Harriet Russell

Moon Pie

2012-03-05T07:12:00.021-08:00

Here is my cover for Moon Pie by Simon Mason, which comes out later this month, published by Random House. It is a children’s book, but the subject matter is quite heavy – it’s about a little girl and her brother trying to cope with their alcoholic father after the death of their mother. Although it sounds like it could be rather depressing, it is actually extremely well written and sensitively handled, and at times quite funny as well as being very moving.

Their brief was to do something typography based, along with any of my own ideas. Here are some of the initial roughs as well as a few colour ideas.

There was quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and changes to make until a final consensus was reached. I thought the large moon with a slice taken out of it like a pie worked well, but in the end they decided to go for a crescent moon. The Dad character was difficult to get right, as it couldn’t be too obvious that he was an alcoholic. At one stage he was on the roof, wobbling as if about to fall off, but this idea was a bit over the top! - so he ended up perched on the end of the moon.

Interview in Doll Speaker Magazine

2012-02-29T11:28:00.022-08:00

My work has been featured in another Iranian magazine, called 'Doll Speaker', again by Morteza Zahedi. It is their 23rd birthday issue and I'm happy that my work is also on the cover!

Mastermind exhibition

2012-02-20T09:39:00.001-08:00

'Mastermind' is a group show of 2-colour risograph prints by 22 artists, produced and put on by Bolt Editions. The show is on at the moment at a variety of venues in Brixton Village - my print 'Elephant Snake' is showing at Italian restaurant Casa Sibilla. There are some great artists involved, including David Hughes, Rachel Gannon and Brett Ryder, so it's well worth a look. The show runs from 16th February until 18th March and prints can be purchased from Bolt editions priced at a mere £23.50 (including postage)! You can find more info and download an Art trail map here.

Interview in Iranian Magazine!

2012-02-15T08:20:00.007-08:00

I was interviewed last year by talented illustrator/artist Morteza Zahedi who also art directs two magazines. Here's my work in one of them, Tandis magazine, published in Tehran, Iran.

Work for Valore Alimentare

2012-02-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

Here are a few recent images for Italian food magazine 'Valore Alimentare'. Themes are flour, sugar and yeast!

Ilustrarte

2012-01-18T08:31:00.000-08:00

Happy new year (a bit late)! I've had a good start to the year, with a recent trip to Lisbon for the children's book illustration biennial 'Ilustrarte' which I am very pleased to have been selected for this year. Three pieces from 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch' were chosen for the show - 'All the people in the world', 'Ice cream on fire and leopard', and 'find the needle in the haystack'. Here's a few pics of the very unusual exhibition set-up - many white chests of drawers with large lampshades above! It looked very cool and rather surreal - you had to open each drawer to view the illustrations. The exhibition is on at the Museum of Electricity until April 8th, after which it will be at the Royal Academy of fine arts in Ghent. More info here.

Happy Christmas!

2011-12-23T02:45:00.001-08:00

CIA calendar image

2011-12-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

This week is my week in my Agency's (CIA) calendar on the theme 'If I were....' My answer (a bit weirdly) was 'If I were an anagram' - 'surreal slither' being an anagram of my name. I've simply produced an image inspired by these words, an elephant with a slithering snake for a trunk.

The Poundshop!

2011-12-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

My bike owl tote bags are going to be sold as part of a very special Christmas Poundshop at the price of just £5.00 each. The Poundshop was set up by Household and Sara Melin in 2010 to provide a platform for designers to sell their goods at an affordable price. The launch is this Friday, downstairs at Mother Ad agency, (Biscuit Building, 10 Redchurch Street, London E2 7DD) and there will also be a pop-up webshop over the weekend of 9th - 11th December. Great for Christmas presents!

Animals in Jumpsuits!

2011-11-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

Brazilian Fashion magazine Lola asked me to contribute to their 'sketchbook' section, where each month a different illustrator draws on and around photographs of different clothing or accessories. For some reason animals wearing designer jumpsuits seemed like a good idea!

American Illustration

2011-11-10T07:44:00.000-08:00

I've had two pieces selected for this year's American Illustration Annual, both from 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch'. The book will be launched tonight, with a party in New York at the Angel Orensanz foundation. Sorry not to be there!

