Two new wild flower paintings

On May 1st, I picked these - carefully and respectfully, mind - on Hackney marshes. Whilst out there, I do believe I heard a cuckoo in the distance. 

Could be, right?  I'm no expert, but the sound of a cuckoo is pretty much unmistakeable.

Yellow flowers were a traditional part of Beltane celebrations, possibly because yellow represented fire, so I read in Wikipedia. The Gaelic May Day festival traditionally marked the beginning of Summer when cattle were driven out to pasture. Doorways and windows as well as the animals were decorated with yellow May flowers to protect them from evil spirits and to encourage good growth in the fields. 

I wanted me some of those good vibes, and sure enough, I got them from just seeing the yellow flowers in their jars in my studio. A very happy making sight.

Wildflowers don't hang around, so you best be getting on with painting them in a day or so, without thinking too much about the whole thing. Works for me.

Watercolour on Fabriano.

How to work a book fair

The London Book Fair: in the belly of a vast exhibition centre, the gentle illustrator is confronted with stretches of purple and lime green exhibition stands lined with books. In the children's book section, yellows and shouty pinks sprinkled with glitter vie for attention under the neon lights. 

Yikes. Most unlovely. I found myself heading for the door within the hour, grabbing a tea and banana bread from the cart outside for a break and some sunshine before giving it another go.

Here's a survival guide for the visually sensitive.

• Focus is key. Hone in on the talks that offer something of value, slowly walk the aisles and explore when a book looks particularly inviting. Ignore the rest, or try to.
• Check out the non-English markets
• Arrive early for the portfolio show and tell, grab a ticket and bring along an actual  portfolio, as in paper in leather bound cover. Ten minutes max with a random publishing house, but still. I hope to be there next year.
• Ask for a publisher's Children's Book catalogue. Most publishers are happy to hand them out.
• Make forays outside for regular doses of fresh, (Earl's Court) air.
• Arrange to meet up with a friend. Fairs can be overwhelming.

I did enjoy a talk on becoming a children's book illustrator hosted in the Children's Hub where seasoned pro Chris Wormell showed slides of the ideas pages of his sketchbooks: stuffed full of notes and thumbnail sketches, not a single idea wasted. Ideas that have turned into one book after another. As well as many a book that didn't make it, but that's all part of the fun.

Templar Art Director Mike Jolley told us that he enjoys receiving submissions. And looking at blogs. More so than websites, he said he finds blogs far more interesting. Good to know, not so?

And for me, the treasure of the day was in the foreign languages section. Belgian illustrator Anne Herbaut's new book je t'aime tellement que for Casterman. True, the cover is pink, but it is, I think you might agree, a thing of beauty. 

Phew, at last - something genuinely lovely.

How do you survive trade fairs? Any ideas welcomed - please do leave a comment below, I love hearing your thoughts.

The Big Blue book launch

 

My friend Yuval, author and illustrator of The Big Blue Thing on the Hill, had a book launch at the Idler Academy in Westbourne Grove yesterday. Here, his young friend Elliot reads aloud, surrounded by his brother Finley and little sister Scout, amongst others. 

Yuval seemed perfectly at ease signing books and chatting to visitors - he says an upcoming reading at Paddington Library for a school group is a more daunting prospect!

What a fab spot in Westbourne Grove is The Idler Academy - a bookshop of the small but perfectly formed variety - light filled, cosy, with a teeny cafe in the garden and just the right amount of deliciously enticing reading. 

hello, gorgeous (#spring)

This guy is in the churchyard next door to our house. Resolutely spring delicate and fluttery no matter what. Drinkers brawl in the recesses of the church building, school kids toss another empty fried chicken box amongst the graves, bikes flash down the lane - and still, the flowers. Clouds of them, saying hello to the gentle sunshine.

Charcoal and colour pencil on cartridge paper.

New drawing and new friends

This is a drawing I made at Walworth Garden Farm's botanical drawing class in South London earlier this week. When I heard about it I thought it'd be a good way of getting out of the studio and into some more experimental drawing and to see a new garden besides. Walworth Garden Farm is a few blocks down the road from Kennington Underground Station - one of those secret London gardens filled with bees (there are hives), quiet shady places amongst the spring blossoms and inspired planting. 

It was so fun to go back to basics with no pressure at all to produce a masterpiece of any variety. Illustrator and workshop teacher Karen George took us through a range of drawing exercises and also generously shared her own sketch books with us. I loved that we did warm-ups, I hardly ever do those any more.

It was so great to choose from someone else's pile of materials - boxes of potentially new ways of mark making and drawing materials that I wouldn't normally go for. I decided to step away from the watercolours, as I wanted to play around with other ways of adding colour.

