Bookshelf

I've gone reading crazy over the last couple of months. Here are the books I've read and loved recently, I'd wholeheartedly recommend all of them:

I Can Colour Everything

I'm very excited that finally a colouring book I illustrated at the end of last year has been published and is available to buy on Amazon! It was the biggest project I've worked on, and was a real challenge - it really did feel like I was drawing everything - but I'm really please with the result. Here's the front cover and some of my favourites from the baby animals section.

Buy a copy here for any little artists in your life!

Book Report

My latest Amazon acquisition is Like A Give A Frock. It's a collection of fashion/trends-based observations and musings by Michi Girl (a quirky Australian daily email like Daily Candy). I don't know if I'm explaining it properly, but the main thing for me was that Kat MacLeod illustrated every page of the book with her brilliant fashion/lifestyle illustrations, and each one is just really fab - colourful, imaginative, a great book to flick through!

Book Club

I've been on a bit of an Amazon frenzy lately, too many books not enough time (or money)... the most recent - and all are highly recommended - are:

Print & Pattern (fresh off the press, a spin-off from the blog)

100 Girls on Cheap Paper (by super-artist/illustrator Tina Berning

Naive (a gorgeous tome from my new favourite publishers Gestalten)

Books etc.

I just thought I'd share a couple of inspiring books I've bought in the last few weeks... The first is Rob Ryan's You can still do a lot with a small brain, which has got all sorts of lovely and interesting images of his work and workshop (it's always nice to see behind the scenes). The second is Illusive, which showcases lots of different illustrators' work and which I can't bear to put on the bookshelf as the cover is just too pretty to be hidden away! It's the third in a series of tomes, so I'll have to backtrack and buy numbers 1 and 2 when funds allow.

Eastern Promise

I was very excited at lunchtime today to make a pilgrimage to our post office sorting depot to pick up a parcel that I've been dying to open... it was two Paume books, which I've had my eye on (the whole series in fact, not any particular issue) for a while, and had seen in the Ella Doran shop but had stupidly assumed I could just get [cheaper] from Amazon. Well, it turns out they're quite elusive, and although I know you can order them from the Yvestown Shop, I was reluctant to pay too much on postage, so the kind girls at Ella Doran agreed to send a couple to me as I didn't know when I'd be able to get to the shop, and here they are.

Very inspiring, and the unintelligible Japanese characters just seem to add to the charm. I suppose it's quite refreshing to be able to make up your own mind about the pictures without someone else's copy getting in the way. Now I want London Ateliers, Appartements de fille à Paris, Stockholm's Apartments... like I said, any of them will do nicely!!

Patrick Heron

The last time I went to the Tate Modern, it was to see a Cy Twombly exhibition. It was a bit of a treat, as although I go there quite often (that stretch of the South Bank from Waterloo to London Bridge is one of my favourite parts of the city), I don't remember ever having paid to see a specific exhibition, because there's so much to see for free anyway. Well, my friend is now a member so we got to see the Cy Twombly for free, which was great. I love gallery shops, and almost always buy something - usually a couple of postcards or a notebook. This time though, the paintings we saw had made me feel quite inspired, and I ended up buying this book on Patrick Heron, who I'd heard of from the Tate St. Ives. When I picked it up I thought it'd be horribly expensive, as it's really big, and has loads of images, but it was quite reasonable and I thought it would be a lovely addition to my pretty much non-existent (non-fictionally) library, which it is except my bookshelves are too narrow so it just moves from surface to surface in my bedroom at the moment. 

For The Love of Light

I can't remember when or where on the internet I first came across this limited edition book of polaroid photographs, but having read about the project a couple of times I swiftly placed an order, despite not knowing an awful lot about what I would be getting. I'm sure the fact that there are only 500 of the little things contributed to my strong desire to own one of them. Well, it arrived in the post last week, and although I haven't spent much time looking at it yet, it is very inspiring and had some really beautiful images in it. I'm starting to think I should stop spending my spare money on clothes and start looking out for more beautiful, lasting, satisfying things just like this.