hello! #2

Second instalment of my new mini series of illustrations. I really did enjoy drawing this Hamburger phone.

hello!

Just a quick post to share one of the things I have been working on recently. I have always loved drawing little random objects, and since one of my meetings in New York when I was advised that this is one of my strong points, I decided to stick with it. I've started working on a short series of spot illustrations (can you guess the theme?) and this is the first in the set. I might use these for a more constructive purpose in the future but for now...

hello!

festive

Hand drawn Christmas holly themed typography

Continuing on the theme of being way too prepared for Christmas, I wanted to share with you a little of the work I've been doing on my own gifts ready for the big festive season. I designed a Christmas-themed font for all of the different elements of my gifts, and have been busy designing labels for different things just to give my gifts a more personal edge. I can never get away from my love of Typography so this was the perfect chance to get some festive designs ready.

 (Anyone reading this who I will be giving the following gift to - I hope this doesn't spoil the fun when you receive yours! it tastes good, trust me I've tried it!)

Handmade Mincemeat in personalised jars

This year I decided to make my own mincemeat, as I have often wondered if it would be really that difficult. Turns out it's not, at all! I opted for our national treasure Delia Smith's recipe which can be found here. Then I simply customised the jars with Christmassy fabric, print out labels and festive ribbon.  

Skull

Recently I have been working on a submission for 'The Big Skull Collab' over at this blog. I found out about the project through twitter (of which mine you can follow here should you want to) from the good people at Illustration Rally who shared the link a few weeks ago. I sent my entry in yesterday and so I thought I would share it with you here (hoping I'm not sharing it with you too early!). The skull itself was illustrated by James Fenwick, the illustrator who started the collaboration, and the rest was all me - I wanted to go with the whole candy-land gingerbread theme I have been painting recently (you may notice a recognisable gingerbread man has snuck his way into this piece) as I found that it had been inspiring me. It's kind of crazy and a little bit overwhelming but I wanted it to be crazy detailed! and I think it'll be pretty different to all the other entries. If you are interested in submitting something for this collaboration there is still 9 days left before it closes and you can get more information from the Dead Fuzz blog.

 Will continue with this theme for another few projects hopefully, and I will soon be starting something type-based that will hopefully be very exciting, so keep your eyes peeled!

*edit 9th Nov* Just a quick addition to this post - if you'd like to see my fabulous friend Natasha Aldred's submission to this competition go here, it's a wonderful blog!

gingerbread

Ok, ok, I know. It's not 'the C word' *ahem*Christmas*ahem* for another ten weeks or so. However, I have been dabbling in a little early Christmas spirit as I have been designing for parts of my personalised presents that I will be giving out to family and friends this year. I have been having fun with paint again (hooray!) and going back to my old favourite of food. These paintings were so much fun, I particularly loved doing the gingerbread house. I also designed the snowflake pattern in the background of these images. I got the colour scheme of the pattern from something I did last year for the They Draw and Cook holiday recipe contest.

I hope to go back to painting food for some of my promo material that I will be working on next, so watch this space! Maybe in a few days I will post some slightly more appropriate seasonal material and do a pumpkin or something? who knows.

 Gingerbread men and candy canes. yuuum.

Gingerbread house - I hope the one I make this year looks this good...

quotes

Hello again. I am posting today because I made a to do list, and when making this list I realised that I still haven't posted a photo of my page in the UCF Book of Illustrated Quotes and Sayings. So here goes! I purchased my copy from our final degree show private view, but you can get yours if you would like one from Amazon here once they are back in stock. All the illustrators that are in here can be seen on the Agency website. Not only is it a great collection of illustration it would help toward the students that are currently studying there to make their book. Ok, plug over.

I'm also working on various projects relating to Christmas (early argh) but you will get to see some of them very soon hopefully. I'm off to cross the first thing off my list!

