due to heavy deadlines and limited time.


So my authorial work currently consists of getting ready for an exhibition in the Picture Room in Newlyn Gallery. The work was born from a weeks residency in Studio no.5 at the Porthmeor studios in St Ives. Home to Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron and other seminal artists, past and present. I will be sharing the gallery with the UCF Fine Art Midas Award winners with a separate show by overall winner Marc Messenger. I have the picture room to myself which is great and very cosy. Although this work lies firmly within fine art, as an illustrator I am constantly working hard on another body of work that brings the two together.

Press release for the show at Newlyn Gallery

You Are My Religion

X Marks the Spot

Swimming Upstream

The 'other body of work' I am creating in the background is my own children's book and a new portfolio. It is taking ages, years in fact, due to lack of time, but it is where my abstract / fine art work meets my love and passion for illustration. They are currently just backgrounds and landscapes while I am getting to grips with working in such a different way to my normal prescribed pencil, paper and paint. This is a more sketchbook style process and in fact came from sketching from life in the woods where I live. My dog walks seem to be where I make sense of the world and give me a huge feeling of freedom. I go out without my phone and just look up, listening to, and experiencing nature and the world around me. So one day I remembered how much I love to sketch from life, took my sketchbook and pencils and loved it. I just don't do it enough. So it starts in my sketchbook, I then scan the pages in and move them around, cut to white and add textures where needed.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work is a story of two parts. My life and my work lies in a world of contrast. I love contrast, but it means that strong contrast in my life means finding a middle ground is really hard. Because of my long background in Illustration and more recently the fine art, my work differs because I have two completely different ways of working and two different genres that I work within. It's an uncomfortable place when I look around. When I'm in each place, it's fine but when I look up and look back I wish I could stick to one thing and do it well, but I don't think that is my way? The paintings for exhibition seem to have a strength of their own, I have simply started the journey by creating them, they now have lives of their own and seem to be gaining their own recognition and pace, which is lovely. The illustration work is harder because I am well known for the commercial, colourful and very accessible work and therefore stuck producing work and books through demand, and with a style made within those constraints. But it pays for copious amounts of Lady Grey tea and art books, and more importantly the mortgage!

I therefore don't really know what genre my authorial work fits into really? It's a process that is born through my sketchbooks and finished in Photoshop. It hasn't really got an audience yet as it is still in progress. I guess illustrators such as Laura Carlin and Jon Klassen come to mind. I am very much influenced by painters as well as illustrators including Mary Newcombe who is a huge favourite of mine. So maybe my work differs as it straddles between fine art and illustration, still trying to finding it's final resting place? 

Growing Up ii

Growing Up i

How does my illustration process work?

When working to someone else's brief I sketch out pages and thumbnails so they can see exactly what I am planning, meaning the process is fairly formulaic. For my own work it happens more organically from making one mark or working with an idea that changes and morphs into something else. I always, and only, have a vision, a feeling that I want my work to have or achieve. It is only with my own work I can achieve that feeling in physical form. With a clients work my view is clouded by their ideas and ultimately isn't as good or satisfying and takes longer. So this means I often have to switch off my own brain and key into the brain of the brief and its genre.
When I'm in my sketchbooks or on my own time I am compelled to satisfy the thirst for self fulfilment, to quench a thirst for colour, texture, space, composition and a lightness of touch, while attempting to connect with a world that I covet and regard as home, in order to inhabit my true self. 

Why do I illustrate what I illustrate?

It's as simple as a compulsion to create something beautiful. For my own work it's a need and a strong will to reach that feeling of ultimate happiness and fulfilment. It's rarely easy and the long lived feeling of achievement has yet to come, but then that's what makes us strive and never stand still. The search for something new and enlightening is a lifelong journey which I am excited by on a daily basis.  

Even when working to brief as a children's illustrator I feel a passion for the structure and the genre and the fact that I can paint for a living and pay the bills, while educating and bringing colour to children's lives, like it did mine. It's not a bad life : )

I now nominate fellow MA graduate and illustrator Tom Hubmann. Tom is a great and very prolific illustrator who lives and breaths contrast in the work he does, but also has an effortless humour and quirk about his work that makes you want to have his work on your walls.

...and secondly another fellow student from back in the BA days, Andy Potts. An amazing artist who cannot only draw like no one else I know, (I've seen his drawing) his ability on the computer is second to none. Andy's ability to marry stunning colour, content, design and space, to produce a polished piece of art is incredible. 

Over to the boys...