On the second day, we were handed secateurs and told we could pick anything we liked from the lovely flower garden and greenhouses - yay! I always love these spiky guys (forgot to ask what they are - anyone?) but a leaf study is a not a Thing of Joy in my books.

I went for a burst of yellow happiness - forsythia, instead, and  began by doing a biro contour drawing before adding pastels and chalk pencil. The Euphorbia got added in afterwards.

It was so lovely to be drawing in a group, to chat and have tea and not get too serious about it all. If you fancy signing up for the next one, you can register for email updates on the website at Walworth Garden farm. Next up is a wooden spoon carving course, which should be loads of fun too. 

the secret delights of st mary's community garden in haggerston

When I first moved to Hackney five years ago, one of the first things I did was to look up a community gardening project so that I could keep a connection to flowers and plants and the changing seasons. I found St Mary's Secret Garden, joined up and have been volunteering there ever since. 

Sometimes, I ask if I can take some flowers home to paint. These ones almost painted themselves onto the page. I loved the mad  floppiness of the Rudbeckias and the late autumn messiness of everything. Flowers from a florist are just not the same at all.

Besides the flowers, I get so much out of volunteering at St Mary's, where I work with adults with learning difficulties.

Last week I planted onions with G, who suffers from bouts of depression in between stretches of great joviality. It took us two hours and we planted three rows, but it isn't all about hurrying to get things done in horticultural therapy. 

The white fly settling like teeny snowflakes on the cabbages, the   cold, wintry soil in our hands, bursts of exuberant song courtesy of P, a group member who loves dancing with his rake as opposed to gathering up leaves. G laughs at the rake dancing, but keeps working, taking great care with each tiny onion. It's good to be out there, planting and helping others to be outside.

Much as I like to be painting in my studio, and wrangling a wacom pen, a day at St Mary's is a good break from all of that.

Sharing the love - my friend Yuval's book is out

You read it here first. 

My friend Yuval Zommer's beautiful children's book, The Big Blue Thing on the Hill, is out. The Big Blue Thing may be a camper van to us humans, but it is a greatly mysterious beast to the animals of the forest, and they want it gone.

It's a first for Yuval, and indeed a first for our circle of children's book illustrators.

I met Yuval on a children's book illustration course at City Lit a while ago, and together with one or two others, we have met once a month to do a show and tell ever since.

The kernel of this book began as an idea sent out to various publishers via email, titled I think, 'The Animal Olympics'. 

In that work, he drew a series of animal characters outdoing one another in sporting feats - a project conceived while watching the Olympics here in London in 2012. 

These drawings, so clearly done with a sense of humour and delight,  were a breakthrough for Yuval. As was discovering drawing on the wacom tablet.

Publishers were immediately interested, but the Olympics had come and gone and he was asked to come up with another concept. Yuval cheerfully got to work on a new story about animals. He always has one or two stories up his sleeve anyway, and wastes no time in waiting for inspiration to arrive.

During our meetings, Yuval has shared the process of the book's development with us and we've all gained insights into the process of crafting a children's book. The collaboration with the publishing team and the way it extended his range, was particularly great to learn about.

How about some flying insects, an editor said. 

Flying insects? 

We'd never seen Yuval doing flying insects. But he was happy to give it a go. At our next meeting, he showed us insects. Wasps. Bees. Funny, wonderful swarms of the things, invading every nook and cranny of the story. And then frogs. Then birds. Snakes. A forest menagerie.

Yuval is already onto the next story, although first up are book launches and the rounds of the trade fairs.

The Big Blue Thing on the Hill goes on sale in late March, but you can pre-order it here.

January blues + sunlight.

More watercolours from colour studies inspired by a visit to Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum, another exhibition and a random album cover.

Still on the blue and grey theme, and still remembering Turner's seascapes, here with some sun added. Cadmium yellow, that would be.

I loved a large scale Biggs and Collings painting at the London Art Fair. Flickering complementary colours, stark geometry, lots of greys. I immediately wanted to include it all.

For the next page, an album cover caught my eye on Spotify. Can't even remember what is was. Point is, inspiration finds me once I drop into a groove. 

Sea blues, winter greys

The first week in January. 

A tricky place, sometimes, with self initiated work. Opening the watercolour box, filling up the water jars, facing a blank page again after the long break. 

This year, I began with binding my own sketchbook. Slicing, stitching and gluing paper and card felt do-able and very, very satisfying. I get to determine the format - square and smallish felt good. 

This is a great DVD on simple bookbinding from Shepherds, paper and bookbinding specialists in London.