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! 

survival

Recently I have been working on a booklet as a gift for my friend (illustrated above!) who has just moved into her first student house. The main reason I wanted to write this booklet for her was that I was aware she was moving into a house with seven other people, something which I experienced during my second year of university. I remembered how hard it could be to live in a normal sized house but with so many people and I wanted to share the knowledge I had gained from this experience. 

I also knew that, as she admitted herself, she wasn't the greatest culinary whizz, so I also included several recipes and useful tips to get her started. To make the book special I decided to do some quick, light hearted little spot illustrations to brighten up the pages. 

After presenting her with the book yesterday I have decided now that it's no longer a secret to share a little extract with you all - and the section I have chosen to share is the list of useful utensils you'll need in your student kitchen. I hope any fresh students that are reading this find it useful, and I also hope that any not so fresh students agree from their own experience that my advice is informative! 

Useful stuff to have in your kitchen

"In a student kitchen there only needs to be a few utensils to make your life easier. I start this list with one piece of advice – unless your flatmates are wonderful and all use their own personal plate, make sure you have one clean plate before you cook as there is nothing worse than having to wash a plate to eat from when your lovely meal is all ready and going cold. The following bits of kit will make it easier to make my recipes as well as other simple staple meals.

A wok  - This is the perfect pan for a student kitchen. Not only is a good wok useful for frying things such as onions or mince, it can also be used as a pan so that everything you do can all be in one pot – and that means less washing up!

A good knife – if you’re cooking meals from scratch it’s a good idea to have one good knife to chop all your vegetables and meat – though don’t forget to clean it before and after washing chicken.

A chopping board – for all that chopping of course. If you can get a plastic one that would be good – but a wooden one is perfectly fine, just make sure you wash it quickly after chopping chicken.

A colander – good for draining your endless meals of pasta! You can also use a sieve for this if you don’t have a colander. A colander also makes a brilliant robot hat for those freshers parties. 

A measuring jug – how else are you going to make gravy my darling?

A good can opener – for the days when you want to ignore my recipes and get out a can of beans and miniature sausages.

A potato peeler – for that yummy mashed potato that we all know and love.

A slotted spoon – good for serving your peas and getting pasta out of the pan to check if it’s done.

A cheese grater – because buying pre-grated cheese is simply on the unacceptable side of laziness.

Other useful things that are fairly obvious are – a good wooden spoon, a decent set of cutlery, a mixing bowl, a spare bowl (so you can put the leftovers in the fridge for the next day) and if you don’t have a wok I recommend a decent saucepan and a good frying pan."

Hope you enjoyed my little snapshot of my booklet, I might post a recipe from it in the next few days. 

bakery

It's been a bit of a large break in between blogs at the moment as I have been working on lots of different things. Today though, I can reveal something I have been cooking up 'Willy Wonka' style for my friend Amber's 18th birthday. A few months ago, she found an image of a rainbow cake and asked me if I thought it was possible to make - so I decided to make one for her birthday. I settled on a brilliant recipe from a blog called The Whisk Kid, whose recipe was not only fantastically written and easy to follow, but the photographs were to die for! So much so that it made me want to be a food photographer for a long time after I read this recipe...

 Anyway, I managed to get some Sugarflair gel food colouring from a brilliant local shop called Angel Cake (which you can also get online at places like this) and after two days of mixing with six separate wooden spoons and icing with a massive spatula, I arrived at the cake. Here's a few pictures of my progress (sorry for the quality, ridiculously bright cake batter and camera lenses don't mix!)

Part of the mixing process - it's a good job our kitchen is heavily overstocked when it comes to bowls and wooden spoons!

The finished cake - I opted for a lilac buttercream over a white crumb coating to hide the cake's gloriously colourful centre.

The offcuts of the trimming process demonstrate how bright the final product was!

 I presented the cake to her this morning in a custom cakebox, with a logo on the lid that I designed myself (above) so that she has something of the epic cake to keep once she has eaten it all. I even managed to sneak a piece of cake for myself and managed to get a couple of better quality photos for you.

Happy 18th Birthday Amber!