a year in prints

i know there have been a lot of calendar round-ups on blogs recently, so here's another to add to the mix. two friends of mine, hilary grant & nikki mcwilliams, organised a little project called a year in prints. twelve artists created an edition of fifty prints for their designated month to make fifty calendars (i'm january - you may recognise a certain bear). find out more about the artists here, & you can pick one up here. at £24, that's a measly two quid per screen-print. bargain.

99p

this was for this, a contemporary art tombola run by some friends, where tickets were 99p, giving buyers chance of winning a piece of work by one of 99 artists.

other stuff has been going on, it's hard to keep track! close to finishing this year's every day a drawing in december; i feel i get sluggish around this point, but it's good to drawdrawdraw. have been exchanging christmas cards with some super artists & illustrators; i won't want to take them down.

e.d.a.d.i.d 2009

last year i did a little project called 'every day a drawing in december'. i'm going to try & do it again this year, with the same rules (if you can call them that) applying: as long as i draw something, anything, every day for the coming month, that's great. if i don't manage, it's no big deal. it's just nice to have another reason to draw.

keep up with it here.

letterbox goodness

i think most people will agree when i say getting post is one of life's simple pleasures. getting a letter from someone through the door, finally receiving the package you've been expecting, or the surprise of one you didn't know about. i've been lucky enough to have something from all three categories this week. above are three zines that have been added to my collection: good to know issue #6 from amy (which came along with some other great little treats), if drawings were photographs, by rob & tom & published by it's nice that, plus nature zine by various people & published by hand of man.

a package that i picked up today was a result of an international art exchange currently making the rounds. started by the lovely flora douville, it's basically a really excellent chain letter where, if all goes as planned, you receive thirty six little works of art from all over. above are a zine & print by erin mcphee, which she sent along with two other prints, so it was a great package to receive! her drawings are really quite lovely, & the zine concept was hilarious: once people find out that erin is an illustrator, they assume her boyfriend is one too. as a result, the zine is a collaboration of her drawings as an illustration student, & his as a history student.

this final package is kind of a mystery! which is pretty cool. all i know is that my letter is from canada, that the person may have taken three of these photos & found the rest, & that they associate where i live with a certain film starring paul hogan. i think it's an international art exchange offering, but i've yet to find out for sure.

along with all this great stuff, i've taken part in susie ghahremani's (of boygirlparty fame) pen pal party. mail is the best. i hope you're all getting equally awesome things arriving on your doormat.

itunes a-z: g

itunes a-z: a-g

a-z

since opening my shop, i've been hoping a new project would come to mind, & hooray, it has! i had been planning on some speed sketching, by listening to itunes on shuffle, & drawing whichever artist or band came on for the duration of their song, before starting on the next one. but who was i kidding; it took me the entirety of bat for lashes' album two suns to draw natasha khan! i drew andrew bird first, & since his name begins with a, decided to move onto b. this should keep me busy for a little while.

shop opening/print giveaway!

hooray! today is the day my etsy shop opens. pretty much everything that i've been working on over the past month is in there, plus some things i've made over the last year. finally! it's been a long time coming. why not go & have a peek right here.

also, to celebrate, i'm having a little giveaway. i have a very small edition (12) of these colour versions of my 'there's no place like home' gocco print, & i'm going to give away four to readers (without the frame). they're slightly bigger than the normal white version in my shop, available on six colours (so two prints per colour), & at the moment they're not available anywhere else but this blog post. to be in with a chance of winning, just leave a comment, & i'll pick four people at random on sunday. exciting!

