Domestic Parade

Shelter Up My Street Art Auction: Collaboration with Amelia’s Magazine illustrators!

2012-03-09T04:46:00.001-08:00

Amelia's Magazine illustrators: Lesley Barnes, Emma Block, Yelena Bryksenkova, Antonia Parker, Thereza Rowe and I participated in a wonderful charity art auction for Shelter. Amelia chose to theme the work around the concept of a safe secure home. The wonderful illustrators all created their idea of a comforting safe home and the final piece was brought together into one home designed by Lesley Barnes.

This is a close up of my illustration, I wanted something multicultural and happy so I decided to draw a secret kid's fort party to show the joy of home. Amelia mentioned that the structure of house will be drawn by Lesley and her signature bold black style is something to consider in my design so I used a lot of black with vibrant colours, kept the inside of fort dark as well so you can focus on what kids are doing. You can see the parents peeking at them in the background if you notice?

Close up entrance by Lesley Barnes, I love the giant key!

Close up room by Emma Block with her lovely grandparents.

Close up room by Thereza Rowe, I want to live in this room!

Close up room by Yelena Bryksenkova, I like the caring atmosphere here.

Close up room by Antonia Parker with a funky granny!

This month Shelter hosts an exhibition of artwork including our collaboration in the concept of Up My Street at the Coningsby Gallery, so please visit there if you are around and enjoy the exhibition!

SOYU: Creative Zodiac 2012

2012-01-23T03:29:00.000-08:00

I've got exciting news for everyone today, I'm taking part in an amazing creative project, SOYU, a brand new brand that is all about East meets West through the medium of art and fashion, this is their launch project, the Creative Zodiac 2012, which takes designs from twelve fabulous artists for each of the animals of the zodiac and gives them a modern reworking, bringing the Zodiac out as an expression of creativity as fresh as the new year.

I've chosen the Rooster as I wanted to draw a Japanese onagadori, it’s a long tailed chicken as you can see! I have taken inspiration from the Japanese painter, Jakuchu Ito, his composition and colours are dramatic, the details he puts in his work are almost crazy, you should check it out if you have a chance, Most of my rooster is hand drawn with ink and gouache to give it a traditional feeling then rendered in photoshop.

See the details of my drawing here, it has been printed beautifully by Ripe Digital.

The prints are available for sale at a discount during Chinese New Year week! (23rd to 29th January)

Below is a little bit about the project by SOYU.

THE CREATIVE ZODIAC
12 Artists x 12 Animals for 2012!

SOYU is a new brand that aims to bring together eastern and western culture through art and fashion, with the force of a Bruce Lee kick to your face - just at a time when the world could do with a bit of positivity.

SOYU's launch project is the Creative Zodiac. A set of 12 prints, by 12 fantastic artists inspired by the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac. Each artist was chosen for their unique style, skill and craft they put in to their pieces. Limited to just 10 prints per piece it is also a response to the mass produced 'Upload and Order' printed products that are appearing online. Each A2 piece is digitally printed on 315gsm cotton uncoated rag, resulting in some of the finest quality wall art you're likely to see around.

SOYU also wants to be fair and accessible with their product line, so they are selling these beautiful prints with a launch offer of just £15 per print during Chinese New Year week (23-29 January).

Head on over to www.soyu.co.uk to grab yourself a bargain, and find out more information about this exciting new brand.

WEBSITE: www.soyu.co.uk
TWITTER: @soyuHQ
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/soyuHQ

The full roster of artists is:
24EXP
J3 Concepts
Killstudio
Natsuki Otani
Okayboss
Robin Boyden
Ruben Ireland
Short
Stephen Chan
Tarin Yuangtrakul
Travis Price
Zutto

Sponsors include:
Ripe Digital
Thunder Chunky
Always Thinkin'
Illustration Rally
Blood Sweat Vector

The Machine

2012-01-19T05:24:00.000-08:00

This design was submitted for Patterns for Colouring where you can download free colouring pages designed by Carlton Hibbert and many more artists. You can submit your own design like I did too! "The Machine" is mobile house/wagon for these two catty girls, I reckon he has a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom somewhere inside him... If you want to download this for you to colour in please visit Patterns for colouring from here, this design is also available for sale as an art print, t-shirt, iphone skin and many more on my shop!

