East Neuk Open Studios - it's that time of year again!

After a year out from ENOS due to house renovations, I have been very busy getting ready to open up my studio to the great British public again. The dates this year are June 5th and 6th, and again on June 12th and 13th, 10.30am - 6pm. If you fancy a daytrip to the beautiful East Neuk of Fife, come and visit me!

I am really looking forward to it and have created some brand new prints especially! I decided to get some of these new ones super-sized and found a great place in London called Digital Print Studio run by Andrew Turnball, who has produced some gorgeous big 50x70cm prints on Somerset Velvet Enhanced paper for me - recommend him totally!
Another new thing this year will be my work on ceramics...I hope. I need to chase up the company where I am getting the transfers done, as their website is a bit crap and they are even worse at communication! Luckily I have a good friend, Karen, at Funky Scottish who is going to help me out and will fire all the mugs for me in her kiln.

If you can make it over to Fife, then please do go and visit all the other artists, designers, jewellers and textile artists who make up our group- there really is a great variety of work to look at and buy. Then, if you are feeling peckish, you have a whole host of places to grab a bite to eat. If you are feeling flush go to The Seafood Restaurant in St Monans, just along the coast - tell Norah I sent you. If you fancy the best fish n' chips in Britain (seriously, they won an award) go to the Anstruther Fish Bar . If you want delicious pub grub and a mean bloody mary overlooking Cellardyke harbour, go to Trevor and Wendy's place, The Haven - I can thoroughly recommend that too! To work it all off again, you can wander along the Fife Coastal Path !

Anyway, for a wee taster, here is a sneak preview of one of my new prints, titled "Urban Fox"

New Turning Point Scotland illustrations

This is the third job I have worked on with designer Michael Dancer for Turning Point Scotland, a charity that provides residential rehabilitation services for people with alcohol and drug addictions and mental health and learning disabilities.
This particular job was for their Mile End service, which supports individuals with learning
and physical disabilities in their own homes providing varying levels of person centred support.

Michael just wanted me to do sheets of drawings that he could then use in the brochure and website - the budget was not big, as you can imagine, so I was happy to work like this.
Here are a couple of the sheets.

The Great Outdoors - Independent Magazine

I was asked by the lovely Stephen Petch at The Independent to illustrate a feature in their Outdoors Special edition, to be published 8th May in The Magazine. Sneak preview here!

The piece is written by four different writers (and all round well-kent faces):
Alex James,Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Joan Bakewell and John Walsh, whose story about his first time horse-riding I did this illustration for. I am a bit wary of drawing horses, but I hope I pass the test here!I like the rider's faces the best.
There were 4 illos in total, including a full page for Joan Bakewell's story about her first time youth hostelling in the 1940's.

It was an ace job to work on - but a bit of a nightmare logistically. I was away teaching, and so only had my 5 year old iBook (g4! shock horror!) to work on. Not ideal, so I then decided to work on the college computers in the evening - lots of different versions of the images were being bandied about on USB sticks etc , so it all got a bit confusing. I have promised to buy myself a new MacBook (pro?) with my fee for the job!

I have to say - it was great to work with another national newspaper. Sometimes I feel it is just The Guardian that commissions illustrators these days!