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
For a talk at City Lit, I’ve been looking at how and why my creative practice has grown, and what I bring from one strand to the others. It’s been a fascinating talk to put together – and here’s what it’s shown me about how creative knowledge and skills can … 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
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
On the face of it, I have three strands of work: design, creative direction and sketch illustration. But I bring my design knowledge to illustration formats and materials and my reportage eye to my work on communication design and branding. Here, two strands of my work are drawn together – … Read More
A half-finished word. This is part of a slow side project spinning off from notes scribbled in a writing workshop involving a harp (thank you, fellow 26 member Fiona Thompson) – but I digress. This half-finished embroidered word. Embroidery is very Zen. I get to look at work in progress … Read More
Pencil shavings. Brush twirls. I like the by-products of creative endeavour. I’ve even made a visual identity out of them, discarding the vector images I had made in favour of the shapes left on my screen. And so, cutting out petals from old paper swatches for a Studio Snack podcast … Read More
Most of my sketching work is reporting on things or gathering in people’s stories. But I’ve turned narrative illustrator for the latest episode of Studio Snack, the monthly podcast I make with collaborator Narcis Sauleda. This month’s episode is on fictional snacks and our creative experiment has involved making up … Read More
In the latest Studio Snack podcast, Carrot, stick, my creative experiment gives me a way of tackling a picture problem… Investigating whether carrots really do help us see in the dark, we had some creative playtime with luminous and fluorescent materials. Beside myself with excitement that luminous thread even exists, … Read More