Vogue Japan

2011-11-08T02:03:00.001-08:00

Here is my recent piece for Japanese Vogue - it appears in a special children's supplement called 'Angels' and my part was to illustrate some quirky step by step 'experiments'. Flowers frozen in ice, stripy water and fun with cornstarch! The design and layout is similar to my 'Silver spoon for Children' work, as this is what the client requested. I was surprised by the mixture of English and Japanese scripts as I imagined all the text would be in Japanese. I had to think about the layout though - as it reads from right to left!

Last chance to see!

2011-10-21T06:41:00.001-07:00

It's your last chance to see our Blue Suede Shoes exhibition as it comes down tomorrow. It's well worth a look and is open until 6pm at the Nancy Victor Gallery, 6 Charlotte Street.

Waitrose Love Life

2011-10-17T06:46:00.001-07:00

Here are some recent illustrations for Waitrose' new magazine 'Love Life', on the subject of face massage. These were tricky to draw and it took several attempts, plus a skype call with the writer of the piece before I could visualise them well enough to get them right! As well as being straight-forward instructional drawings, I've tried to add a little bit of humour into them with the little doodles and notes.

Blue Suede Shoes at Nancy Victor

2011-10-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

Our Blue Suede shoes exhibition is on until 21st October at the wonderful Nancy Victor gallery in Fitzrovia. It's open every day except Sunday from 10am-6pm. Here's a few pics of the gallery and the opening!

Blue Suede Shoes in Central London!

2011-09-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

I have another show coming up, this time with my illustration collective, 'Gumbo'. Our 'Blue Suede shoes' exhibition will be on again in October. This time we have an amazing location in central London - the Nancy Victor gallery at 6 Charlotte place, Fitzrovia. The show opens on 6th October and runs until 21st October. Open Monday - Saturday 10am - 6pm. Hope you can make it along!

Image for Google

2011-09-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

I created this recent image to go in a booklet for Google. The booklet was based on the fact that the Google display network offers 4x the click-through rate compared to the industry standard, and contains other '4x' facts illustrated by different artists. My fact was 'Women on average say 4 times more words a day than men'. I have chosen to go for a typographic solution with many words illustrated that mean 'to talk'! I was restricted to using all four google colours, plus black and white.

The Silver spoon goes Dutch....

2011-09-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

....and Russian and Danish! I spent endless hours in the earlier part of this year rewriting all the lettering for three more foreign language editions of The Silver spoon for children - (it's already in Spanish, French and Japanese). This is a much bigger job than it sounds, as every single title, plus incidental bit of text including ingredient packets etc have to be translated, lettered, coloured and placed. The Russian was definitely the biggest challenge!

Colibri

2011-09-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Festivaletteratura is on in Mantua in Italy this week - home of my publisher Corraini Edizioni. I am not there this year but here is some lettering I did for the festival newspaper. It's called 'Colibri' which means humming bird in Italian.

Sixty Impossible Things....in French!

2011-09-06T08:39:00.000-07:00

Bonjour. ‘Soixante choses impossibles à faire avant le déjeuner’ is now available and is published by Éditions les grandes personnes.

Art Auction for Burundi

2011-08-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine, illustrator Sarah Horne is holding an art auction to raise money for a small team from her church to go out to Burundi, central Africa to support the work of the Batwa project. On sale will be original illustrations, limited edition prints, signed books and original art by many illustrators including Simone Lia, Sandra Howgate and Chris Andrews. I've contributed a bike owl tote bag, as well as a couple of prints and signed books. The auction will be held on Sunday 4th September at Hermitage Moorings, 16 Wapping High Street, London, and is open to all. There will loads of great stuff to buy and bid for, and rumour has it there will be cake too! More info on the auction can be found here.

Bike owl tote bags!

2011-08-16T06:35:00.001-07:00

My bike owl design is now available as a tote bag, printed on organic cotton using water based inks, by the lovely people at idressmyself. The full range of t-shirt sizes is now available too - from my online shop.

A few more pics of the show

2011-08-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

The show has come down but you can still buy copies of the book 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch' from my online shop. All artworks from the book are also available as limited edition giclee prints, priced at £100 (unframed) or £120 (framed). If you would like to order one let me know!

Last chance to see!

2011-07-21T03:07:00.001-07:00

Today is the last day of my exhibition at the Design Conspiracy gallery, 12 Stukeley Street. Come along if you can, I'll be here until 6.30pm....

