one two three draw

I recently had the joy of interviewing the talented man that is Simeon Farrar all about himself and his Spring/Summer 2012 collection for Amelia's Magazine. In addition to this joy I also illustrated one of the images to go along with the finished post, which you can read in it's entirety here. 

I wanted to write a bit about the process, and a neat little tip I picked up from another illustrator, Charlotte Hoyle. Not only do I love her so work so much that I suggested her to do a portrait for a dear friend, but I also love her blog. She goes where very few illustrators do, (perhaps for fear of showing the process or just because of an assumption that no-one would be interested) and gives a detailed run-down of how she completes each project. It's great to see, and you pick up some great tips along the way. I usually just use curves in Photoshop to clean up pencil drawings, but she mentioned using the burn tool to darken lines, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

I felt more confident in playing around with the image in Photoshop and didn't lose any detail on the lines through using the burn tool, so I'd recommend a read for all illustrators, experienced and inexperienced alike.

Simeon has a real tactile, painterly quality in his clothing, due to the hand-made nature of the garments, which is why I think this particular call-out appealed to so many illustrators. I love finding new illustrators through call-outs for Amelia's Mag, especially like the colourfully detailed work of Madi Illustrates and the romantic poses by Dana Bocai. 

Although I have been thrown into a very hectic new schedule, I can never shake that super-excited feeling about the Xmas holidays, and this year I have decided to send out cards made by myself. I really love bright colours for winter, and feel like these will be able to send a bit of holiday cheer to friends and loved ones. 

After two months of getting to grips with a new job in the City (a part of London I've never really gotten to know before) I'm finally feeling like I'm coming out of that Zombie-like new job state of mind and have been able to finally get back to my blog and illustrating. One thing about the City that really surprised me was to see an incredibly brave artist standing in front of Mansion House, capturing the masses of commuters on a small sketchbook. Naturally I had to have a look and a chat, and it turns out that Rydal Hanbury is an award-winning artist who loves nothing more than the magic of drawing, touting herself as 'an artist within the square mile'. Her drawings of commuters, builders, and the stunning architecture in the city are incredible, worth a further look at on her website. 

The other thing I love about Xmas are the shop window displays, and Liberty's have some of the best around. I could be a little biased as I worked with the display team for a little while myself, but I can honestly say it was one of the friendliest places I've ever worked, where I also learnt a ton. It's the place I wish I interned while studying and the place I always love to go to. Any students out there wanting to get into retail display and wondering where to go, start getting a CV and portfolio ready for Liberty! They've put up this very sweet little film of how the Xmas windows came to be this year, making me look forward to seeing them in person all the more.

My latest bit of illustration for Amelia's Magazine has been on of my favourites. When I saw this stunning piece by Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse I was stopped in my tracks, which made me jump at the chance to illustrate it. Hundreds of wooden shapes created this incredible corset, which you can read about in more detail in the article I illustrated for. I realised just how complicated and precise the pattern was when I had to draw each of the tiny pieces, making sure I got them as close to the real corset as possible. I also thought this would be the perfect oppertunity to get my indian ink out and use it's thick, matte, deep black quality for filling in the eye pattern. 

This London Fashion Week I've been attending shows, illustrating and writing show reviews (which I've LOVED doing) for the lovely Amelia and the illustrated bundle of joy that is Amelias Magazine. I'll post more on the show reviews Ive written and my LFW experience soon, but I wanted to show you what illustrating I've been up to so far:

Jean-Pierre Braganza S/S 2012 for the show review written by me

PPQ S/S 2012 for a glorious LFW review by Matt Bramford

I'm having my first Etsy Shop Summer Sale to get ready for lots of new things that I'll be selling and to make buying some fine art prints or colourful postcards a little bit more of a treat! The fine art prints are all Giclee prints which in my opinion look exactly (if not better thanks to the smooth, detailed ink) than the originals. I also love to have interesting postcards on hand for my home display or to send to friends so I've picked some of my favourite work and printed it up in postcard form. The sale itself starts today and will run for the whole month of July, so use the coupon code "123SUMMERDRAW" while you can! 