Summer cycling

2012-01-16T05:27:00.000-08:00

Commission for Digital Artist issue 23 "Liven up your line art work tutorial", I've done this ages ago actually but again I've been really lazy with promoting myself since Illustration Rally became so busy! I don't draw landscape image often but hope you like it, I'm not sure if you can tell but I was inspired by beautiful Russian architectures. This image is available as art print, laptop and ipad skin also iphone and ipod skin here!

Portrait

2011-10-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Jarvis Cocker

Alexa Chung

Jeff Bridges

Erin O'Conner

10 mins sketches...

Girlfriend

2011-09-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

For my friend's girlfriend.

Shoot me an email if you want me to draw you or your family, friends or partner's portrait...

Paint it! Make it! retrospective!

2011-06-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

Erica Sharp, Lea Wade, Stephen Chan and I were planning this event over a month and we finally did it last Saturday! We had cakes, balloons, origamis, pens and everything, live drawing by Mr Millerchip, Kristian Jones, Seb Burnett and Stephen Chan was amazing, best live drawing I've ever seen, and people loved live portrait drawing by Jenny Robins and June Sees... We've raised £300.16 pounds on a day when the tube was down Glastonbury was on, and the whole world was conspiring to keep us out of London! (My train in morning was stuck halfway through to London for 20mins and had to change twice after, train for going back home took over 2 hours thought it takes about 1 hour usually, taxi we took from the station wasn't even bothered to stop in front of our flat! )

Preparation time...

Everyone (especially girls!) loved kimonos and yukatas, zine binding, our origami zoo, hundreds of pen, papers and crafty bits, two massive cardboard trees...

Cakes!

I made matcha (green tea) and ginger white choc cupcakes... didn't have a chance to taste... :(

Prizes from ToDryFor, No Guts No Glory and Kuretake UK!

Shop!

Beautiful Emma Block and Kim Roberts in Yukatas!

Emma and Kim looked so stunning, I'm sure their BFs wanted to see this in person... :)

Origami workshop by Erica Sharp and Kuretake UK pen trial!

Zine making workshop by Lea Wade!

Lovely Will Aslett and Katie Moth popped in too...

Live portrait drawing by Jenny Robins and June Sees!

Awesome girls, I love how happy he looks with his portrait... :D

Live drawing in morning!

Completed live drawing by Mr Millerchip, Kristian Jones, Seb Burnett and Stephen Chan!

We have more fantastic pictures on Illustration Rally flickr page, so please check them out.

A massive thanks to all those who came and to all those who helped out tirelessly, giving us the first of what we hope will be many Illustration Rally live art events! We've raised nearly £2,000 since we started our Japan Tsunami Appeal on JustGiving, I could never do this without everyone's help...

I also did a cover art of our Paint it! Make it! zine, I wasn't sure if it's ok for me to do this as all the contributors in the zine is fantastic... but Stephen forced me to do (honest!) so I think I can justify myself this time... You can buy our charity zine from here for the minimum donation for the zine is £3, and postage and packing costs £1.50 for UK shipping, £2.50 rest of the world.

Paint it! Make it! Party for Japan

2011-06-19T07:07:00.000-07:00

Many of you already know that I own another blog called Illustration Rally, and we are organizing a wicked art event to raise money for Japan tsunami appeal. Lovely illustrator friends: Erica Sharp, Lea Wade and Stephen Chan are helping us this event super successful together, they have been so amazing and I can't thank them enough really. :)

I have done a cover art for our special charity zine, and here is a sneaky peek for you!