Sixty Impossible things Private view

2011-07-19T04:30:00.001-07:00

A good time was had by all at the private view for 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch', held at the Design Conspiracy gallery last Thursday. As well as prosecco, orange juice and beer, visitors were treated to some impossibly themed food.....chocolate teapot biscuits, chicken or egg scotch eggs, ice creams on fire (which were actually ice cream shaped chilli cheese biscuits), and flying pigs (sausages on sticks with wings!) We had great fun thinking of and making these on the day. Thank you to all those who came. For those that couldn't make it, the show is still on (until Thursday) so come and have a look! Books and limited edition prints are on sale in the gallery.

Sixty Impossible Things....London exhibition!

2011-06-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

I'm having an exhibition of work from my recent book 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch' at the Design Conspiracy Gallery, 12 Stukeley Street, London WC2B 5LQ. The show is open to the public from 15th July and continues until 21st. Open Monday-Friday from 10am-6pm and 11am-4pm at the weekend. I will be manning the show during the week so I hope to see you there!

Creative Review

2011-06-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

I recently created this image as a piece of self promotion to go on the Creative Review website.

Shop update

2011-06-09T06:17:00.001-07:00

I've just added a couple more products to my online shop - this screenprint of a hedgehog (a hog in a hedge) is available in light yellow, green and brown, or turquoise, green and dark red. They are printed on lovely thick Somerset satin paper and are a limited edition of 20. Also available is my silkscreen of a cat in a coal cellar and a polar bear in a snowstorm. You can also buy my new book 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch', priced at £14.00. Take a look!

New book about Illustration

2011-05-26T09:30:00.001-07:00

'Illustration' by Andrew Hall is published by Laurence King and is out this month. It's part of their portfolio series and is a comprehensive guide for students or recent graduates wanting to pursue a career as an illustrator. I have contributed one small image - oil derricks and nodding donkeys from 'An Endangered Species' which was part of an exhibition catalogue for the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.

Print for Jealous

2011-05-17T08:24:00.001-07:00

I was very happy to be asked to contribute a print to Jealous gallery's portfolio and recent show of two colour screen prints 'Jealous Needs you'. Here is my print 'Blue Escapes Painting', a simpler version of the piece I did for the 'Blue Suede Shoes' exhibition. It is now available from my online shop and from Jealous gallery.

Workshop at ISIA

2011-05-10T06:21:00.000-07:00

Last week I travelled to Italy to do a workshop with postgraduate students at ISIA, a design school in Urbino, with help from Chiara Carrer and Giulia Sagramola. Urbino is a beautiful walled town with an ancient Ducal palace, cobbled streets and impressive views, nestled in the hills in the Marche region of Italy. The school itself is in a converted monastery and on arrival you are greeted by an amazing circular painted ceiling.

The workshop was based on my book 'A is for Rhinoceros', published by Edizioni Corraini, and was about getting students to look at the shapes of the letters rather than what the letters are 'for'. They did several exercises working with letters, using them as a basis for a drawing.

Then, on the second day they started their main project to work (in groups) on two alphabet books - one of capital letters and one of lower case letters. They were given restrictions on size and colour but were free to choose a theme for their book if they wished.

The 'Capitals' group had to work with blue, red and black on an A3 book and their chosen theme was 'Eros' (Everything Relies On Sex)! The lowercase group worked with yellow, green and black on a smaller, A5 book, and their chosen subject was ingredients. Both groups had the additional challenge of working in English, as the Italian alphabet only has 21 letters and the brief was to create 26!

Both groups worked well, and (just!) managed to finish their books in time. Here are a few of the images produced. Work by Giulia Sagramola, Michele Galluzzo, Alessio D'Ellena, Federica Vaglio, Claudia Polizzi, Giampiero Donno and Antonella Liscita.

The hand of the graphic designer

2011-04-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year I was asked to contribute some original drawings for an exhibition called 'The Hand of the Graphic designer' organised by FAI - (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the Italian equivalent of the National Trust. The exhibition opened last week as part of Design week in Milan, and features 367 original drawings by 108 graphic designers from all over the world, including Sara Fanelli, Seymour Chwast and Guido Scarobottolo. Mine come from a mixture of projects - Squashes and yams from 'The Great big veg challenge', dinosaur and oil from 'An Endangered Species', and Milanese Risotto from 'The Silver spoon for children'. The catalogue is in the form of a Moleskine notebook and all drawings will be auctioned by Sotheby's in support of FAI. More info on the exhibition and FAI can be found here.

