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

 Photo courtesy of Amelia's Magazine

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

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

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

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

Jarvis Cocker

Alexa Chung

Jeff Bridges

Erin O'Conner

10 mins sketches...

Girlfriend

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!

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.