Hope you like it and feel free to repost this on your blog or site and use the hash tag #paintitmakeit on twitter to spread the word about this, and facebook event page is here!

Event details

When:

Saturday the 25th of June 10am til 5pm

Where:

The Book Club, 100-106 Leonard Street, City of London, Greater London EC2A 4XS

What:

Live Drawing

Keeping you in the mood all day the awesome Mr Millerchip and Kristian Jones will be creating some slick visuals and giving us some original art before your eyes!

Pop Up Shop

Thanks to our amazing community we have some fabulous pieces of art on our charity shop on etsy, and we will be bringing it to life in all it's charity goodness at the event. Browse enjoy and buy, just with everything else it all goes to charity.

Origami Folding

Take part in some tradition and get your fold on, learn a skill, make paper happy and take home something sweet.

How to wear kimono and tea ceremony

Join how to wear kimono workshop and experience traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

Charity Raffle, Part 2!

Need another chance to pick up exclusive, one in a million , designer kitchen ware for only a pound? Then look no further than the live section of our charity raffle where 5 more magnificent tea towels from the super lovely ToDryFor will find loving homes. Check the designs available from Paint it! Make it! updates!

T-shirt Available from No Guts No Glory

Designed by the event live artist Mr Millerchip! The T-shirt "Dunkun - Organic White T" will be available at the event and if you want to learn a little more about the wonderful Millerchip you can read about him in our live artist feature.

New art products to test! Kuretake Pens

Try out some of the hottest new products from amazing pen maker Kuretake. Some amazing pens, you can use in really cool ways, you may even drop your posca, so check it out!

Cakes

There will be cakes! They will be awesome, and you will be able to get your hands on some great munch to keep you fuelled for the day, may contain nuts, will contain tasty, what more could you want!

Music

Music has been careful chosen for your listening pleasure by DJ halwo SAKAMOTO, DJ CHINEN and DJ 柳 (Yanagi). It is an ecxclectic mix of Jpop, Jelectro and techno all mixed by Japanese DJ's to keep you in the mood for a party.

Zine Making

Assemble and bind your very own zine, our zine making is the most interactive collaborative event we can make it so feel free to bring your own bits and bobs to share, from coloured paper ribbons and pens you can bring anything you like to add to your customisation. Our zine is going to be A5 so if you want to, you can bring along your own artwork for people to bind, feel free to sign it or even just bind it into your own zine, the zine is BW so even photocopies would be fun. We will be providing plenty of extra cute bits and bobs too. We have a wonderful selection of artists for your zine making pleasure.

Uberkraaft
Ben the illustrator
Aaron Miller
Gaia Bordicchia
Yupyland
Andy Coucil
Tom Bagshaw
Bubblefriends
Bubi Au Yeung
Dave Bain
Gemma Correll
Bex Glover
Lou Lou & Tummie
Mr Millerchip
the boy fitz hammond
Toy Factory
Lesley Barnes
Seb Burnett
Jonathan Edwards
Fon The Pern
Ruben Ireland
Thereza Rowe
Robert Shadbolt
The Tree House Press

Carlton Hibbert

Erica Sharp

Lea Wade

Natsuki Otani

Stephen Chan

Everything we raise from this event will be donated to our Japan tsunami appeal on JustGiving!

Working for Digital Artist

2011-05-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

Digital Artist, it's an innovative and inspiring tutorial based magazine which is most of you probably know already! I have been working for them recently and it has been amazing experiences, I'm hoping some of tutorials I have done was helpful in some ways... :)

Here are some of my illustrations I have done for them...

Silence

For Digital Artist issue 15 "Chromatic colour tutorial"

Magic

For Digital Artists issue 17 "Design decorative lettering"

They are both available as products from my society6 shop, free shipping through this Sunday so check it out!

Also in this issue, I was featured in their Creative hotlist surrounded by beautiful spread by C86! It was very flattering and I really wish I will be so...