Basel Kantonal bank

2011-04-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year I was busy working on a commission with Swiss design agency New Identity for their client Basel Kantonal bank. The brief was to produce some images for an illustrated section of the bank's annual report. It was a great brief - my job was to provide visual interpretations of various unusual place names in Basel: 'Hare's castle', '11,000 virgins alley' and 'Chamois mountain' to name a few. I was asked not to think about what the real place looked like, but was instead completely free to use the name as inspiration for my drawings. It was a fairly long process of many sketches and ideas and also involved two day trips to Basel for meetings! Here are 'Beak alley','Chamois mountain', 'House of the mosquito', 'Hare's castle' and 'Snail man'. Hare's castle wasn't actually used in the end - which is why it's slightly more colourful than the others!

Exhibition pics

2011-04-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

Flying pigs

2011-04-11T08:46:00.001-07:00

Here are some photos of my recent children's workshop in Bologna. Children had great fun making flying pigs of all colours, shapes and sizes and then hanging them from the ceiling.

A few of the Impossible things....

2011-04-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’

‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." from ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’ by Lewis Carroll

This delightful conversation between Alice and the White Queen is the starting point for my new book 'Sixty Impossible things before Lunch' published by Edizioni Corraini. A book full of impossible questions, impossible pictures and impossible ideas, such as  'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' 'Where is the middle of nowhere?', 'What does the universe look like?' and 'How long is a piece of string?'  Questions without answers or questions that are so hard as to be impossible. And some questions with so many answers it is impossible to give just one!

The book was launched at the recent Bologna book fair with an exhibition at MAMbo, the modern art museum in Bologna. Here are a few spreads... Photos of the private view and kids workshop coming soon!

Sixty Impossible things before Lunch

2011-03-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm about to head out to Bologna, for the Children's book fair and launch of my new book 'Sixty Impossible things before lunch', published by Edizioni Corraini. The opening will be at MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna; via Don Minzoni 14, 40121 Bologna, on Sunday 27th March at 7pm. To coincide with the opening, corrainiMAMbo artbookshop will be exhibiting a small show of drawings from the book, along with limited edition giclee prints. The exhibition runs until April 29th. If you're in Bologna, come along!

Inbox 12 London fanzine

2011-03-22T06:02:00.000-07:00

Inbox 12 produce lovely postcard books, where 12 illustrators are asked to draw their favorite spots in certain cities, including New York, Madrid and London. My contribution for the London one is of a slightly surreal looking Kensington gardens. I have included an amazing sculpture on the banks of the Serpentine by Anish Kapoor, a huge circular mirror which reflects the sky.

Blue Escapes painting

2011-03-22T05:43:00.001-07:00

Here is one of my pieces from the Blue Suede shoes exhibition, 'Blue escapes painting'. We had a great opening night, with a good turn out and plenty of books sold. It's on for another month so lots of time to go and take a look. All artworks are available as limited edition giclee prints and the publication is on sale for £7.

Blue Suede Shoes, Exhibition and book launch!

2011-02-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

For the last couple of months, I've been working on a project with my illustration collective 'Gumbo', and it's just about ready to be let loose upon the world.... Using the well known phrase 'Blue Suede shoes' as a starting point, we played a game of 'pass it on' to produce a sequence of 12 lines of text. Through a series of word changes the story twists and turns to take you on a surreal journey into the imagination; thus Blue Suede Shoes become 'Blue Suede Dinosaur', transforming somehow into 'Blue dinosaur soup', and so on and so forth....Each artist then responded visually to these words to produce a rich mix of images.

We are delighted that Duke press, an independent publisher based in London, have decided to publish our illustrations as a limited edition of 100 books. These will be hand-stitched with a screen printed cover.

We are showing our unique set of blue themed illustrations at The Apthorp Gallery, Arts Depot, 5 Nether Street,Tally Ho Corner, North Finchley, London N12 0GA. The exhibition runs from 4th March until 1st May. Private View 3rd March 6 - 8.30pm. We would love to see you there!

Happy Chinese New year!