* lovely pegs in first image by zoetropa

plans

continuing with 'what i wore today'. an easy little daily exercise, wondering how long i can keep it up for.

i am opening my etsy shop in FOUR days! i'm mostly prepared, it's exciting. will have to start planning some giveaways too.

complete

tonight has involved a lot of printing, a lot of folding, & a lot of stapling. amazingly, i'm a week ahead of my self-imposed schedule. i should take tomorrow off, but after getting into the habit of using my time so well, i'm wondering how easy it'll be to stop!

proof

i've not posted much work online of late. don't let that fool you. here is some evidence of said busy-ness. the piles of paper are a zine of drawings i've been working on, on & off, for longer that i'd like to admit (since march, argh!), but it's coming together, along with a couple of other things. it's exciting to have psychical products in your hands after working on them for hours! the above image is a kaleidoscope-esque thing that is a repeated pattern of the word 'we'. you can't see the word anymore, the pattern swallowed it whole. the result ties in with the zine. all will be revealed once it's complete.

totem

i did the above totem for the scribble project's last team effort, where scribblers were asked to draw a totem to create a giant virtual totem pole. you can see everyone's totems here, including mine uncoloured. such a fun idea.

in other news, i have a drawing in the latest 88mph zine. i'm waiting to find a copy of it, but you can view it online here.

good advice

hooray! today i'm going on holiday! it's going to be so nice to have my first proper break since march, with no internet & no work. when i come back, i've got lots to do, & you can help while i'm away. what i'd like to know is, what's your favourite piece of good advice? perhaps it's something your family have passed on, or a friend has shared, or you picked it up in a book or a song. whatever it is, i'd like to hear it. 

have a good weekend!

outtake

things appear to have been quiet, but that's because they've been the complete opposite. work has been busy, three exhibitions opened on saturday, & that's probably the least of it. i'm trying to sort out holidays, i can't imagine how good it'll be to just stop doing everything for a few days. my mental to-do list is huge, illustration-wise. i've been drawing & making but everything i've done is for something i'm putting together, so all you get to see is the above outtake. so many little things build up to being so much, but i wouldn't have it any other way.

art tank

about three weeks ago i asked anyone reading this blog to choose the a phrase from the three listed. phrase #1 proved the most popular, & was the one that i went on to use in my proposal for art tanks. with my window-box space, i wrote the phrase on the glass for passers by (& there was a lot of them, since that window is right next to some traffic lights - it's a bit strange having random passers by stare at you as you're drawing on a window) to read. hopefully people will take something positive from it. it was fun to do, & i'm interested to see what other people do with the window spaces they were allocated.

practice

so they hang like ghosts

inspired by lyrics from "you can do better than me" by death cab for cutie. the words in death cab songs always create lots of imagery in my mind, thanks to the many metaphors & descriptions that narrate the story as i listen.

work in progress

planning, making. i'm not sure how much i can say about my current little project (i actually don't know a huge amount about it right now anyway), but in roughly two & a half weeks i will have one of six window spaces in which i'm passing on the advice that received the most votes a few blog entries back. exciting!

it's duncan of jordanstone's degree show vip preview tonight. i'm going to the official opening on friday, & i'm looking forward to it very much, but i really cannot believe it's been a year since i graduated. it's been an extremely excellent year however, so the length of time has not been wasted.

sb in dc

i skimmed through the flickr uploads of art house co-op yesterday, curious to see whether i'd see mine or alan's sketchbook submissions among the hundreds on display. & whadyaknow! i found mine nestled in a pile in washington dc! 

regarding yesterday's post, thank you to everyone who submitted feedback & their interpretations via various sites. it's a close call, but i think the people have spoken, & - in the context of the project anyway - i think it'll work best.

help

hello friends. i need a little help. the above sentences are what i've come up with for a project, & i need you to help me pick one which best presents what i've said below, & also which is simply better as a phrase. i wish to pass on a little advice regarding how people present themselves & the things that they do; people may take what they want from it, & i am open to your interpretations, but in a nutshell, it's mainly about taking pride in what you do, about innovation & not imitation, & not simply doing things (whatever those things may be) to please others. sometimes i think we all need reminding, myself included, & i'd like this to be something that encourages thought, rather than telling people what to do. 

i've never been the best at putting my idea's into words, but this is a work in progress, so we'll see where it goes. thanks.

portrait #3