Merry Christmas!! 

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Patterns Galore!

Food packaging patterns relating to different cultures.

Sea Salt

Mexican

 Apple Cider

 Chinese 

Indonesian

YUM!

Tomb of the Cloud People Gif

Been doodling this character for ever now so I thought I'd do something cooool with it! Yeah!

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A nice bum and some cool tattoos.

A book illustration I'm working on: 

Its going to be a nightmare to colour but I'm looking forward to it!

MayanEye

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At last I can present this! I feel like I've been working on this monster forever, it been a good three days of colouring and of smacking my head on the keyboard. I haven't been able to move on until its finished but it is now! and I've gotta admit I'm looking forward to moving on.

My main woe with the illustration was colour. Its one of my favourite elements and I just could not get it on my side this week. Cue lots of crying and eye bleeding. 

Beans & Jakarta

I did some typography for a poster. It was quite nice and relaxing.

I've also got about 164 other illustrations and bobs that need scanning, colouring and prepping and I will get them up eventually! Life's just kinda got in the way right now, which is sort of nice but needs to move over soon so I can work.

Jakata Club is quite nice too! Nice to see a little cumbria band making it big on Mahogany.

                 

textures schmextures.

I don't know why but I love this. Just some textures for...textures.

cool.

Kook, Dubloon.

My finished piece for Kook surf magazine. 

I'm really happy with this although I went about it in a completely different process to usual. I was having trouble with the lines so I decided to keep them in for once which makes it look very wjc to me. (He's a favourite illustrator of mine and maybe having a few of his prints next to my desk is more influential than I originally thought...)

I also sent along this little illustration with a quote from the tempest. My next big project is going to be shakespeare based and I can't wait to nerd out on the bard. Super excited!

New Blood!

Last week(ish) I was lucky enough to attend D&DA's annual New Blood exhibition and had a great time with some amazing and exciting outcomes and lots of really wonderful feedback and interesting constructive criticism.
It was super cool.

As well as getting to talk with some industry people I got to meet some of the crazy talented illustrators and designers who were exhibiting.
We were positioned opposite Falmouth uni so I pretty much fell in love with ALL of their stuff. So many beautiful books! Amongst my favourites were:

Ella Bailey's beautiful style and characters:

Juliet Harris' illustration for Philip Pullmans 'The firework maker's daughter.'
I love the limited pallet and dreamlike feel, couldn't stop wandering over and staring at it.

I also got the chance to talk to Falmouths Martha Anne who created these illustrations based on the Karma Sutra and is a genuinely lovely person. (And has great colour style!)

And with Jonny Clapham, who's weirdly wonderful and unique illustrations are well worth a gander. 

not to mention his hilarious messed up videos: 

7 Tips for Creative Graduates from Jonny Clapham on Vimeo.

I have it on good authority that some of the guys off my course are collaborating with him to produce a zine and I can not wait!

My other picks include this ingenious bike 'accessory' by Joe Waterfield to promote a charity bike ride:

(Look at the clouuds!)

Cedi Cycles - The Iron Curtain from Joe Waterfield on Vimeo.

And finally my favourite book of the show 'My Dads better than your Dad' by Claire Paul. This thing had me grinning from ear to ear by the time I finished it. Great little story and who doesn't like cute mustachioed cacti? (huhu mustachioed...)

Asides from all the great memories, fun times and lessons learnt what I'm going to remember most is something an incredibly drunk man told us in a club in shoreditch. He asked us if we'd won and we told him that we hadn't entered anything to which he replied 'You're here at new blood. You made it. You won!' 
I was four pints in so it probably sounded like inspired drunken poetry but that and the fantastic hipster dance off were what I remembered in the morning and it still makes me smile. 

I have to stop ending my blog posts on gooey feelings. ugh.

also! I ran out of business cards but the replacements seemed to go down well. Ever the professional.

A First and lots of adventures!

It has been a crazy month of excitement, adventure and far too many smelly megabus trips, so heres an update on life. 

I GOT A FIRST!!

So thats kinda exciting you know. 