Soul Pancake's "Chew on Life's Big Questions"

2011-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's while back that my "Winged boy" got featured in Soul Pancake's "Chew on Life's Big Questions"...

and it looks like this, Ta-da!!

and my illustration with Rainn Wilson! (it's very quick so don't blink!)

This book is absolutely fantastic, I'm quoting the book feature we did on Illustration Rally here,

"It's another book feature for you now. Soul Pancake is a book that both asks and answers life's big questions. It was born from the Soul Pancake website created by actor Rainn Wilson and is an both a comic indictment of organised thinking and a source of wisdom and strength. The best way of describing this book is as a journey you don't know you are on but you realised you've already come a long way. Not only is the book fun and clever, encouraging interaction and it's own subversion but it does this in an elegant way with clear and fresh typography pitched against some insightful and beautiful illustrations. In this book the idea is the star and its a melting pot of the deep, the trivial and the life affirming.

The book itself is a fusion of images and text that is as vibrant as it can be without taking the shine off the ideas, Beautiful photographs meld seamlessly into anarchic text and incisive illustrations lend a hand to creating something that feels truly warm and innately good. It literally asks questions of you as you read and draws you into something you feel you should have known about since day one. It's gently effective, like a brick in a feather pillow it has a solid message but at no stage do you feel badgered or pushed. It lets you take the lead and take what you need from it. You can tell there is a craft involved and that it has a great deal of intelligent talent hammering it into this one concise volume, but yet it remains as irreverent as it can be whilst tackling the deeper side of the soul.

It really is a special thing to hold and to keep, in part as it's not only beautiful but a really vibrant idea filled guide to the spiritual side of your life.

A wonderful piece of heartfelt spirituality, here it is, it's Soul Pancake's "Chew on Life's Big Questions"."

Have a look at other great art pieces by amazing artists here too, I'm so proud to be in this book!

Art by Justin Williams

Art by Mario Hugo

Art by Joanne Cruickshank

Art by Julia Pott

Art by Maxime Francout

Art by Jack Teagle

Art by Anthony Zinonos

London Fashion Week A/W 2011 illustrated

2011-04-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

noki

Charlie Le Mindu

Masha Ma

Cooperative Designs

Elliott J. Frieze

Eun Jeong

I am posting something on my blog finally! The last post was made.... last October. Well, forget that, anyway, I actually have been busy since then and have many things I can share with you!

To start with I'd like to show some illustrations I created for Amelia's Magazine over LFW A/W 2011. I have tried different styles to see what works the best, what do you think? I really enjoyed drawing noki and I am very happy with how Cooperative Designs turned out. I think what I did with Charlie Le Mindu can develop further as well.

Making a banner!

2010-10-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

I wanted to change my blog title and the banner for ages! (sorry it's so sudden) So I finally started to get on with it, I showed the process on twitter and got some ideas what to put in my illustration.

How I started...

Added chicken legs...

Requests from

@uberkraaft: A diamond

@MissIllustrator: A book

@mattellero: Some sort of animal- a bird or a fox

are added...

@whisk82: A basket of laundry and a washing machine

@shad_0: Super samurai hamster

are added...

@abigaildaker: A boat or a ship

@lesleybarnes: An eagle

are added...

@iamanoctopus: AN OCTOPUS

@daria_h: A flying chair

@r_hakim: Art nouveau frame

is added...

and I just carried on drawing and this is how it's done!
Now I'm going to polish this off and transform it into a banner somehow. :)

Holly Fulton

2010-10-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

I illustrated some Holly Fulton's beautiful dress... for Amelia's magazine! :)

aaaaaand graphical test I did for a job I didn't get... blahhhh

Amazing posts!

2010-10-14T06:15:00.001-07:00

Lovely Lesley Barnes sent me this gorgeous card a while back, I love how beautiful the people she draws are! Such a fun card to look at :)

Also, sweet Emma Cowley did an amazing give away and I got so many illustrated treats. :D

I did a feature on her recently on Illustration Rally blog so if you are interested, read here!

