20 Ways To Draw A Tree

I got this book for christmas and rediscovered it recently when clearing out my book shelf. It is a sketchbook with a difference, combining space for drawing with a huge number of drawings for inspiration. 

The front cover is made of matte texturised paper which makes me feel artsy for a start.

Each page consists of a different "thing" to be drawn from nature, there is a huge range from acorns to snowflakes, stars, mushrooms and feathers. 

They are all laid out slightly differently but the pages always have around 20 drawings of each thing, and space for you to add your own drawings. 

This is a great book for people who like drawing nature. I especially like it as pattern designers like me can use these small drawings as the basis for repeat patterns. 

Here are some ferns I drew on one page - it does feel strange being "allowed" to draw in this book.

The illustrator Eloise Renouf has put some truly beautiful artwork in this book with a wide variety of different colours, textures and styles to really get you inspired and motivated to draw. Even if you aren't into drawing it is a gorgeous book to own and have a flick through.

You can check out Eloise's website here and this book can be purchases from amazon here along with a number of other "20 ways to draw" books by different artists. What do you guys think of this book? Any other sketchbooks you can recommend?

Moomin Adventures Book Review

I have wanted to write a review of these books for ages, well, not even so much a review more just to show them off because I think they are beautiful! 

My mum bought a set of these for christmas presents but I liked them so much I got her to order me a set, you can buy them here for the absolutely stupid price of £4.99 for 3 books!

This set is based on the original stories and illustrations by Tove Jansson, they have been simplified for younger children and modernised with bright, fresh colour palettes. 

Before you even get to the first page the endpapers are absolutely beautiful!

I love the typography in the first couple of pages:

Each page has a different main colour which makes them very bright and exciting, with each illustration looking very different from the next. 

I love the style of mark making used with lots of small lines and dots creating patterns and depth within the drawings. They have done a great job of keeping the artwork in the traditional style whilst using colour to make it more modern and appealing to young children.

So awesome! What do you guys think? Do you like the way colour is used or do you prefer the more traditional style?

The All Purpose Magical Tent

As part of one of our university modules this years we had to take part in competitions and other projects outside of uni. One of the projects a few of us decided to do was a "Twitter Narrative" project called "The All Purpose Magical Tent", the brainchild of poet Lytton Smith. 

The project runs across five twitter accounts, each account representing one character including The Ringmaster, The Bearded Lady, The Lion Tamer, The Tightrope Walker and The Carousel Attendant. We were put into teams and assigned different characters to illustrate tweets for. The tweets are lines of poetry which occasionally link between the different characters and are being slowly released over the course of two weeks. 

To check out the project in its entirety click here to go to the main website, this also has links to the individual accounts so you can follow them on twitter!

I was part of the Bearded Lady team along with Paolo Fiore and Sophia Viney. Here are a few of my images:

"It is always at the outset a displacement—[the monster] is fragment, obscured glance"

"The hybrid wildlife of irises visible in the foliage. Language, we are moving on again."

"what our solitude requires, that it removes the body. Do you dare imagine the anchoress laying a hand on her own ... "

"Am suspicion, boneshard, one town over, footprint or silhouette at the Gates of Difference, wait for their unlocking"

The style was pretty dark for this but I quite enjoyed it after doing lots of brightly coloured things for a while!

These are some of the other people images by people involved in the project:

Sophia Viney

Paolo Fiore

Katie Keith

Luke Gill

Jamie Bradford

Alistair Nimmo

Abby Regler

Ben Morgan

Jordan Rogers

Paddy Smith

Claire Adele

(plym students reading this - as people have worked in different styles there are a few images I wasn't sure of the artist so please link me one of yours and I will add it in!)

Give Up Your Day Job

Last thursday I took part in "Palentines Day" an event organised by the Give Up Your Day Job team who host alternative craft fairs in Jack Chams bar in Plymouth. 

We were given the stage area to sell our wares, I went along with fellow students Sophia Viney, Jess Stewart Croker, Beth Bains and  Abby Regler. Do check out their blogs for lovely illustrations! 

As we had the stage, we got to look over everyone, and we also had an area behind our stall with sofas which was pretty awesome :)

There were a lot of alternative valentines cards, zines, mix tapes to be swapped, free stickers and lots of cake!

I also met Dulcie Houghton who makes these beautiful steampunk plugs along with cards and jewellery. I was admiring these a lot even though I dont have particularly want to stretch my ears they are super beautiful :)

Lize Meddings one of the organisers designed the poster and was also there selling risograph prints, comics and giving out free Palentines Day mix cds! 

I always find it really hard not to buy things at these events-everyone has such amazing things that you know you won't find anywhere else its easy to buy lots... In the end I bought a vintage bag and melted vinyl record bowl from Parisian Sweets Vintage, a zine and poster from Lize and one of Abby's amazing icecream cone cakes! Hoping they do one again soon :)

Annarack Artist Feature

Hey, so this is going to be my second artist feature. This weeks shows the work of illustrator, textile and jewellery designer Annarack. She designs some beautifully patterned jewellery which you can buy here.

1-tell me a bit about your practise, what you make and how you go about making it?

Hello I'm Anna aka Annarack, an illustrator, textile and jewellery maker from Newcastle upon Tyne. I have quite an eccentric style as I love to use pattern and lots of colour throughout my drawings. My work starts from creating lots of little doodles and in the case of my jewellery I make lots of prototypes to try out different sizes, shapes and colour ways. If I'm confident enough sometimes I go straight into making final pieces.

2-what do you do to get inspired?

I get inspired by so much, mainly from very simple things I see around me. Going for days out and simply having a nice walk to refresh my mind gets me buzzing with ideas. I am also very influenced by many illustrators and try to keep within the trends. 

3-where do you work best and why that place?

I work in my bedroom. Its so cosy and there's everything to hand so it makes sense to work in it. There is so much in my room that it inspires me everyday. Anyone who has seen my room says it is amazing and like some sort of antique and curiosity shop. I have pile upon pile of antiquarian books and old maps, in fact every where you look in my room there is a map to be seen. I also collect compasses so I can find my way around my room.

4-what media do you prefer and why?

My illustrations are all entirely hand drawn, then scanned and enhanced in photoshop. I wish I knew how to use photoshop and illustrator properly so I could digitally colour my drawings. Computers frustrate me so I think I will stick to drawing everything by hand for the time being.

5-if you could choose one thing to draw for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Ooooooh now that is a hard one to think of...hmmm...to be honest I don't think I could possibly answer that question I like far too many things haha.

6-any advice to other aspiring artists?

Be positive and love what you do, cause if you don't no-one else will.