Some Toast: 2013

COSBY SWEATERS AND DOGS

Are what I have been drawing lately. Merry Christmas!

PUG LIFE

Pugs certainly were the doggy internet sensation of 2013. I've just tried drawing some and now... I think I know why.

Puggy Christmas card available at my Etsy store

PRECIOUS MEMORY

An old friend of mine recently married. She's a bit of a Cats fan, so I made her wedding card suitably feline.

JOIN THE PENCIL PARTY!

My new Etsy store, PENCIL PARTY, is now LIVE!

Visit it now for unique cards and gifts.

MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO

Just a silly little drawing. Been loving my pencil crayons lately.

I've recently moved up in the technology world and have acquired an iPad! Other than playing Hanging With Friends and Facebooking in High Definition, I've really been drawn to (ha ha) the amazing app, Paper 53. After playing around with a few drawing and painting apps I settled for this one, two of the top features being the watercolour function and the way drawings are displayed in little moleskine notebooks. (Off-white pages- hooray!)

Although technology needs to come a little further to really make the images authentic (different sized paintbrushes would be a good start), it's been a fun few days testing out a new medium. I don't have a stylus so it's more like glorified finger painting at the moment, but I'm enjoying using the app to jot down ideas... and draw lots of cats.

And redesign my website... if only it were this simple!

And start work on this years Christmas cards.

And draw junk lying around the house.

Creativity - 1, Chores - 0.

CAUTION! WOMAN AT WORK

I have been hard at work on my next instalment for the Melbourne graffiti collection. With a lot of encouragement, a bunch of flowers picked from the roadside and ooh, let's say, two kilos of chocolate, I'm about halfway through. Hosier Lane, YOU ARE MY EVEREST.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

For my recent poster design I created a repeat pattern of artist's tools:

And then (just for kicks) also made an illustrator pattern:

Weee!

Weeeeee!

TOO. MUCH. FUN.

CALLING ALL ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS!

Together with the lovely Yasmin Ellis and Sweet Caroline Hair Salon we will be running a design market in South Yarra over the Christmas period. We're looking for any artists and designers around Melbourne who might be interested in selling some work, so if you think you might be interested, get on board and email us at designsweetcaroline@outlook.com.

(Poster design by me!)

WHERE THE STREETS ARE PAINTED BLUE (AND RED AND YELLOW AND BLACK)

I've recently started a new series of prints depicting the well loved rainbow coloured streets of Melbourne. Waiting for a friend in a trendy chocolate cafe I picked up a copy of the newspaper and began idly flicking through, when a huge ghostly image of the newly painted Rutledge Lane caught my eye. Coming from Bristol and having spent nearly a year in Melbourne now I've become somewhat desensitised to the art of the streets, and a little bored of the old 'is it art or mindless vandalism?' debate. But the new work by Adrian Doyle, entitled 'Empty Nursery Blue' really tries something different, and from the moment I saw the photograph I was itching to hop on the Metro and see it for myself.

Attempted Panorama

Anyone who has been to Melbourne will know that the laneways are their own little worlds: kooky side steps from the tooting main streets. Empty Nursery Blue is like that but on steroids. It makes Hosier Lane look mainstream. This windy little laneway had been completely drenched in an ethereal blue, not a comforting kind like a well-loved blanket or your grandma's budgie, but an icy cold sort that takes you out of the heat of Melbourne and into some sinister snowy backalley somewhere in eastern Europe. It feels more like an installation from an art gallery than your average alleyway; I love that.

Rutledge (#nofilter) and Entrance to Rutledge from Hosier Lane

What interests me about this venture is not only the bold playfulness, but also how it will transform over time. Street art changes its curation overnight, it's in a constant state of flux, and so what was once the main exhibit will soon morph into a moody backdrop for the next team to move in on. Indeed, even whilst I tried to tentatively photograph the walls inbetween the groups of schoolchildren smoking on pale blue kerbs, at least four or five artists had begun work on the great oceanic canvas. And so it will go on.

Perhaps photography is the best way to capture street art, but in a world over saturated with square images in filters of Brannan and Rise, I felt compelled to document street art in a different way- as an artist. So I set to work. Every tag, every drop of paint, every wild eyed animal I painstakingly redrew, preserving the walls as they were on that day, like any aspiring Monet might try and recreate sunlight on a church or lilypads on a pond. By the time I had finished, the image was defunct, 'oh that's so last week', dated and at the bottom of the news feed. That's kind of what I love about the project. In our scrolling world it can be challenging to create something that's going to stick around and go on your wall (your real wall, not your Facebook one), especially since they have apps now that pretty much make you a photographer without having any clue about what an f stop might be. Street art is part of that ever-changing community, and I've really enjoyed trying to bring together the two worlds of art in some sort of wary friendship.

SNEAK PREVIEW

They say you should never show a work in progress, but they also say you should get to your bus stop ten minutes before your bus is due to arrive and tomato ketchup should be stored in the fridge. Here is a sneak preview of what I'm up to at the moment.

SKETCHES FROM THE END OF SUMMER

EXPERI-MERRIMENT

Flicking through some old snaps I discovered that if you switched quickly between these two photos it gave a 3D effect. Had a little tweek in Photoshop and created my first STEREOSCOPIC (cool name huh?) photograph. More to come!

BONZA BIRTHDAYS

By some happy coincidence (or misfortune- depends on my bank balance) my mother, father and grandmother all share birthdays within the same week. As an Illustration graduate I feel the least that I owe my family for all their support is a hand-drawn birthday card once a year. In light of recent travels, the 2013 collection has taken an Aussie animal theme.

BIRTHDAY BUNNY BUNTING

Tomorrow my Grandma will celebrate her 90th birthday. Unfortunately I will not be in England to celebrate, but I received an email from my mum asking me to draw a picture and write something I associate with Grandma to use for bunting for her party. The idea is that everyone will contribute a flag each and Granny will receive something a bit like a decorative photo album. For anyone unfamiliar with bunting, it's that cute flag stuff you see in Laura Ashley magazines and village fetes.

(Here's some I made during my art foundation, decorated with an illustrated poem I wrote about Hungarian museum exhibits coming to life one night, venturing out into the city and, realising it was no longer the Medieval fairytale kingdom it once was, deciding to head back stay in the musuem after all)

I had lots of ideas about what to put on my allotted flag, but I went with this bunny puppet and a short story on the back.

"On summer evenings we used to walk down to the Beefeater pub with Grandma and Grandad. One night I left my toy rabbit, Cottontail, in Old Mother Hubbard's shoe. When we got home Grandma called the Beefeater, but nobody had handed my rabbit in. Seeing how upset I was, Grandma spent the next day sewing a near perfect replica of said bunny rabbit. I called him Flopsy. He had whiskers and everything. Grandma made the best stuffed toys. She always got the eyes just right."

I hope she has a wonderful day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA!