bonbah

I have a lot of blogs that I try to keep up with and normally fail miserably (how do people have time to blog everyday?), but Two Fish Illustration and Designis easy enough as designer Jacob Souva blogs even less frequently than I do. But in his case it’s definitely quality winning out over quantity. In terms of design, his blog is probably my favourite and will be an inspiration for this blog whenever I get time to redo it properly. Even if you’re not that interested in illustration and design, it’s worth a visit. It’s not flashy, but it’s very beautiful.

And he seems to have made something for my nephew Jonah:

I wasn’t too sure about the Tate Modern when it first opened. I think that was because I was still very much in love with the Pompidou in Paris, which is still my favourite museum. So on my first visit to the new Tate Modern, shortly after it opened, all I did was compare it to the Pompidou and complain about the room of poo (still not a fan). But over the years it’s slowly grown on me and now I love it. As well as the museum collection itself (apart from the poo), I love the building and I love the bookshop which in a dream world I would transplant to my house. But I guess having it easily accessible along the South Bank is just as good. I normally spend all my time in there looking at the books, but when we went yesterday (to see the Cy Twombly exhibit - separate post later) I wandered over to the card section. And I think, as well as having the best book collection, they might also have the best cards. Here’s just a couple of the companies they stock (more on the others later)…

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we are family design

quirky & eco-friendly too, they’re all printed in Britain with vegetable based inks on FSC, chlorine free paper. who knew you could make a nice pattern out of sprouts?!

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rose hip cards

the notebooks are on recycled paper but not sure about the cards. these weren’t the designs they had at the tate but they’re lovely all the same

I went to the Urban Art Fair in Brixton yesterday to see Charlotte Hardy’s work. It was lovely to see her work up close and really nice to talk to her about her own work as I’ve only known her as a tutor where she’s either been discussing our work or other artists. I only wish I had some spare funds to buy one of her pieces.
I had a wander up Josephine Avenue to see what else was on display and found loads of really talented printmakers and artists. Just a quick run down of some of my favourites:

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Katarina F Jones

I’m not very good at talking to people at these things, but I had a quick word with Katarina about her work. It’s really eyecatching. Each print shows a captured world with something almost glowing. The light she’s managed to create in the prints is incredible. It’s as if there is a torch being shone through them. She told me that some people find them spooky, but I didn’t at all, they felt very safe - like sitting within the glow of a campfire.

see more – www.katherine-jones.co.uk

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Staffan Gnosspelius

Alot of the prints that Staffan was showing at the fair were of foxes and rabbits in very storybook settings. They really reminded me of Brer Rabbit,one of my favourite storybook characters when I was a child, and I really expected the artist to be a wise old man with twinkly eyes. But no Staffan appeared to be a twentysomething Swedish young man, although I’m sure he probably had alot of wisdom and a bit of a twinkle had I been brave enough to talk to him. He must have had about 30 or 40 prints up and each one managed to capture an entire narrative in what was sometimes only a few lines and strokes. My favourite was of a solitary rabbit looking off into the distance. I couldn’t find a good image of that to put here but you can see it on his website (address below).

see more - www.gnosspelius.com or artswitch.com

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David Pepper

I couldn’t find David Pepper on t’ inter-telly, but here’s a tiny thumbnail that doesn’t do any justice at all to his actual work. I found it on the Streatham Artists website which makes him a local and it looks like they’re having an open house in September so will be well worth a visit just to see his works again. To steal their description:

“David creates these liquid like images using multi-layers of paint and varnish on a traditional gesso ground. These dream like paintings play on an ideal of beauty, creating a new vision as seen by the artist.”