Recently I created a flyer for the lovely Karen who looks after the PR for the wonderful Stepney City Farm. I also happened to have met Karen at the ACOFI book tour in Brick Lane last week, so it was a meeting all thanks to Amelia Gregory and a mutual love of illustration (and in my case also the promise of tea and bisuits). The flyer itself is for The Paul Foot Farm Favourite Jigsaw Puzzle East End Weekend where Paul will be putting together the world's largest jigsaw in the Farm's lovely grounds to raise money for looking after the animals and providing a great community service. In case you haven't heard of comedian Mr Paul Foot, I suggest you visit his youtube page and have a look at his videos. They certainly gave me a good giggle while I sketched him and some of the farm animals for the colourful flyer. If you're around do come along, there will also be a yummy BBQ and hopefully lots of sunshine. These flyers are ready to print so email them, share them, make them really big and post them up! I can't even remember the last time I put together a jigsaw but something about seeing the world's biggest one in puzzle-y action sounds amazing! I wonder if the puzzle pieces are bigger or are there just a ton of them?

Last night I went to the last bour tour of ACOFI, or Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration which is a colourful tome of fashion illustration from some of the best and (properly) new illustrators out there. By showcasing ethical fashion along with creative input from all around the world, Amelia of Amelia's Magazine has created something pretty special. Her book tours have given a personal touch, and I felt very lucky to catch her last one at the Brick Lane Tatty Devine store.

Before a talk by Amelia, myself and my best gal pal Aggie (who took the pics below) got greeted by the lovely smiling Tatty Devine girls and the sight of gorgeous biscuits from Biscuiteers Ltd, goodies from Dr.Hauschka refreshing peppermint tea by Lahloo Tea in pretty teacups and yummy juice from Juiceology. Feeling very spolit and surrounded by happy people in the afternoon sunshine made it all feel more like a gathering of friends instead of an 'event' which was a newexperience for me. 

After enjoying all the tasty treats and making a shopping wish list for Tatty Devine rings and this Eley Kishimoto purse that I love, Aggie and I got down to decorating some biscuits which we ate about half a second after decorating. Fact: Biscuiteers Ltd chocolate biscuits are the most chocolate-y I've had, the buiscuiteers themselves are lovely, AND they passed on biscuit-decorating wisdom such as "if in doubt, just add more gold candy balls".

Tatty Devine make the cutest displays...

I also got to finally meet talented and very funny illustrator Gareth A. Hopkins who will also be showcasing his incredibly detailed artwork in the Chelmsford Arts Trail with myself and other local artists. He posted a pic of me and Aggie on his blog trying to decorate biscuits while making Amelia giggle...

Painter, illustrator and photographer Helena Maratheftis of  Thefty also took some fantastic pictures of the evening such as the glorious rainbow hair of a Tatty Devine Girl and the shop glitterball, more of which are on her blog:

Amelia's talk was particuarly enjoyable, I was really looking forward to hearing what inspires and drives her to combine creativity, design and her ethical stance. She gave a packed room a great introduction to how she got the magazine started as something completely personal and different to what she felt at the time was a world of corporate magazines, her dedication to sourcing creative work from around the world, and how she works with illustrators.

As an illustrator who's worked for Amelia's Mag for a little while now, I cannot explain the exciting and postitive influence drawing for Amelia has had on my work. As someone who can take forever on a drawing and get a bit lost in the world of using only black and white for my artwork, producing colourful and expressive work overnight for fashion, music, and other news articles has been the shake-up my work needed. As I was discussing with Gareth last night (@grthink) using materials that are totally alien to you (in his case it was using more colour, too) and might even make you want to run straight back to your trusty fineliner pens or pencil or Photoshop actually give you the confidence to explore different things and be more creative with your work. As Gareth showed me examples from his own work, more recent illustrations and work for Amelia's Mag, you could really see how his style developed and changed over time. He even mentioned how he thought his first (wonderful) illustrations with watercolour weren't particularly good, but Amelia's interest in them spurred him to keep going and come up with more and more interesting work as he continued.