(My camera kept thinking this one has a face!)

LSD love + Margaret Howells + A barricade

2010-09-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

My blog isn't really catching up with my life, so this "LSD love" is made a month ago for Ian Caulkett's Fantastic Suburbia. I created this from Sarah Remy Lee's lovely poem, LSD love.

This one is Margaret Howell's elegant gown for Amelia's Magazine at London Fashion Week. Every time I tried to record the process of my drawing, I totally forget keeping it up, but you can tell my rough's not really helping my lines from the photo below!lol

and here are more random images from my life...

My handmade barricade!

He forgot to let me know whether he was coming back home or staying out, therefore I had to stay up waiting for him till very late, I was furious!! So of course I had to make a barricade as my protest :)))

My illustration in HUCK Magazine

2010-09-20T03:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's real! (what I thought firstly) Yes, I did an illustration for amazing HUCK Magazine. I never really drew someone as wrinkly as him before but I think it came out ok, although I don't entirely get why I'm always surrounded by slightly trippy subjects. I can't even drink alcohol, honest.

This is the original!

They are the pom poms!

I love making them, yeah...

Sunshine

2010-09-09T04:39:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update here, this is a small illustration I did for my exhibition.

I just love ponchos and massive hats!!

Exhibition + Weezer + Breakfast

2010-09-07T08:58:00.000-07:00

So, this is my Weezer for Amelia's Magazine! I never listened to them properly before but River Cuomo is such a photogenic and great fun guy to draw. Apparently, he didn't like Japan for a little bit for some reason (he never said why) and is now married to a Japanese lady... ok, I'm being a detective here :)

I'm now having an exhibition at the T lounge gallery in Norwich as well, this place is so lovely and I blame myself for not coming here when I used to live in Norwich! We will have a reverse private view in October though the date is yet to be confirmed.

Here is my bestest breakfast, I just wanted to show it off because it just looks so tasty. (and it was!)

Don't forget to write to Santa Claus

2010-09-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

My submission for Ballad Of

I remember getting a letter from Santa Claus when I was small... and it was written in some sort of English so I really believed that it was from him. Sweet memories!

Illustrating Ada Zandition

2010-09-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Here is another new fashion illustration, Ada Zandition's beautiful dress I did for Amelia's Magazine!

Read the full article here, very inspiring and you can see the beautiful illustrations of ADZ by Aniela Murphy and Jess Stokes too!

Illustrating Lu Flux

2010-08-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

They are my submission for Amelia's Anthology of Fashion Illustration!

Lu Flux's design is mythical and romantic, it's a pure pleasure to draw her design.

Hope you like them... :)

Russian church and Japanese building

2010-08-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

I rendered some old illustrations which were discovered after a massive cleaning...

You can buy art print of them from here :)

Discovered old illustration...

2010-08-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

I was having a massive summer cleaning and discovered those Japanese and Russian building drawings from a tower of papers I was ignoring for ages.

I'm rendering those to new illustrations for fun and I'm selling the originals for someone who would take better care of them. As these are old illustrations, I'm selling them for only £10 each, just Email me if you are interested! :)

Japanese building £10

138 x 180 mm water colour paper, pencils, inks

Russian church £10

146 x146mm watercolour paper, pastels, pencils

My ninja hamster

2010-07-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

Cotto

2010-07-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

I just became 26 years old the other day and yesterday was the day we booked a dinner at Cotto in Cambridge! It was the first visit there and we were so looking forward to it, so we even skipped a proper lunch. (Maybe the lovey dovey birds we saw earlier was a good sign.)

The Food there was... AWESOME!

