Sumo Design

Lovely job this for Sumo Design in Newcastle - they have given me quite a bit of freedom to come up with ideas for a set of 6 B/W illustrations which they can use to show their clients how they promote the Arts through design.
Bit naughty this, as it hasn't been approved yet (sorry Jim) but I like the looseness of my drawing here and the fact the Storyteller has brought a bird with her to the classroom.
Really lovely just working in b/w again too - I found a bottle of Windsor and Newton ink I remember buying when I was a student and it has stood the test of time.
Treated myself to some decent Fabriano paper too, quite rough mould but actually really good for pen and ink drawing (no snagging and resulting ink splats)

Otherwise I am busy getting ready to start teaching at eca again - term starts next week and I will be working with 2nd Year students (ie new to specialising in Illustration from their general art courses)all week, so I have a juicy little project about creating characters which will keep them busy...as well as all the location drawing I have planned for them!
Next week is also busy at college for helping put the final touches to our 500 Years of Printing exhibition, which is called "Open Here" but I will do a separate post, with links for that.

CMY and K

Never have I given so much thought to the humble 4 Colours of the Apocolypse. That doesn't make any sense, but it has a ring to it, don't you think ?
CMYK - it could replace YMCA and you would only have to figure out how to do the "A" arm signal when on the discoteque floor (answers on a postcard please).
Anyway - I am going slightly loopy, as I am up in Edinburgh tomorrow and Wednesday, donning my inky overcoat in the eca Printworkshop in order to screenprint my part of the Imprint: 500 Years of Printing in Scotland project we are doing (see previous post). I FEEL like I have been printing for 500 years here in the studio, as I am doing a mongrel print - a hybrid of digital and screen - and so am printing the digital bits and it takes a while.
CMYK features, of course. I have never been one to use them together as a colour palette before, but I have to say I am quite hooked now - jiggle them about a bit, so they don't quite fit and, Bingo! you get fuzzy vision. You'll be seeing more CMYK from me I think.
Anyway,I was going to do something with King James IV but instead I have recycled a drawing of a rather brutish looking chap, who looks like he is from the 60's, but in my mind for this picture he is a printer - a Print Manager, or maybe a Print Operations Director...no,no...a Pre Press Repro Manager, that's it. He's worried. Books are going digital. The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book.
here is a tiny morsel of my image - miniscule.
500 years of No Printing in Scotland is the name of the follow-up exhibition.

New Folio Pages and other things of note

I am absent again, am I not?
Well, it is back to school time, fresh start time and all that, so busy busy.
This time of year usually means that I arrange some new folio pages for my books in the USA. Obviously I print out illustrations from actual jobs, but I also like to do speculative pages, personal stuff etc too. It is good to show all the other things you can draw, or think about too. I get quite a bit of work from random drawings or ideas I have printed out and put in the folio, so it does pay off.
Anyway, I am currently working on another animation with Eskymo (an epic - it's half completed but involves animals and cars) and these are SOME of the car drawings I have done for that, which I have composed into a folio page.
Generally I am crap at drawing cars, but I do love drawing them. Students, cover your ears/eyes, but i NEVER go and look at cars for reference, as I prefer making them up. You could never tell, could you.

What else am I up to? Well, waiting for some feedback on the first round of sketches for the new New Yorker/Mass Mutual job. I think Labor Day held everything up but we don't have that holiday in the UK, so I was twiddling my thumbs, champing at the bit to get going on it!

I am also working on a nice wee project with my fellow visual communicators at Edinburgh College of Art as part of the 500 Years of Printing In Scotland celebrations. Jonny Gibbs (my boss!) has organised an exhibition called Imprint and we all have to produce an edition of 15 prints responding to the theme of 500 years of printing in Scotland - quite open.
I have not done much printmaking but I want to get into our juicy new printworkshop at the college and do some screenprinting, but also using digital print too (which I do do) My ideas keep changing, but I am actually going down a bit of a conceptual route, unusually for me. Saying that, I do want to draw King James IV of Scotland (he granted the licence for the first printing press in Scotland to Chepman and Myllar) as he looks such a metrosexual thug, with his spaniel ear hair-do and furry bling bling. He did love his books though, bless 'im.
Anyhow, our exhibition will be on at the Art College in October, but I will post more about that later on, alongside my Imprint image.

Oh, can also say that I LOVE this woman's work - Marian Bantjes - beautiful, brilliant and she writes a mean essay too.

13 reasons for the Absentee Blogger...