This is where I feel Amelia gets that individual touch to her magazine, working closely with illustrators in a straight-forward and open way, even 'tying things up neatly' by asking illustrators to illustrate for articles about events such as the book tour that they attended themselves. Another thing that Amelia mentioned that I thought was particularly important was how she doesn't look at where illustrators are in their career or how they got into being an artist or even who they've worked for, she just looks at their work, if she likes it and thinks it would work well within the magazine. This is such a refreshing take on submissions as I do feel a lot of the time are the people who get noticed/get a mention are those who have been doing it for a long time or who know the right people. While mostly those people are deserving of that recognition I feel it's equally important that graduates, self-trained illustrators, artists who are trying out fashion illustration for a change get a chance too and get their work seen.

Tying all of this in with social media such as Twitter, Facebook and more recently Pinterest Amelia highlighted just how important it is to get your work noticed and get out there. Illustration can be a very solitary career, so using social media to collaborate and see what other creatives are up to worldwide really is as valuable as it seems. So many graduates have already got well-established illustration blogs running with some including online shops and a fanbase to match, which as Amelia mentioned is an opportunity not to miss out on. Illustrating can really be a tough business but having online tools to help you get noticed and collaborate with designers, event organisers, PR's, etc. makes a massive difference. Amelia demonstrated this by showing what other projects illustrators she featured have been up to such as Lesley Barnes being featured in The Sunday Times Style Magazine  and a host of illustrators collaborating with ethical designers by creating videos that mix the two together into a powerful moving image such as designers Lu Flux did for their 'Over the Hills & Far Away' Spring/Summer 2011 collection, which I also illustrated for Amelias Mag:

I also love the videos by PARTIMI which Amelia also listed as one of her favourites, and I find a much more interesting way to see a collection:

It would be impossible to list all the exciting creative things happening right or even describe them in such a passionate and positive way that Amelia did, but I wanted to pass on the enthusiasm around the ACOFI book tour talk and event as best as I could. The last but not least nice bit of info I loved was being told about 123 Bethnal Green Road, a concept store run by brother and sister Ross and Michelle who make sure everything sold inside is local and sustainable. Look out on their twitter page to see new stock that is regularly added to the store or visit the 'Bunker Café' by day for locally made tea and cake or by night for a uniquely local bar experience.

Image from www.123bethnalgreenroad.co.uk

My discovery of Pinterest happily co-incided with me being between computers while I waited for  a new one. Unable to do any illustrating without my trusty photoshop to clean up all my scans, I went on the search for visual inspiration and thanks to Pinterest I've been able to get a good dose of visual excellency. Finally all the images from links and blog posts and pictures you take can be put in one place and organised into something that becomes an ever-changing moodbaord. Illustrators can put together all sorts of visuals and have them at the ready to draw from, the fashion types can put together boards based on style, collection, designers, colours, or garment, but the best thing about it for me has been finding boards about things I never even thought about collecting images for. There are vegetarian recipie boards, shoe boards, art boards, sculpture boards, and I'm sure many many more I haven't found yet. It is also a great way to get a sneaky peek at what inspires people who inspire you; illustrator extraordinaire John Paul Thurlow who re-creates covers of magazines he loves by hand (with incredible detail) has some excellent boards rangning from a collection of 'man' imagery to the search for 'a perfect grey'. Line drawings of urban skylines and buildings are illustrator Laura Barnard's speciality, and her boards a collection of line, pattern, and structure. When it comes to indulging in shopping fantasties, Enid Hwang (Communications manager at Pinterest) has opened up a whole world of designers I want to know more about and sublime fashion I'd love to buy through her 'want-wear' board. I've started a few boards myself, but my favourite one to add to lately has been based on 'colour' , which has made a perfect reference page for anything from bright structured Chalayan dresses to sugary-pink balloons. I think I've found a new online pastime.

A little while ago I completed these illustrations for Amelia's Mag all about Fashion Week Poland, and it turns out Amelia Gregory went off to Poland to see what fashion lies there herself, with some interesting finds. I had a vague recollection of seeing Poland's fashion weeks mentioned, but I think to have this much info and reference of brand new design talent from somewhere besides London/Paris/NY/Milan is fantastic. It turns out a whole hoarde of articles have been (and still are!) written about polish fashion, so it's worth a look.

I also finally got to use my lino print rollers for a fashion illustration, making the background a little different to the solid black I usually use.