Beef Carpaccio

Crayfish and crab starter

Red snapper with sorrel and samphire

Beef fillet steak

Blueberry creme brulee

Apple tart

They have a 3 course set menu only for £35, but they let you chose everything and have a different menu depending on what is fresh. They are also a cafe so you can have various teas and special cakes during the day, we'll definitely go back there again after their summer holiday. :)

Red Vivienne Westwood’s Dress

2010-07-16T04:55:00.000-07:00

Here is another illustration I did for Amelia's Magazine! This is for the article about Kensington Palace's fashionable and fairy exhibition. The palace is of course beautiful and I was instantly in love with this gorgeous red dress so I tried to make both of them look as attractive as possible! Hope it worked... :)

Sketchy sketch

2010-07-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

just a quick sketch of Hunter Dixon's sweet lolly top...

Animal Bandido

2010-07-15T14:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a small illo I did for Amelia's Magazine's Animal Bandido article.

I actually LOVE their sweaters especially, something I want for this Christmas! (if I could be patient...)

Pornsaint Catalog + goodies!

2010-07-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Here is a beautiful Pornsaints Catalog for the group exhibition at Zurich, the size of book is 5.8"x8.3", 20 pages, full colour, with introduction written by Gregorio

Magini and Vanni Santoni.

The artists in this catalog are:

Molly Crabapple

Jeff Faerber

Katelan Foisy

Francesco D' Isa

Aunia Kahn

Zoe Corleone Zoe Lacchei

Steven Leyba

Danny Malboeuf

Robert Morris

Natsuki Otani

Giuseppe Petrilli

Italia Ruotolo

Natalie Shau

Ellen Stagg

Pamela Tait

Kris Wlodarski

Yana

This book contains exposed ladies but it is a theme we humans haven't got bored of drawing for a couple of thousand years so why would you hesitate to get one?! I'm selling this with my winged boy postcard and one of my handmade luggage tags, it's for £4 with PayPal or Credit card. There are only 10 copies available to buy so be quick and have a wonderful gift! :)

ArtBox Magazine

2010-06-20T08:20:00.001-07:00

Yes, I've been featured in ArtBox Magazine June/July '10 issue!!! It's a neat and beautifully square magazine which focuses on contemporary art/design culture. (You can buy a copy in WHSmith!)

Oh No Ono

2010-06-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Image created for The 4o5's Oh No Ono playlist.

Artwork framed!

2010-05-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

This is my newly framed "Miss Panic"!

I love how clean it looks, and it's a nicely done frame though the guy in the frame shop could not stop teasing me for drawing a nude woman, maybe it didn't look quite connected as I am an average normal looking Asian girl. (girl?) I just thought maybe I should at least expose tits as this is for a porn graphical art collective, I'm not that fetish you see...

It is going to be sent to Zurich for upcoming Pornsaints exhibition at Museum of Porn in Art, sounds really exciting, I wonder what do they exhibit usually?!

Z is for Zombie prince

2010-05-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

So, this is the last letter for Illustration Rally's Alphabet theme!

I couldn't come up with anything other than zombies for Z, I don't think anyone could come up with something different, don't you agree?

One of the things I was surprised by while living in England was how much English people love zombies. I wasn't a big fan of zombies or zombie films but I think I got warmer to them now, I loved Shaun of the Dead, I was annoyed by the kids in 28 weeks later, Lesbian Vampire Killers was one of the crappiest film I've ever watched, hmm? It wasn't even a zombie film, I guess zombies take my fancy slightly more.

(checking 28 weeks later's website wasn't a good idea by the way...)

Products available on society6

2010-05-10T02:57:00.000-07:00

That's all what I need to say, shipping fee isn't too cheap if you are living outside America though I'd really really appreciate if anyone actually by those, I was almost in tears when I made my first sale you know!

Each works are available as products from the links below!

Strong woman

www.society6.com/shop/product/35971/tshirts?cl=3

Bloom

www.society6.com/shop/product/27453/tshirts?cl=3

Nirvana

www.society6.com/shop/product/29054/tshirts?cl=3

Girl

www.society6.com/shop/product/34587/tshirts?cl=3

Sketchbook Magazine issue 2

2010-05-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Here I am, I still have something to write, I wasn't just laying down in my bed and wetting my pillow with my mouth water thorough the previous weeks.