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post which is criminal. Rest assured I have been a busy bee, which is a relief, as I was starting to think the credit crunch was working it's cruel magic.
Since the Images 32 big event in London I have been:

1. doing another Guardian illo about Garden Leave, commissioned by Sarah Habershon for the Work Section...pictured above.
2. quoting on a few juicy jobs which I am waiting to hear back from
3. Scribbling away for a Jennifer Weiner rebrand for Simon&Schuster
4. Doing some interesting black and white illos for a thrusting young design group called Sumo (job not complete yet, so I'll post them a bit later on)
5. Getting the go ahead for another New Yorker special edition for Mass Mutual!
6. Applying for a residency in Tasmania
7. Deciding where all the plug points and radiators are going to go in our epic house renovation (which hasn't even started yet and I am stressed)
8. Entering work for Images 33
9. Forgetting to enter work for Altpick Awards...but there might still be time yet.
10.Enjoying the Pittenweem Arts Festival, where I was showing some paintings at the Blue Door Gallery.
11. Making Potato Dauphinoise for the first time which was served with local roast haunch of venison from our local farm shop at Ardross
12. Celebrating my dog Charlie's 15th birthday.
13. Getting emotional when watching the Olympics.

IMAGES 32: Launch exhibition in London

Hello hello hello! I am just back from London where I was at the Images 32: The Best of British Contemporary Illustration launch exhibition and awards night.
Woohoo - I have photos of the event (taken the day after, as I forgot my camera on the big night) including a sneak preview of my very own "Tulips" on the Images 32 cover and throughout the exhibition! Lovely. Take note designers, my figure drawings look great blown up to epic scale and applied to a big plate glass window. I had no idea the AOI were going to do that, but I was really pleased with it.
It was a great night with some excellent work on the smooth white walls. Quentin Blake was there in dear little white shoes and he handed out the awards - Hurray, Adrian Johnston won the advertising section!!
I met up with fellow Scot and printmaker extraordinaire Jonny Hannah and said a quick howdy to a bearded Geoff Grandfield too. Me old chum Paul Bommer was there looking very dashing in his fedora cap. Inkymole popped down for the event and we had a proper natter about all things inky and pen-like.We do love a good nib, do Inkymole and I!
The London College of Communication is an excellent venue, with loads of space. The AOI have done us illustrators proud this year...and the book looks fab too. It will be winging its way to all designers and art directors this week!
More detail and possibly blurry phone photos later - I have a deadline for The Guardian again but I wanted to get this up here ASAP.

First Animation with Eskymo

YES! Finally I am doing some animation(last time I was still at college). So many people have said to me that my work is crying out to be animated and so after a bit of a hunt around to find an animator to work with, I found Evie Milo at Eskymo...just down the road in Kinghorn.
We had never met spoken or known each other's work before, yet I popped down to her studio, set up my laptop and Wacom tablet and she fired up Flash and we just spent a day fiddling about with a load of inky files I had prepared for potential animation.
We decided that my illustration "Balloon Dog" featuring a shocked looking little girl would be fun to experiment with. Neither of us expected to end up with a complete wee film at the end of the day, considering we had just met for the first time - but we did.
I wanted to keep the inkiness of my original drawings and not have to vectorize everything in Illustrator - Flash did the job beautifully as you could import fully layered files from Photoshop and just start animating and adding sound.
8 hours,a few home made biccies and a bagel lunch later we came up with this cheeky little number. I have a feeling the Quicktime movie uploaded here might be a bit jumpy for some reason - if so, please go HERE to see a better version of it!

Both of us felt that Little Girl should also wet her pants...but that will be in another version, I am sure.
It was great fun to work together and we are planning on producing more films later this summer which will certainly be added to a new Motion section on my website.

Carry on Caring /Leith Agency

Blimey, that's a blog title that trips off the tongue!
Anyway, have had a bit of fun with some illustrations for part of Leith's National Care Standards campaign for the Scottish Government.
This is a big Scottish TV, print, web etc campaign...and get this - my part is to illustrate the poster, CD and booklet for a specially commissioned play, called "Carry On Caring",which will tour around Scotland, promoting this important initiative for carers and the people they care for.
The play is in the true British, cheeky chappy comedy style of Sid James et al's Carry On classic films. OOOOOOooh I DO say....
here are a few spots from the booklet:

