Forever & Ever

A while ago I did a one day screen printing workshop at Peckham Print Studio. It's the first time I had ever touched a screen or a squeegee or anything, and I came away with a two colour print edition of 10! Not bad. I'd highly recommend the workshop to anyone interested in screen printing and Hugh and Nathan are very helpful.

The piece is two stylised snakes, intertwined in an infinite Celtic Knot. A snake eating its own tail has long been a symbol of love without end, and these two have clearly decided to stick together!

I have listed the print in my Etsy shop if you are interested in picking up a hand printed piece for your wall. There are 6 looking for homes. Full details are in the listing.

Number 1 

Print detail

Screens at the ready!

Freshly printed stack

Blue snake detail

Orange snake detail

We Roam Your Streets at Night

You may have guessed that I love animals, and that I live in London. There aren't that many wild animals living in London, but I still love the sight of every single one of them. A lot of people consider them vermin, but rats, mice, foxes, pigeons, crows, are all magic for my eyeballs. 

There are quite a lot of foxes around Peckham, where I live, and I always thrill at a late night sighting when the streets are dark and quiet. That's what inspired me to make this print - called 'We Roam Your Streets at Night'. 

We Roam Your Streets at Night, A3 giclée print on Hahnemuhle german etching

Foxy

Victorian terrace

Wet tarmac typography

And now for the technical bit..
I created the whole print in Photoshop, working over a sketchbook page that I had scanned in. I like working with layers and playing on the interaction between them, so I decided to limit the colour palette by working on 3 layers: one cyan, one magenta and one yellow. I set the layer blending modes to 'multiply' so that the colours would mix where they are overlaid.

I drew into the layers using my trusty Wacom tablet. Here's a step-by-step GIF...

We Roam Your Streets at Night - Step by step GIF

So the colours I had to work with are cyan, magenta and yellow. Along with... 

Cyan and magenta making dark blue;

Magenta and yellow making orange;

Yellow and cyan making green;
No colours means you see the white page;

And if all three colours are present they make a dark colour, almost black.

I have separated each layer out to try and demonstrate, below...

The cyan layer

The magenta layer

The yellow layer

These prints are being printed by The Print Space right now, and I will post again when they arrive and I have listed them in my Etsy shop. 

18/03/2014 UPDATE

I have listed these prints on Etsy now! Check it out here: www.etsy.com/uk/listing/182980029/a3-print-we-roam-your-streets-at-night

Many thanks!

Lost in London

Lost in London is a beautiful quarterly magazine about living simply in the city.  It initially caught my eye because of its natural bent and local attitude.  They also happen to make fantastic use of illustration between the covers.

For this latest issue, number 8, I was asked to illustrate the Starling murmuration (yep, I had to look it up too!) that happens over Rainham Marshes.

THE SPREADS

THE COVER

There are lots of gorgeous spreads in this issue and it would make a great present for any lost Londoners you might happen to know!  For £10 you can order a copy online or catch it in these stockists.

DETAILS

Image Hoard: Black & White

It's about time for another stack of inspiration on this here blog.  These are all monochrome (or close enough) and have struck me at one point or another over the last couple of months.  The reasons that an image resonates are always somewhat intangible, and I like to keep it that way, keep it fluid. 

Enjoy!

Doreen taking an Alligator ride - Unknown

Unknown

Young girl in profile - Consuela Kanaga

 

Speak Flower (detail), hand cut paper - Kako Ueda

Homeless Portrait - Lee Jeffries

Jacopo Ligozzi

A Heroic Abduction, mixed media assemblage - Kris Kuksi

Marilyn with diamonds

Spanish Dancer (detail) - John Singer Sargent

Annelise Kretschmer

Irises - William Morris

Zoo Day!

Last Friday I went to the Zoo (ZSL London Zoo) and had a brilliant time looking at the beautiful//crazy animals.  I'm ambivalent about zoos because it's hard to prioritise the happiness of the animals when people also pay to get a good look at them, but I do like seeing the animals.  I think London Zoo does a very good job in general.  Definitely the least satisfied-looking animals are the Tigers; one was just pacing a figure eight by the fence until the crowd grew too big and then it moved to another spot.  But I was happy to see a poster showing the new Tiger pen that they are going to build and it's big!

These are my photos from the day, and a couple of sketches thrown in for good measure.  Pretty self-explanatory (but I can't label them all because I can't remember what they all are).  :)

  

Cheers!