He had about 6 or 8 of these panels in a row and each one had the most beautiful blue ‘blobs’ on them which he had created from paint and what looked like oil. It wasn’t just that he’d managed to make all of them my absolutely favourite shade of blue but there was something very delicate and organic about them.

find out more - Streatham Artists

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Emiko Aida

I absolutely loved every single one of Emiko’s prints. The colours and the detailed line drawings were beautiful. To quote from her website which says it all:

Her works are the visual equivalent of the Haiku, the Japanese 17 syllable verse. She invites the viewer to use their imagination and engage with her imagery: dew, raindrops, rainstorms and rain-drenched flowers.

see more - www.aidastudios.com

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Lene Bladbjerg

Lene’s work was quite striking and I wasn’t surprised to read on her website that she studied graphic design. Her paintings and prints have a really pleasing order and composition to them. She does a lot of work with handlettering which is something I really love. She also managed to create beautiful compositions from razor blades!

see more - www.lenebladbjerg.com

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Martin Grover

The colours of Martin Grover’s work first caught my eye and then you get drawn into the detail and reading the little anecdotes and messages everywhere. To quote his website:

His screenprints offer little paeans to iconic traffic signs, bus stops, buses, and to destinations or states of mind reached and those elusive ones so often glimpsed or imagined but always tantilisingly just out of reach.

His paintings of record sleeves are brilliant also for their colour and lovely type.

see more - www.martingrover.com

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Well I didn’t really do any of them much justice but this would end up being a coffee table book if I went on any more so please have a look at more of their work on the links above and also a full list of the exhibitors at the Urban Art Fair on their website:

Urban Art Fair - www.urbanart.co.uk

Ever since I started working freelance about a year and a half ago, I’ve been having an extended “you know, I think I used to be quite creative and artistic” moment. So I’ve gone on a long-term journey to rediscover my long hidden drawing and creating abilities.

My first step on this relearning process was a three evening course at CityLit called “Drawing for Textiles”. I had no idea what to expect but was incredibly excited to walk into a room full of easels and sticks and paint and to meet my tutor, Charlotte Hardy. The three evenings were not nearly enough, but I came away with a new lease on life and remembering all the reasons I did an art degree years ago. And it was so nice to have paint encrusted under my fingernails rather than computer lint. And a wonderful feeling of  “I can make anything I want, anything!”

I’ve taken longer printmaking and drawing courses at CityLit since then - and they were both brilliant, but last week I did another 4 evening textiles course. I walked in on the first night and was really thrilled to see that there had been a change in tutors and I was back with Charlotte again.

Charlotte is an absolutely brilliant teacher, she has a way of encouraging you with your strengths without making you feel badly about the things you’re not so good at. But she’s not just a teacher she’s also an talented professional artist. Having met with her a few times now I can really see her lighthearted, honest personality in her designs.

There’s something really lovely about the way she takes everyday things and gives them a presence so you feel like you’re looking at your granny’s favourite things and all the memories that go along with them. I’m off to see Charlotte at the Urban Art Fair in Brixton. It will be really nice to see some of her work in person although unfortunately I can’t afford to buy anything today.

I think I’ll definitely be taking Charlotte’s drawing class again this year

see more of Charlotte’s work here – www.charlottehardy.co.uk

find out more about CityLit here - www.citylit.ac.uk

for more on the Urban Art Fair – www.urbanart.co.uk

It’s probably pretty obvious to tell that I’m just discovering the wide world of illustration and pattern and I’m sure if anyone other than my family accidentally falls upon this blog they’re probably thinking - yes we knew about that ages ago. But hey, I didn’t and there’s sure to be someone else out there as behind the times as me!

So I thought I’d write a little bit about Angie Lewin who I’m thinking is probably pretty well known but she was the first surface designer whose work I could actually recognise. So I’d feel quite smug pointing out her cards and notebooks in a shop, knowing full well in the back of my head that it was probably a bit like pointing out a Picasso or Warhol - pretty obvious really. But there you go, I’m learning and Angie has a definite distinct style that is very easily recognisable even if you are a bit of a novice.

Angie studied at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design and Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. She works in a range of printmaking techniques including lithography, silkscreen and etching and more recently lino and woodcut and wood engraving. Her designs are mostly botanical and they have a retro feel to them which I think comes from the areas of flat colour. The colours she uses are really beautiful, muted and saturated blues, pinks, yellows and greens.