3x3 Illustration ProShow Awards

***NEWS JUST IN*** I am supersonically delighted to be chosen as one of this year's 3x3 ProShow Illustration award winners.
I got the email this evening from the publisher, Charles Hively and read that about 4000 people entered the awards, with only 200 being selected by the rather high powered panel of judges.
Very pleased that my stablemate at Friend and Johnson, Paul Wearing has been selected too, so well done to him!
Seriously, though, I am quite humbled to be in a list that includes some of my illustration heroes, such as Brad Holland, Nate Williams, Jeff Fisher, Guido
Scarabottolo, Penelope Dullaghan and Anita Kunz...stop me before I blub like Gwyneth Paltrow in a pink dress :-)
More news later on this, as I am still not sure which picture of mine the judges have selected (I submitted 4, if I remember correctly) - but it will be in the juicy little annual 3x3 produce, which will be out in January 2009.
*UPDATE* just found out that it was "the Selfish Giant's Garden" that got the votes. I posted this image before for an Illustration Friday/Garden but, what the heck, I'll post it again!

New Guardian Weekend Job

Hurray for Pauline Doyle looking at my new website, as it resulted in a nice wee job for The Guardian Weekend Magazine - not done an illo for them in a while.
It is for the relationships column and is all about what causes the "Seven Year Itch " in a relationships. Mainly partners not listening, is the main reason...and picking your bum/ears/nose - sometimes simultaneously - which can get a bit tiresome for your partner to look at after a while (seven years).
As soon as I got the email with the copy on Thursday evening, I started to doodle ideas on the printout, as seen here - then I move on to my sketchbook.
Initial ideas were based around repeats of the same couple but in opposite settings, using the cutout folded paperman idea - YES!FAR TOO COMPLICATED, I agree!I couldn't get it to work.
Anyway, I have been developing ideas in the sketchbook over the weekend and I sent my colour rough to Pauline this morning, which has been approved!
I do love putting a bit of awkward body language and facial expressions in my work, so here is an apparently "OK" couple, but the rot has set in...they will be scratching in no time!
You can catch this illustration in the Guardian Weekend Magazine on Saturday 12th July....and if you missed it on Saturday 12th July, I finally got round to posting the finished illustration above.

East Neuk Open Studios-Day 2

Well, the rain came down hard this morning and I wondered how many brave souls would venture out - but...yes! The sun did put his hat on and the streets of Cellardyke were bathed in steamy sunshine and full of folk glad to get out their house/caravan/car.
I am delighted have sold a complete framed set of my ELLE horoscope trio, so that was nice.
Otherwise, this little image has been very popular - a kind of digital collage called "Bird Puddles"

Meanwhile, more tea for the artist, please...and maybe a slice of cake?

PS this post is a day late because I could not upload the image for some reason - probably because I was using Safari at the time.

East Neuk Open Studios - Day 1

It's been a busy old day in Cellardyke, with lots of visitors to my studio - and still 2 hours to go! Thank goodness the weather is warm and sunny as that brings people out and about. In fact King Creosote and some of the Fence musicians have just popped in for a blether and look around - *touched by fame*!
The last two days have been all about tidying my studio (and the house), making sure there are pictures in frames, cards for people to buy and, of course, some freebie bits and bobs - usually my Contact Illustrator run-ons and any odd postcards I have around the place
Despite it being a busy weekend, I am also working on a job for the Guardian and so all my inks are out and people are really curious about how I approach an illustration job from brief to final execution...I am happy to answer all the questions!
Open Studios is a great way of meeting folk - neighbours and people who have travelled from further afield (Dundee!). Today I have met a former illustrator turned musician, a former artist from Seattle turned golf caddy at St Andrews and a filmaker who is currently working with Stephen Poliakof. Just goes to show that East Neuk is rarely dull and you never know who will show up!

My Big Fat New Website

Hurray!!
My brand new website is UP and Running!
A sexy, streamlined new design with loads of new images - new lettering - new spots illustrations (tiny ones!) and a new bio section plus links to this blog and to my New! section, which is actually my Flickr page.
Mary at Tangerine Blue has done a sterling job - but we are still going to be adding a couple of new sections in the near future, hopefully with animation.

Have a look and let me know what you think

Byre Theatre Exhibition Opens

Finally, one of the shows I am part of this summer has opened!
I am part of an excellent Open Studios group where I live - ENOS - and the lovely Jo Whitney has organised this group event in the fantastic venue of the Byre Theatre in historic St Andrews (yes - where Price William was a student)
This ink and acrylic painting incorporates my current fascination with cats - there are so many in my street. Now , I am a dog woman through and through, but I like observing the relationship these cats have with my dogs and with the local birds...one of disdain and craftiness. Life is tough in the countryside!

Illustration Friday-Baby

quite a straightforward one from me this week - though please take note of my Brooklyn brownstones in the background, even if they are a shade of olive green.
FW inks and Ecoline inks on Daler Bristol Board - lovely smooth surface.
Did this for Woman and Home magazine - the article was actually about the pros and cons of having a baby when your other children were already quite grown-up. Think some might call that a "mistake"...there is a 7 year gap between me and my sisters, which I am sure was wholly intended! :-)

illustration friday-worry

worry, worry, worry.
I am a woman, I worry all the time.
However, this particular illustration is about men.
This man is worried about testicular cancer.
(commissioned by another art director not wanting any genitalia on show)

Contact Illustrators 24 is OUT NOW

All round excitement as Contact Illustrators 24 came through my door this week - this means that art directors everywhere should have their copy now too.

The book is a bit thinner this year, but as my chum Glen says, that just makes it all the easier to be found! The power of positive thinking.
Contact also has an illustrator's website, where I have 20 images on display too

I decided to do a montage image this year - playing around with blocks of colour, texture and line, and of course, showcasing my pen and ink people and objects. I have cars, handbags, shoes, bicycles, flowers, LETTERING and even mobile phone masts in there, all artfully composed. Looking forward to a few phone calls and some lovely new clients.

Australian Paintings - sneak view

I have 2 shows coming up and have been working on several new paintings for them - I showed you some a few posts back.
Well, I need to get them to the framers on Monday, so I have to get them finished this weekend!
I was in Australia over the Christmas and New Year as a good friend of mine was getting married. They have a lovely farm in the hills out the back of Perth in WA, where we stayed for a while. The birds on that farm are amazing - you get emus, of course, but the black parrots, green parakeets and the tiny, electric blue Fairy Wren, which would come and sit on the wire fence outside the verandah. Kangaroos everywhere at dawn and dusk...and some large wolf spiders too.
Here is a section of a painting called "Parakeets at Gidgegannup"...the orange looks a bit flat in the scan, as the saturation has gone way up in the scanning. There are lots of tiny details which youmaybe cannot see here, but you get the idea.

Elle Netherlands - job done

Phew-ee, the job is done, emailed and got final approval today.
The fashion is fashionable and the girls must be pretty, so all is good!
Here we go - sneak preview of them, though they will appear in the July issue. If you are over in the 'Dam then, go grab a copy.

Sunny here in Cellardyke, but I have my website to work on and an exhibition and the East Neuk Open Studios in June to get ready for now, so I am inside on a glorious day :-(. Maybe I'll go outside and draw some birds instead - we have a blackbird who is nesting in the current bush and keeps hopping into the kitchen after any crumbs - cheeky.

more Elle progress reports

Well, I have been working on the three Elle illustrations all week - really enjoying them, as I do love doing a foxy portrait, using colour and some of my ink drawings. John Singer Sargent IS an inspiration, you know - especially Madame X and Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (which is on show at the National Gallery of Scotland)
The art direction is quite strict in terms of what the females need to look like - and about the clothes they are wearing too.
I've been told the girls need to be prettier and the clothes summery but fashionable. Now, I do love fashion but being a country bumpkin these days, I tend to forget my fashionista roots. However, I discovered the wonder that is Net-A-Porter.com for all my fashion reference - roll on Diane Von Furstenberg and Mikey and Alice Temperley does rather nice threads too. Maybe I need to include some Dutch designers too...mmm.
Anyway, this portrait with the champagne glass is my self termed, night-time clubber one - the girl with a bit of danger in her eyes. She is also sporting a custom designed Aquarius salmon skin belt in Screaming Teal. Really.
The really hard looking girl was the one that got rejected - for being too hard and Eighties looking (note: my fashion sense was honed in that decade, so maybe it has come back to haunt me)
I think these illos might make good prints once they are finished - and alongside my USAville Girl portrait, could be a rather fetching quartet on anyone's wall...

An ELLE in progress...

I am working with the refreshingly direct designers at ELLE Netherlands to do 3 full page illustrations for their July issue, which is quite good fun, actually.
The job is for the Horoscope specials and needs to have all the symbols in there - 4 per illo. I have to do it quite subtly, and tie it in with their ethos - young, modern, confident and fashionable (and no hair in pigtails).
I am in the process of trying to draw slightly prettier(!) women, but here is a current rough - spot the symbols! This one IS going to be changing quite a bit, as the beret is a bit too wintery...and the birds are OUT (more flowers IN)
These changes might all seem a bit prescriptive, but it is a good process whereby you create work that you are happy with, aswell as delighting the client.