Ride or Die

Here's a piece that I did recently. It was commissioned as a birthday gift for one of a trio of friends. The brief was that it had to include a tricycle (as a symbol of their three-way friendship) and the words "Ride or die".

I thoroughly enjoyed aggressively inking out the letters but decided that a Lisa Frank rainbow gradient would be perfect to lighten the tone. It looks like Summer holiday mischief to me.

Fresh ink

The trike

Printout

Rainbow typography

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!

10 days til Christmas!

We don't have a tree, but I wanted some festive decoration in our home for Christmas.  So I decided to decorate our living room window myself and have two trees!  I took a whole day to do plus some preparation and editing but was worth it.

I used Posca markers to draw on the glass because they're opaque and they will scrub off no trouble.

The music is from Sufjan Stevens' new Christmas album called Silver and Gold.  It's very festive and a bit weird, but brilliant. (And would make a great gift for a Sufjan fan!)

I have made a few attempts to produce a video, but this time I swore I would post it no matter how it turned out.  So here goes...

And Merry Christmas!




PS. I don't usually move around like a fully caffeinated ant.

Phone Pop

Whoops I let my blog go quite a while without posting!  But I assure you it is because I've been very busy.  I even have a whole new business to show for my efforts.

Ladies and Gents, may I present to you...
www.Phone-Pop.com

I got an iPhone 5 when they were released and really didn't want to put a bulky case or cover on it and spoil the look.  I thought there must be a better way to protect and enhance your phone.  The aluminium  back plate offered quite a nice opportunity to add some decoration onto the phone and merge it seamlessly onto the handset.  And so, the Vinyl Back was born!

Phone-Pop.com is an online store that I have created.  There are 6 sets to choose from and 3 different designs in each set.  Because the Vinyl Backs are easily removable you can change the look of your phone as often as you like.

They are all original designs that I have created and I hope the range has a little something for everyone, whether you want your Vinyl Backs to be bold or blend in.  I aim to release new designs regularly so the options will increase!

Have a look at the Phone Pop shop and let me know what you think!

Jäger-Bombed

Bizness

I have not made a blog post in 2 months.  This, I know, makes me a bad human being.  I've been terribly busy on a number of projects that I can't share with you just yet.  

One thing I can share is this poster I designed and executed for a show long gone.  This was one of the best gigs I've ever been to, for the talent, energy, and sheer happy-making-ness going on there.  

I guess this is a bit more colourful than a lot of the stuff I do, but I think it's appropriate.

This is Tune-Yards playing 'Bizness' on Studio 360 Live...



If you dig it check out the album W H O K I L L and buy tickets to the next available show.

#letitsnow

I have a husband from Africa who is obsessed by snow.  His effusiveness on the subject tends to make the British roll their eyes, but inside we all know that a White Christmas would be really magical.  Sadly it's gotten warmer in the last few days, but maybe it's like Elf where everyone has to have xmas spirit for Santa's sleigh to fly, ie: if it trends on Twitter it will come true.

I absolutely love the work of Ernst Haeckel (look him up) and this is my own Natural History array for Christmas, labelled and everything.

Merry Christmas everyone!

5 Days // 5 Drawings

I decided not to blog my drawings every day; that would just be too much.  Doing them everyday is enough work!  I fell a day behind on Saturday because, well it was the weekend and I just didn't think about it.  I have caught up now though, so I at day 7 I am still on schedule.

These are all over the place and so rough.  Welcome to my head!

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Day 3

Favourite Food

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I have spent a good chunk of my life as a vegetarian.  These days I mostly don't eat meat, but do still eat meat sometimes, if that makes sense.  When I do eat animals I get free range / organic and appreciate it.  I also try not to ignore where it came from (ie animals).  It's easy to forget when it comes clean, sliced and wrapped in plastic that that ham used to be a pig.

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Day 3

Favourite Place

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What a thing to have to decide! let alone draw.

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Day 3

Best Friend

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Again, I'm not an eight year old girl (anymore) but in the spirit of things; here's Ross.

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Day 3

Favourite Character

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He's not literary, but on Sunday I was watching 30 Rock and squealing about how much I love Kenneth.  This is grotesque and half melted.

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Day 3

Favourite Quote

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I'm learning to not deliberate about the prompt too much.  I have other stuff to do with my days as well people!

Over Being Under

This came to me watching letlive. on stage.  Their live show has converted many a non-believer and frontman Jason Aalon Butler was recently named Kerrang's Greatest Rockstar in the World Today.  Do you need another reason to give their album Fake History a listen?  I think not.  

(but just in case: note the Care Bear tattoo)

My Brightest Diamond

Maybe a poster is totally redundant once the gig has passed, but I was way too busy before the show to even start on this.  I went to see My Brightest Diamond last Thursday and wanted to memorialise the show in poster format.  

Shara Worden gave such an excellent performance along with her full suite of musicians and a little help from Stateless frontman Chris James.  They performed the new album 'All Things Will Unwind' top to tale in a marvellously grand church.  The pews were a little hard on the behind, but acoustics and the view were good.

All Things Will Unwind album cover

Shara sang her unbelievable version of Feeling Good during the encore.  A video doesn't quite do it justice, but this one's pretty good and you will get the idea.

Fashion on the Move

I've just finished a project with Bianca Ferreira for her brand new blog 'Fashion on the Move'.  I made a banner to grace the blog header and set the tone; something graceful yet fun and forward-looking.  

I did a bunch of different colour-ways so there's some flexibility and Bianca can pick a blog banner to suit her mood.  Girl's gotta have options.  See it in situ here.

I did the same for two profile pictures; one a crop of Bianca's face, and another with a FOTM acronym.

Very best of luck to Bianca and her new blog-child!

Follow 'Fashion On The Move' here.

Follow Bianca on Twitter here.

Bones

I blogged this record before when it came out, but I hadn't seen the actual item then.  Now I have it in my possession and have gotten round to taking some photos of my most recent record-decorating efforts, which you can enjoy below.  

Fashion Ice

So the winner of the recent City Kids Sting / Abi Heyneke competition was Katt.  She runs a cool style blog over at Fashion Ice.  

The prize was a custom illustrated banner and we worked together on what kind of look and feel would be right for Fashion Ice.  The result can be seen below in all its glory and in situ at Fashion Ice.

Bones

My second 12" sleeve design is out now!  I can finally show it to you.  I finished it back in May, but that feels like years ago now.  Check out my first one, for a remix of Anaconda by Untold, in this blog post.  This new one is for the same label; SSSSS.  It is part of Hemlock recordings; a independent London-based record co owned by Andy Spencer and Untold.  

The 12" features two remixes of Untold's track 'Bones' by Joe and Rockwell.  You can buy the disk or download at BoomKat.com.  I love the tracks and had a lot of fun working on the sleeve.  I have yet to see it, hold it in my hands, but I can't wait.

Again this sleeve has a Mehican influence, with ghostly skulls and bones (obvs) in running ink and a subdued off-black and magenta colour scheme.  The sleeve also features everyone's favourite Psychoactive Alkaloid-containing cactus, Peyote.  Peyote is currently an endangered species in the state of Texas, so if you're thinking of going on a 'vision quest' in the desert and harvesting some of the hallucinogen for your trip.. Don't.

The sleeve with its pink label

Hand drawn type on the disk labels

And just for fun; below is one of the 'work in progress' versions.

An earlier version, a little more Rainborific