I knew I wanted to start off with colour studies, since I had been inspired by a visit to see Turner and the Sea at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

Many of Turner's late, very elemental and rough, more experimental pieces were on show. To my eye, those were some of the most interesting and wow pieces in the exhibition. Pieces which were not originally intended for exhibition, actually, they were private explorations and notes.

I looked and looked at the greys he is so famous for, and at the huge tonal range. 

Back in my studio I'm loving finding the varied greys, hunting for the full range of tonal values using just a few colours and coming back again and again to the same thing in a meditative way. 

The blank page has become an invitation, and I can't wait to finish one spread and start the next each day.

The case of the exploding onions...

Onions and a pressure cooker explosion - the brief to illustrate a piece about the complexity of the Syrian situation, in a recent commission for Diplomat magazine. It was a fun surprise to see that the art director had added an escaped onion to the final layout. 



My bi-weekly screen break - helping out at St Mary's Secret Garden

When I first moved to Hackney five years ago, one of the first things I did was to look up a community gardening project so that I could keep a connection to flowers and plants and the changing seasons. I found the delightful St Mary's Secret Garden and have been volunteering there ever since. 

Sometimes, I ask if I can take some flowers home to paint. These ones almost painted themselves onto the page, I was so inspired by the mad flaming floppiness of the Rudbeckias and the general late autumn messiness of everything. Flowers from a florist are just not the same.

Besides the flowers, I get so much out of volunteering at St Mary's, where I work with adults with learning difficulties and mental health issues. 

Last week I planted onions with G, who suffers from debilitating bouts of depression in between stretches of great joviality. It took us two hours and we planted three rows, but it isn't all about hurrying to get things done in horticultural therapy. 

The white fly settling like teeny snowflakes on the cabbages, the  soil cold and wintry, bursts of exuberant song courtesy of P, a client with a great love of dancing with his rake rather than actually gathering up leaves, and G taking great care with each tiny onion - we had a good time out in the garden. 

Much as I love to be painting in my studio, I treasure my day at St Mary's.

work in progress - sneak share of a new series

I've been drawing up a storm lately - it's been so much fun visiting London attractions in pursuit of groups of people for work on a new series. After a day out drawing, I do a day at home in my studio, scanning the drawings and colouring them digitally. 

Here, a drawing of a visitor viewing a Mayan fertility figure at the British Museum. 

It's work in progress mind you, but I thought I'd drop in and say hi along the way.

How to keep bees happy - Gardeners' World illustration

This was for Gardeners' World magazine recently, in the July issue which featured gardening for bees. It was a lovely commission, so many of my favourite plants and flowers to paint all in one go, and in enough detail that they are identifiable. 

Pretty intense to work on - watercolour drawings of plants flew onto the page, then to the scanner and then whiz bang wheeee into layers in Photoshop. After that, more tweaks, a couple of add-ins and some changes here and there and many cups of rooibos tea in between.

Still, now I have some idea of what makes a bee's heart happy, and a new appreciation for these furry guys and their patrols of the among the flowers in our back garden, sometimes until late into the summer evenings. 

And a new appreciation, too, for my wacom tablet...

nasturtiums snaking through the garden

I'm so happy with all the surprise seedlings that came up in our garden this year. Nasturtiums, feverfew, lemon balm and poppies all germinated from the lovely compost we got from St Mary's Secret Garden.

There's definitely something to be said for buying compost from an organic garden tended with love - if wildness and weeds are your thing. 

Plenty inspiring to draw, for one thing. I couldn't not draw these guys, I so love the leaf shape and the snaky thing they do.

There were huge drifts of nasturtiums in the garden of my childhood in Cape Town, and I loved hunting for the special ones - the dark reds or wildly flame patterned oranges - to add to the bunches my mum would pick and arrange in a tangle in a glass vase.  

Funny that we never thought to save the seeds, but I guess to us they were just weeds growing on the edge of our sprawling garden, not so much ornamental flowers in specific colours. 

Marker pen on paper plus digital drawing.

illustration friday: travel

The most memorable birthday coffee and cake ever on that Istanbul visit - a plate of honey-crumbly, crispy light pistachio baklava and a full force, proper coffee, in an aircon, tiled  pastry shop on the newer side of the river amongst the office buildings. 

That's the thing about exploring in a city like Istanbul - you can never say what will surprise you best.  

I did this illustration a good few years ago, as a competition entry for a textile magazine. (Back then, I didn't think twice about including the  printed bits, heh heh. Oops - copyright.)

I'm not sure it's really where I'm at these days, style-wise, but no matter. I'm much more into keeping it easy breezier. Progress!

Still. I thought it might be fun to give it some more mileage, see what happens. Open up the travel illustration possibilities in my work and all.