New book about Illustration

'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

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

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

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

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

Flying pigs

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.