Love

Today's post brings an appropriately love-themed artwork - I felt like it had been too long since I focused on heavily embellished type and I thought what better time to go back to it than Valentine's. The words are taken from the start of Elephant Love Medley, one of the main songs from Baz Lurhmann's classic romance tale Moulin Rouge. Enjoy, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Charity

Thought I would quickly share with you the poster I made for this year's charity Christmas Quiz at my local pub. I wanted to keep it quite simple and traditional, and played with the idea of leaving offerings for Santa and his reindeer. The title font and the sleigh were from dafont, and the border illustration was my own work. Will hopefully be getting some more Christmas themed stuff up here again soon!

script

Recently I've been interested in calligraphic type styles and tattoo style flourishes, and I decided to have a go at putting together a little design. I settled on the four "bohemian ideals" from the movie Moulin Rouge that I recently rewatched for the umpteenth time; Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love.

inking my design up with my trusty dip pen

What I came up with is loosely based on an existing typeface that I came across, borrowing an ampersand from a different typeface for a more unusual look. I'd love to hear what you think!

Lobster

Happy April! Recently I've been rediscovering my love of type (as if it really ever went away). A little while ago I also rediscovered my love for the work of Lewis Carroll when I acquired a lovely copy of his entire works from an antique shop, and while reading through Alice in Wonderland I came across an interesting nonsense poem during Alice's encounter with the Mock-Turtle and the Gryphon. The illustration above takes the first two lines of the poem, and frankly it was a bonus opportunity to draw a lobster. Turns out I really like drawing crustaceans. 

In the near future I will also be sharing some exciting news that has been keeping me busy over the past couple of weeks. enjoy!

quizlet

Just a quick one today to share a poster design with you all that I worked on this evening. My dad is running the local pub charity quiz in a few weeks and wanted a little advertising so I thought I would step in! I have been feeling very Christmassy of late and got a little bit excited searching for typefaces, as I had to get this done quite fast and didn't have time to draw out my own font for a change! The festive type I used here is from this website though it's not entirely the same as the designer intended as I did edit out parts of the original type design. The candlelit background is some collage paper that I scanned in, I think it might be by papermania.  Overall I was going for the whole Tom Smith's crackers victorian postcard style aesthetic. Hope you like it!

wightwick

Just a quick post today. Been busy buzzing around to London and back last week so I couldn't post, hopefully some exciting promo stuff inspired by that trip coming up soon. But in the meantime, today I was working on another chalkboard design,  this time for the 'malthouse' tearoom at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton, an amazing mid 19th Century mock-Tudor building that was once home to the enterprising Mander family. If you, like me, love Pre-Raphaelite art and the Arts and Crafts movement, it's definitely worth a visit as they have loads of amazing William Morris patterns and a few pretty incredible drawings by Rossetti. 

Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Anyway, the tearoom there was in need of a large display board for the wall so I offered my type skills for the job. I kept the main body of the type as close to the National Trust's standard font as I could by hand, but the main title was inspired by an old book I once got from the Falmouth uni library about Victorian typefaces.  It'll be up there in the tearoom some time this week I believe!