It's what I've been aiming at but it was still a massive shock and I am so, so fucking proud. Hard work and loving what you do works!

As its the end of uni we've had our DEGREE SHOW (With my posters!) and I'm happy to report that it was a success. Lots of wobbling up step ladders and swearing at double sided tape later and we had a lovely exhibition space full of arrows going off into the wide world.

Pics Steph Stilwell

 Each graduate designed arrows in their personal style to represent the different directions they'd be exploding out into the world in. I decided to hone some skills, experiment with colour and have fun!

A lot of hard work but totally worth it so my family could final visit where I spend all my daylight hours.

 ( P.S. I love you Studio <3 )

The Exhibition website can be found HERE! 

Then we went on lots of travels in Cumbria and Scotland.
I finally got to visit the cool bit of Hadrian's Wall (from robin hood prince of thieves!), stumble across amazing little villages in the lakes, partake in ritual coursework burning before climbing SCAFELL PIKE. 12 hours later I was on a horrendously smelly megabus home to cornwall (via London and the globe theatre) where I spent the weekend before zipping back up to London (New Blood!) and then to oxford and back again. Mad month!

Here is a taste of my CUMBRIAN ADVENTURES: 

Its been a great month all in all. Saying goodbye to my home of three years and greeting the future with arms wide open! (Ahhh gooey feelings :)

Wip, Dubloon.

Just a little work in progress to prove that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth since finishing up with uni.

This is just work I'm fiddling with as a freelance project for kook surfing magazine. More to come soon!!

 

Kudos if you guess the film!

Finn H. Drude is the Business.

My good friend and comrade in the visual arts, Finn H. Drude is going out into the world of film and sheep soon! (he'll be moving to Wales) and he wanted some business cards. 

So Ta-Dah! (thats about it.)

 

also today I was about 1mm off a trip to A&E after reshaping my index finger. Ouch.

Actually this is the card I wanted to make. Bratwurst cutie!

Semester Two Farewells.

So I'm officially finished with my education at the University of Cumbria. 
Its been a blast. Really.
Here is the work from my final semester:

Who needs kidneys anyway?

My mum has always had problems with her kidneys since she was a kid but during the summer their 'functionality' dropped to a dangerous level and so it seems that she needs an extra one soon!
In the meantime she'll be starting peritoneal dialysis. Its scary stuff but shes got lots of love and support around her. 
For Christmas I was browsing potential dialysis safe cookbooks (recipes with low potassium, no fresh or dried fruit and no chocolate or marmite! etc, etc and etc) And there were bugger-all nice looking or well designed books to be had. 
I think it makes the whole restricted diet thing much more depressing when the design bores you to tears so I designed a happy colourful and fun cookbook! 
Bon Appetit!

Potassium is the major baddie in this. And its in lots of stuff that everyone likes to eat lots like potato and crisps and chips and lots of fruit and veg. Its sucks. But you can get rid of it via the Double Boil. It just means meals take a little while more to make.

I actually made and tested all these recipies and the the Pantzaroslata was by far the most fun.

Lots of pink and beets!

I'm massively happy with this, its a really lovely little (actually huge) book that I can give to my mum. It's not much but it feels like something towards everything. 

(I'll get better photos up soon! Promises!)

GROW! Seed Packaging.

Hello!

These happy chaps are a range of seed packets designed to fold out and grow! 

They'd be sold to children in newsagents like Pokemon cards as an alternative to sweets and as a little gardening projects to encourage environmental awareness.

Basically there'd be some sort of compact soil within the character and then you just add water, let it grow and then plant the whole thing in the garden or a big pot!

Suspiciously carroty looking cress...

Wind in the Willows.

Last month I was tearing my hair out over a book cover for Kenneth Grahams' Wind in the Willows. I'm still nowhere near over the moon with it but I like the idea and it was a really important learning curve in regards to the work Ive produced since. 

The idea was that the cover would fold out into a map of Toads landscape allowing young children to enter the world more fully and speculate the future plot.  I was focused on creating the magic feeling you get as a kid spending hours studying the maps within books.