2011-02-03T04:33:00.001-08:00

Blue Suede heel

2011-01-25T06:55:00.001-08:00

I am currently working on an exciting project with my illustration collective, Gumbo. We are producing a book called 'Blue Suede shoes' and will be exhibiting work from the book at Artsdepot in Finchley from early March. This image was done as publicity for the show, with each part of the shoes drawn by a different illustrator - mine is the heel! Other sections were drawn by fellow Gumbos Sarah Horne, Eivind Gulliksen, Samara Andrews, Chris Andrews and Sandra Howgate. More details and private view info to follow!

Mother and Baby magazine

2011-01-25T06:31:00.000-08:00

Illustration for the January issue of Mother and Baby magazine, for an article about maintaining a healthy weight during pregnancy.

Valore Alimentare magazine

2011-01-11T06:19:00.000-08:00

Here is my latest work for Italian food magazine Valore Alimentare, which I contribute to regularly. The article is about 'flying the nest'. Also, my image for the previous issue, to accompany a piece about nitrates, which are present in both in processed foods and fertiliser!

Happy new year!

2011-01-05T07:22:00.001-08:00

The Lancet

2010-11-16T06:12:00.001-08:00

Test cover

I was recently asked, along with several other illustrators to do a test cover for the Lancet Neurology journal. The brief was about Motor neurone disease and quite a challenge! Here is what I came up with - a simple idea of a motor neuron 'tree' with the nerve endings (dendrites) forming the branches, the axon the trunk and the roots being formed by the terminal endings. I wanted to show the tree - normally something strong, natural and healthy, slowly deteriorating with the addition of a woodpecker pecking away at the neuron trunk, showing the damage in a gentle, subtle way... I wasn't picked for the final cover, but I'm told I got second place, oh well, next time...

New Era Cap

2010-11-04T04:33:00.001-07:00

90th Anniversary exhibition

I had a really great day a couple of weeks ago decorating this baseball cap for New Era, who celebrate their 90th anniversary this year. My idea was simply to do a 'thinking cap' with various things that the cap could be thinking written on and illustrated - for example 'I am 90 years old - don't I look good for my age?' and 'I love baseball' etc. etc. Great project - and it was really refreshing to get some paints out and get away from the computer screen. It was also quite a challenge to imagine how my design would translate from flat paper on to the 3 dimensional cap, I realised how much of a 2D thinker I am! Here's the finished design, plus some work in progress pics.

New Era provided each artist with an amazing boxed cap kit, containing blank canvas cap plus an array of coloured markers, and also encouraged artists to document the process of creating the designs. The caps will be displayed in New York and LA later in the month.

Dawn French!

2010-10-28T04:44:00.000-07:00

A Tiny bit Marvellous

Dawn French's first novel, 'A Tiny bit Marvellous' is out this week, and I had the pleasure of being commissioned to do an illustration for the cover. The book is a humorous look at dysfunctional family life, with the dialogue moving between the teenage son, daughter and their Mother Mo, a child psychologist who fails to understand either of them! My first brief was to depict the whole family as a little vignette, or to focus on their house but after quite a lot of to-ing and fro-ing this was pared right down.The end result is the (tiny!) little dog - named 'poo'! Here is the finished cover, plus a few of the earlier versions.

Happiness at Work

2010-10-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

Exhibition opening next week!

I'm taking part in an exhibition of work by past and present members of my former studio 'Happiness at Work', at the Print house gallery in Dalston. The studio, at the Turk's head in sunny Wapping, was set up in 2002 and has hosted some of London's most creative artists and designers, including Simone Lia, Catell Ronca, Sarah Horne, Sandra Howgate and Fumio Obata.

The show is open from 9am til 5pm from 29th October - 15th November (11 - 4 at weekends)

PRIVATE VIEW: Thursday 28th October, 6.00 - 8.00pm at the Print House Gallery, 18 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL. Hope to see you there.....there will be music, drink and happiness! :-)

Cadogan house

2010-10-12T02:50:00.000-07:00

Pop up!

I was recently commissioned by Simply to produce a pop-up school house illustration for newly a refurbished girls' prep school in Rickmansworth. Here is the result!

Festivals, fun and fagioli!