Long time ago, I think that was last year, I visited Sketchbook Magazine's office in London for showing my portfolio. I was surprised and inspired by how young the editors are and their passion and talent. Sketchbook Magazine is a quality magazine with fantastic eye candy, it showcases established and emerging creative talents in fashion, design and culture with a focus in features, photography and illustration.

They just published their issue 2 which I contributed a series of illustration featuring Nick Knight's SHOWstudio, it was a fun project and I really enjoyed drawing the costumes designed by Gareth Pugh. Hope you enjoy it too...

You can also read web version of Sketchbook Magazine issue 2 here.

Happy Journey Collective

2010-05-08T06:53:00.000-07:00

It is rainy Saturday which forces me to blog...

Last Friday, the project called Happy Journey Collective was launched. It's started by 3 lovely illustrators, Thereza Rowe, Lesley Barnes and Abi Daker coming up with the idea of creating imaginative illustrated coffins, they invited illustrators/artists and made it into a wonderful and positive collective.

The artists participating in the collective are wonderful, including Simon Wild, uberkraaft, Jo Cheung, and Emma Cowley.

I participated with a piece called "Tempus Fugit" inspired by Mexico's festival of death.

They are also open for commissions through their flickr group so why don't you give it a go?

Lovely girl from a planet of Blur

2010-04-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

Saying "twitter is awesome!!" or "twitter is the best!!!" would put many people off probably and I'm not going to say that. But I must admit I met so many wonderful people through it, and Nadya Saskia is one of them! She is from Jakarta and totally crazy about Blur, she is the reason why I drew Damon Albarn for Illustration Rally.

I took part in her postcard project in which she sends a diy postcard to people who want it, they'll receive the postcard weeks later and they take a picture of themselves with the postcard or just the postcard alone. They send the photos to her and she compiles them into a zine!

Sounds awesome doesn't it?

and this is what I've done for her! I can't wait to see her completed zine...

Be a strong woman

2010-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

I just sent a drawing off for the Photography and Art competition at the Birdcage gallery in Norwich today. I didn't have much time for it so the original image is quite small (5"x7") but I had a little bit of playing around with my scanned image, which I'm hoping that you like.

The theme was circus so I was doing some research but I was really struggling to get any inspiration, when I finally came up with the idea, bondage (I'm not sure how I was going to connect it with the theme circus) my idea even went worse and couldn't get any roughs done. Despite the fact the photographs of Nobuyoshi Araki I was looking at were incredibly inspirational, sexy and passionate.

Anyways, I gave up on drawing bondage and started to draw a juggler but my other half suggested to me to look up Strong men, (I never heard of this before...) and I quite liked the idea so this's what happened in the end.

New illustration added on my website

2010-04-13T16:25:00.000-07:00

As the title says!

Including Nirvana (the image below) which is one of the illustrations displaying at Yolanta hair and beauty salon in Mayfair. You can see all the new work here!

I also am experiencing with typography for making greeting cards, I wonder if you like the line at all...?

and I made a fan page of Illustration Rally on facebook as well, pretty active, ain't I?

Please become a fan of Illustration Rally! I promise you I won't let you down. :)

Featured in Computer Arts Magazine!

2010-04-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Here is wicked news! My work is in this month's Computer Arts Magazine as part of Japan feature! Unfortunately, my name got spelt wrong (Natsuki Osani, it says) and there was almost no-one called by that name on the internet so anyone who's interested in my work because of the article will never find me really.