We’ve got some really lovely card shops on our local high street (Oliver Bonas and Zeitgeist) where I’m pretty sure I had seen Angie’s cards, but it wasn’t until Jeff bought me a couple of her notebooks for Christmas (which I can’t bring myself to use) that I actually knew her name. Since then I’ve found quite a few excuses to buy boxes of her notecards - much cheaper than buying separate cards every time, right?! Next step is obviously prints and textiles, but how to choose…

see more by Angie here - www.angielewin.co.uk

have a look at Oliver Bonas here - www.oliverbonas.com

I really like the hand-drawn repeat patterns by Julia Rothman. She’s drawn everyday things like cars and chairs and made them into really lovely patterns

Julia also has a really interesting blog on book illustration – Book By Its Cover - I’ve only just discovered it but it looks like it will become one of my regular reads. She also has a design agency with a brilliant website – Also – that looks to do really lovely work.

see Julia’s website here - www.juliarothman.com

read her book blog here - www.book-by-its-cover.com

I realised the other day that for the most part all the wrapping paper and cards I’ve been buying over the past year have come from the same company, eventhough I’ve bought them all over the place. So I guess I must like them alot. The company is called NineteenSeventyThree and their products “are environmentally friendly whether they are boards made from 100% post consumer waste or from mixed sources of recycled material and pulp from certified well managed forests with sound replantin gprogrammes. all the inks used in the printing of our products are vegetable based and all our cello bags are compostable and biodegradable”. And they’re all really cool to boot. They work with several different artists/designers, some I already knew like Jon Burgerman and others I discovered: Catalina Estrada, TADO, PushMePullYou Design,  Eboy.

My favourite ranges are The Good Life:

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PushMePullYou:

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Suki:

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and the Melvyn Evans address books and notebooks:

see & buy more lovely stuff from 1973 here – www.nineteenseventythree.com

So my mice skittles and kitty ball seem to have been a big success. Here’s my nephew Jude playing with his kitty ball

Apparently the ball was a hit because he really likes balls right now. I seem to remember one of our other nephews Toby going through a ball phase. Too bad I hadn’t discovered the joys of little felt critters back then.

I also made a set of skittles for my friend’s little girl Rosie and funnily she loves the mice and isn’t so in to the ball. She apparently likes putting them in different places around the house. So I think Rosie and Jude would probably play really well together - no squabbling over who gets the ball.

Hmmm I’m thinking I’m going to have to start on Christmas a bit sooner this year. What to make?

I was attempting to make a stripey elephant for my friend’s new baby girl. Halfway in I realised I was attempting a bit more than I could handle in the time that I had and I had obviously picked the wrong kind of fabric. So the elephant went into the pile of half finished projects and I ended up with a couple of hours to figure out something else. So I fell back on the trusty felt animal book and decided to make a bear with some really nice thick handmade felt from Paperchase. I’m not very good at actually using the patterns in the book and tend to freewheel a bit. Well with this one I freewheeled quite a lot and she ended up with a funny little head and a really long body. As I was finishing up I started thinking that I couldn’t possibly give this thing to anyone. Jeff thought she was cute. Me, not so much, but I decided to sleep on it (not literally).

So the next morning I looked at her and you know she had kind of grown on me. So she wasn’t perfect and she was a bit mis-shapen and strange but you certainly couldn’t say she didn’t have personality or that she wasn’t unique. So I decided to give her to Tilly after all. And as we were taking the tube to meet them, the little bear grew on me more and more because perfect things can actually be pretty boring. It’s like our little garden which I love more and more. It’s definitely not landscaped and definitely not manicured but it’s full of colour and things that are probably classified as weeds and the birds and bees and neighbourhood cats and foxes love it.

When I gave Tilly’s mum the bear she loved it. And she even asked me a little later with a bit of concern if I would be able to make another one if it turned out to be Tilly’s favourite toy and something happened to it. Sure I can and hopefully that one will be just as strange.

We’ve been getting an organic veggie box for a couple of years now and apart from the endless leek and greens season I love it. I do really love leeks (not so sure about the greens) but there’s a limit to how many you can eat. Anyway the veggie box gives me an enjoyable challenge of figuring out what to do with all the vegetables before the next one arrives and sometimes I actually have to figure out what the vegetables are.

Last week we got a really strange looking thing that turned out to be a kohl rabi. Luckily it came with a recipe for kohl rabi and peanut stirfry which we had for dinner last night (and leftovers for lunch). It was really good - the kohl rabi is kind of a cross between cabbage and apples. Sounds weird, but definitely worth trying. Now I have to figure out what to do with the thing that looks like a garlic bulb with a big stalk coming out of it…