2010-09-20T02:08:00.000-07:00

Travels to Cambridge and Italy

I’ve been getting out and about a bit recently which makes a nice change from being stuck behind a desk! Firstly, my illustration collective Gumbo and I were invited to appear at the Lodestar festival, an up and coming music and arts fest in beautiful countryside just outside Cambridge. We had lots of fun doing some live drawing, and were helped along by many local kids who joined in with gusto. We also set up a stall of wares selling prints, books, cards and lovely kerchiefs by Sandra Howgate. It was a good, if somewhat messy day!

I was also asked by my Italian publisher Corraini to do some kid’s workshops at Festivalettarura in Mantua, Italy. I was doubtful at first – how was I going to manage 30 8-11 year olds with very little Italian?! Luckily it was all very well organised, I had an interpreter, and lots of help! The theme of the workshop was ‘Magical beans’ or ‘Fagioli Magici’ as inspired by the story Jack and Beanstalk. After some explanations from me, kids could design and make their own magical bean packets which they could decorate however they liked – plus make some magical beans to go inside!

The Exquisite Book

2010-09-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

I am very happy to be part of this amazing book which has just been published by Chronicle – ‘The Exquisite book: 100 artists play a collaborative game.’ Artists were divided into ten groups of ten with the first artist in each group being given a few words to inspire their image. This image was then passed on to the second artist in the group, who would use it as a starting point and inspiration for their own image, before passing it on to the third artist to continue the story, and so on. A visual link runs through images in the form of a continuing horizon line, which connects one image to the next. More info here: http://www.exquisitebook.com/

License to Inspire

2010-08-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

Central Illustration Agency book

My agency CIA has recently brought out this beautiful book ‘License to Inspire – A Collection of work from some of the most inspired illustrators and the story of the Agency that represents them’. Here is the cover and one of my pieces (from a few years ago!) that is featured in the book.

Shop!

2010-07-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

Bike owl t-shirts

These bike owl t-shirts are one of the first products to be available in my brand new online shop! They are limited edition, screenprint on organic cotton tees, available in a variety of sizes. The shop is pretty small at the moment (I only have four products so far...) but there will be more coming soon, and I will be selling a variety of books, prints, cards, t-shirts and more! Go to Harriet Russell's shop to have a look.

More mushrooms...

2010-07-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

…and a sausage (or is it?)

It is not every day (luckily) that you are told your illustration looks like a poo…but this is what happened with this ad! I actually found the whole thing rather funny when it was pointed out that the sausage in this ad looked like something else… Hopefully you won’t be able to see what I mean as I am only going to show the amended version here. A fully barbecued sausage…talking to a mushroom. Why not? The ad was commissioned by Ruby Agency for The mushroom bureau.

Cloud Computing

2010-07-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

A recent illustration for the Guardian.

A work of Persol

2010-06-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

Sunglasses and art

Hello Ciao. Well, it’s been a busy couple of months. I have spent much of it working with Edizioni Corraini on this book, commissioned by Italian sunglasses company Persol. It was an unusual and challenging project - as well as making sunglasses, Persol have a collection of contemporary art: 17 specially commissioned pieces by young artists from all over the world. My job was to make links between the sunglasses and the works of art, with the essential idea being that Persol glasses are a work of art themselves. Although it seemed an impossible task at first, after a week in Milan working intensively on it in the Corraini’s studio, the ideas and drawings began to flow (helped along by some lovely Italian food…) The final result (I think) is almost like a cross between an exhibition catalogue and a sketchbook with it’s mix of photography, text and drawing.

The book has a punched cover with special sheets that can be inserted to give different views through the glasses. It was launched in Basel last week at a very swish do with copious amounts of prosecco flowing….or some type of sparkling wine, it was very nice anyway!

Hermes windows

2010-06-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Ooh, New Bond Street!

Had a little wander down New Bond Street at the weekend, past the huge array of vastly expensive shops until I came across this... my illustrations in the window of Hermes. Not fantastically great photos, but it gives you the general idea!

Bike owl

2010-06-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

Illustration for the Big Issue about Cycling safety.

Hermes

2010-06-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

Posh scarves and bags

I was recently commissioned by Hermes to do some illustrations for one of their upcoming window displays, along with two other illustrators, the brilliant Gemma Correll and Paul Desmond. We were asked to illustrate storyboards focussing on various Hermes products. My two were the ‘Kelly bag’ (made famous by Grace Kelly) and ‘The story of silk’ (all about silk scarves, ties etc.) Here are a few of my images. Hope to post a pic of them in situ soon!