My name is Natsuki Otani, not Natsuki Osani, I'm just writing this with a little hope that this blog post will give people a chance to reach to my website if there are any! If you are the one who's interested in my illustration and couldn't find my website, the link is below! :D

http://www.natsukiotani.co.uk/

Still, I'm really really happy about this, this is the first time my work ever appeared in such a major magazine. All the Japanese artists in the article are so talented and big names, (I'm not nearly good enough to be next to them honestly) you should keep an eye on those guys!

In the end, a big thank you to Nick Carson for such a wonderful feature.

Secret Places

2010-04-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

I have done a collaboration with Urban Outfitter x Society6, yes! This is called "Hideaway Love", I created this for the theme "Secret Places", this is an incredibly girly and romantic picture, I felt so womanly I must admit.

You can buy art print, iphone cover and laptop skin here!

Illustration Rally

2010-03-27T09:39:00.001-07:00

I have another blog called Illustration Rally which is the blog that has illustrators from all over the world rallying with their lovely drawings, it's just like inky tennis!

I started this blog with Joanne Young originally as a personal project but now it's open to anyone else! With the alphabet theme, we have people helping us up to Z already but we are planning to carry on the project with different themes such as numbers, months, horoscopes, etc!

Here are some awesome illos contributed to Illustration Rally,

Ediot by James Baker

Gaga Ooh la la by Tom Colmans

Heartbroken by Tigz Rice

I SPY. by Ian Caulkett

Have you heard of Pornsaints?

2010-03-22T10:28:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, I was contacted by Francesco D'Isa who is the Pornpope! (One of the coolest titles I've ever heard!) He runs a site called Pornsaints (contains pornographic images) which is an erotic themed arts site, and he asked me to become a Pornbishop which sounded kinda fun and scary, but if you visit their site the quality of art you can see there is wonderful so I thought why not try this. Plus, I can't say I've never drawn pornographic style illustration before.

Here is my portrait of Miss Panic, she was really sweet on her email and I was delighted to hear that she loved my illustration. My work will be up there at some point soon but I was allowed to upload the image on my blog, hope you enjoy this!

Icelandic Music

2010-03-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's such a lovely Sunday so I finally decided to update my blog!

Here are some contributions for The 405 which describe themselves as "an online Music/Art/Film magazine packed with the latest reviews, interviews, news, mixtapes, features & much more. Since being formed in the spring of 2008, The 405 has built up an army of fans, put on some gigs and generally had an amazing time doing so."

Sounds nice, doesn't it? So why not check them out.

I've never heard of Seabear before, but I actually absolutely adore their music, it goes perfectly well with a peaceful Sunday, take that!

Lesley Barnes Bookmark

2010-03-01T14:04:00.000-08:00

I got lovely bookmarks from a wonderful animator/illustrator Lesley Barnes last week,

it was originally bought as a Valentine's day gift but Royal mail didn't deliver it successfully at the first time so she kindly sent me another one of her bookmarks for me too!

After getting these lovely gifts, I was suddenly in a mood for making something hand made by myself. So let's do origami since I'm a totally Japanese, this is a dodecahedron origami I made!

Anyone likes Blur?

2010-02-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

I promised to draw Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon for some lovely Blur crazy girls so here they are.

Damon Albarn

Graham Coxon

He does look too young, I didn't mean to do this to him, but if I had a chance to see him when he was 14, he'd probably looked like this, I guess.

I used to love boys with glasses, I especially loved a Japanese comedian, Ken Yahagi and used his picture as my phone background. All of my friends were dismissive about it, found me strange because he didn't look handsome enough to have as a phone background which was so unfair. Do you want see how he looks like? Here you go.

Ken Yahagi

I was slightly pissed off with the fact that I struggled finding nice images of him on google, by the way.

Hello everybody!

2010-02-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

This is my first post in my new blog, Cats on Mars, it's a blog about my life, my illustration, fashion, music and anything that takes my fancy.

I was never successful with writing diaries, I don't remember well what I've done in my past so I'm lucky that I can draw a little and post it on this blog if it makes any sense.

I put a photo of my desk here so you can see how I work and live.

I start everything from here.