The Lancet

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

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!

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

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

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!

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

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

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!

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...

…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

A recent illustration for the Guardian.

A work of Persol

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! 

All images from the book Art in process. A work of Persol. © 2010 Luxottica Group spa  © 2010 Maurizio Corraini srl

Hermes windows

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

Illustration for the Big Issue about Cycling safety. 

Hermes

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

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

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!