The Dog

2010-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

Book Cover

Rather a wintry picture for quite a nice sunny day! I did this cover for ‘The Dog’ by Kerstin Ekman a while ago and the book is out this month, published by Sphere.

Egg-sharing, part 2

2010-04-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

Some changes and new pics

Since my last post I’ve had to make some changes to some of my images for the Women’s clinic – and some of the more humorous bits have had to be taken out... including the T-Rex from the ‘Extinct family lines’ image. The poor old dinosaur really is extinct! Also a couple of other interpretations of egg-sharing, plants and flowers sharing their seeds.

Also as part of this brief (but ended not being used)…..the selfish gene!

Egg-sharing

2010-04-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

The London Women’s clinic

I’ve just been doing some illustrations for a brochure about egg-sharing for the London Women’s clinic. I must admit I didn’t know much about the process of egg-sharing before, but the basic idea is that IVF patients who have a surplus of unused eggs can donate them to help women with fertility problems to have a baby. The process is beneficial to both sharer and receiver, as the receiver pays for the sharer’s treatment.

There are all sorts of issues involved and I thought the subject would be a tricky one to illustrate, but design company Silk Pearce who commissioned the work encouraged me to tackle it with a gentle humour. Here are some of the images I came up with.

Jack and the Beanstalk….

2010-03-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

…and Bologna

I’ve just got back from the Bologna children’s book fair, which was brilliant and very inspiring, if a little overwhelming – it is absolutely huge! Lots of beautiful books, particularly from the French publishers and some of the Italian, all wonderfully printed and produced. And of course the delicious food and sunshine made it all the more enjoyable!

Jack and the Beanstalk is my latest book for Edizioni Corraini – it’s the traditional story simply illustrated and available in Italian and English. Here are some spreads plus a couple of pics of my books at the Corraini stand.

I also signed some books at the amazing Co-op Ambascatori (not sure of the spelling.. but it was something like that) – a book shop, but also an Italian food emporium, restaurant, and wine bar (with a large selection of beer too)! What more could you want?

Italian table linen

2010-03-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

You could eat your dinner off it!

More spaghetti – but this time on a tablecloth… twisting and turning until it becomes an elephant’s trunk, or a giraffe’s tail…. Flat design are a new company based in Italy who produce 100% linen tablecloths, runners, napkins, placemats and so on. For their first collection they have asked a number of designers and artists to contribute designs to be printed or embroidered on the linen – this is mine. The collection will be launched next month at a furniture fair in Milan. Exciting!

Conversational mushrooms

2010-03-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

The Mushroom Council

Did you know there was a council for Mushrooms?! Well I didn’t until I was asked to illustrate some ads for them. The mushroom plays the sensible, straight talking one in these little scenarios of conversations with other food types. Whilst writing the copy about how wonderfully delicious mushrooms are and how good they are for you, I almost began to have mushroom cravings – very strange as ordinarily I am not that keen on them!

You can see the mushroom council’s website at www.mushroom-uk.com/ designed by Ruby Agency – look out for the funny little wobbling mushrooms when you go to click on something!

The Silver Spoon for Children

2010-02-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

Spaghetti Blog naise

I thought I’d start with a couple of images from what was my biggest project (and probably most time consuming ever!) from last year: ‘The Silver Spoon for children’. Published by Phaidon press and aimed at children aged 10-14 it teaches kids to cook authentic Italian food. It’s also pretty good for adults and most of the dishes are really tasty. I tried quite a few of them during the photo shoots, which was a lovely perk of this job! I thought I would be sick of Italian food after months on end of drawing it, but I love it just as much as ever, and even attempted one of the recipes at the weekend for my parents (the lamb with a herb crust)! Anyway, here’s the cover and a couple of the inside spreads.

Hello

2010-02-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

About time too.....

Hello.... It really is about time I started a blog. I have held off for too long and it really is so easy nowadays. As easy as falling off a blog, so to speak (sorry..) Well I say that, but I haven’t actually tried to post anything yet so let’s see. It’s all a bit new at the moment. It won’t be anything fancy, just a few bits and pieces about what I’m up to, the odd image or doodle and a bit of news.