It’s not the most conventional of festive repeat patterns. But bear with me… I love a pencil shaving. I make a lot of them, on live sketching assignments and on my own work. In a circle, they can be baubles or snowflakes. They’re general enough to be relevant to the … Read More
What is an Advent calendar and where did they come from? In our latest episode of Studio Snack, a food podcast about design, we explore the austere, the odd and the newsworthy, we consult AI and we rethink what an Advent calendar could be. I love going down rabbit holes … Read More
It’s happened to me before: I’m working on an image, lift what’s supposed to be the thing from its background… and what’s left is more interesting. I’ve been reminded of this as I work on a new collection of illustrated garments and totes. I often wear my own designs for … Read More
In our Halloween episode of Studio Snack, we have monster feet, stories behind traditions, weird flavour combinations – and skeleton snack pictures made from the inside out. We’d come up with the idea over some properly spicy chai (digital conversation is marvellous but creatively, nothing quite beats throwing ideas back … Read More
I’ll be sketching at 26 Wordstock @ Bloomsbury Festival. And because my sketching is rooted in design, where I start is with what I’m drawing on. The event will be prefaced by the public launch of pamphlet format poem Berliners by John Simmons at Berliners and Other Poems. Pamphlets, then… … Read More
As creatures stash their food supplies for Winter, in the latest episode of Studio Snack, a collaborative podcast with Narcis Sauleda, we chat about inconvenience food. We explore apocalypse storecupboards, space food, preserving, what we can learn from squirrels… and as always, there are creative experiments. I start with a … Read More
“Hello! We’re gathering in stories!” At Cody Dock’s memory wall, that’s the first step in finding out what people might contribute. The memory wall started with my drawing giant loops of the river Lea. Across three events, I’ve sketched people’s stories for them or coaxed them to add their own: … Read More
I love a good clearout. I’m the daughter of an artist-designer who turned his own into an event – canvases would be ripped; pots smashed; bonfires piled high; work buried in the meadow at the end of the garden. One day, archaeologists will ponder the rituals that these might have … Read More
Buscuit. No, that’s not a typo. Well, it was, until someone taking part in some sketch engagement I was doing at Cody Dock wrote it (biscuit being one of those words it’s surprisingly tricky to remember how to spell) and we decided that it should not just be a word … Read More
Chip fork fish? DIY postcards? There’s been a field trip to the seaside for the latest episode of Studio Snack, a food podcast about design that I make with Narcis Sauleda. We were researching seaside snacks and for our grand day out, as well as my usual hand-bound sketchbook made … Read More