Happy Christmas!!

Festive Fever

It might be too early to be getting in a festive frame of mind, but the shops say otherwise and it is starting to get quite chilly and dark early, and so here are some new christmas card designs...

Now Open

My sister Sophie has just opened up an online shop selling her limited edition screen prints, hand embroidered cushions and hand painted pebbles. It's a bit of a treasure trove... go here to have a look around!!

Affordable Art Fair

I can't believe it's already time for my annual favourites from the Battersea Affordable Fair. I found some new (to me) artists to admire at this year's exhibition, including:

Gorgeous paintings by Paul Fry who was exhibiting with a couple of galleries, his work uses such subtle colours but with pops of brightness.

More amazing colour work by Sophie Smallhorn

Elegant and slightly old fashioned oil paintings by Sarah Coghill

Unusual but striking colours with great texture by Gerard Bru

Prints Charming(!)

Just thought I'd share these pictures that I reckon might make good prints, maybe on canvas, for children's rooms.

Papercut

My sister's boyfriend commissioned this papercut for her 30th birthday last month. It's some of the lyrics to one of her favourite Joni Mitchell songs - A Case Of You - painted with blackboard paint and mounted on some nice textured rag paper. I really enjoy doing these papercuts, even if my fingers don't thank me for the intense grip they're forced to endure!

September Shop

In the last couple of weeks I've been helping my artist sister Sasha set up a new project (in my very official capacity as marketing & communications officer) - A Painting A Day. Every day in September she's creating a small painting and selling it for just £200 in her new online shop (usually her paintings are very expensive, worth every penny of course, but not affordable to everyone). So far the venture has been going really well, and it's lovely to see the shop gradually fill up. Tip: If you want to get your hands on one check online each day at about 2pm, that's when she usually posts the new painting...

Pantone Table

You've probably seen all the Pantone merchandise around - mugs, chairs, storage tins etc. - and I'm sure everyone's over it, but not me, so I decided the other day to paint our Ikea coffee table as a Pantone chip. The colour reference isn't accurate, which I suppose in a way defeats the object, but I think that's ok.

Eat Me

A while ago I came across Eat Me magazine in WH Smith. It's a beautifully printed quarterly food magazine with lots of great articles, recipes and restaurant reviews. I went to meet them the other week, and now one of my illustrations is being used on their website alongside a birthday cake memoir!

Ooh La Ladurée

Have you ever had macarons from Ladurée? They are heavenly! When I went to Paris a couple of years ago I bought three and ate them in the Tuileries, and then a couple of months ago a shop opened up in Covent Garden and my sister and I sat in the piazza and each had a salted caramel one. They're SO expensive and SUCH a treat!!

Tiling

Looking through my scrapbook the other day I couldn't help but notice an awful lot of Moroccan-y tiles that I've torn out of magazines... so I thought I try designing some of my own!

Colourful Cards

Some new card designs that build on one I showed a few weeks ago as part of a competition... now I just need to find someone to publish them!!

Patterned

This week has been very exciting... I've gone part time in my day job to have more time to illustrate and paint. Working from home is taking a bit of getting used to, but it's very exciting! And hopefully it'll mean more work to share here, and more time for posting. These are some patterns I've made for Tigerprint's Male Pattern competition...

Chicken

At the moment cushions seem to me to make good birthday presents for domesticated sisters, this is one I made for my sister Sasha a few weeks ago. She's got lots of chickens in her garden, hence...

Sonya Walters

I was in Penzance, Cornwall the weekend before last visiting my sisters, and we popped into Cornwall Contemporary for a look at their latest exhibition. What really caught my eye was their attic room filled with big Sonya Walters canvases. I hadn't seen her work before and really loved it, so simple and such gorgeous colours and colour combinations. I'm a bit of a sucker for a bright abstract painting, and these ones are just the thing. Here are some others of hers that I've seen online...

Oh Mother

I'm still persistently entering Tigerprint's monthly card design competitions, in the hope that one day I might hit the nail on the head!! Here are the entries I've just submitted (at the 11th hour) for this month's brief - contemporary Mother's Day designs...

For Posterity

I've been working on a new website design and build in the last few months, which has been a steep learning curve, and is now online and up and running. The website is for a great salvage and reclamation yard in the Cotswolds called Posterity, they have all sorts of treasures - furniture, antiques, amazing chandeliers... They're having a bit of a rebrand, and a friend of mine has just opened a café called Salvation on the site. It's well worth a visit if you find yourself in the Ledbury area! Here's a screenshot and link to the website...

Hello Petal

Last week I did a couple of paper cuts as commissions for wedding presents and thought while I had the craft knife out I'd do one to put up in my own flat. I had a black frame waiting to be filled so decided to go monochrome...

By The River

The London Transport Museum have been running an illustration competition for posters showing the Thames, my entry turned out slightly unrealistic but optimistic I'd say!

AAF

A couple of weeks ago I went to The Affordable Art Fair in London and I've been meaning to share a couple of my favourite artists ever since...

Ben Hawkes - I just spotted this one print from a distance but it really made me smile

Jo Lamb - the gorgeous hot colours and loose style of this really drew me in

Beth Richardson - already one of my favourites from last year, I loved seeing her new paintings, lots of beatifully painted big expanses of colour. In fact, I stood staring at them for such a long time that the gallery owner approached me to tell me more about them, which I hate to admit freaked me out a bit (as I couldn't even pretend I could afford to buy one) and I didn't stick around for too much longer. I'm definitely a big fan though!