In love with…drawing

In between commissions I occasionally take on personal portrait pieces, they're always fun to do as I love drawing people and I've found recently in my commercial practice I seem to be drawing slightly less of them.

I will always adore drawing characters, I remember whilst I was an art student one evening I filled a whole concertina moleskin sketchbook of portraits and it was when I clicked with drawing people - sometimes there's a creative block where you hold back drawing a certain thing that you feel you can't, you can build up an almost fear of drawing that thing. I did that with people, but that evening I sat and drew and drew and it finally clicked. I think with drawing it's a process of practise and constantly evolving.

Illustration project with Youth Sauce

Image from The Guardian series by Zachary Norman

Image from The Guardian series by Zachary Norman

I've been working with Youth Sauce, an organisation who provides youth-led services such as projects, events, mentorship and more. Here is a description of what they stand for taken from their tumblr. "We believe in youth empowerment. We are young but professional offering services and opportunities for our peers. We aim to develop enthusiastic young people with established young entrepreneurs and artists, with the assistance of industry professionals sharing skills and experience. We get real and genuine opinions from our peers and provide real opportunities."

Photo by Small green shoots. The sessions were held at Walthamstow Library. 

I worked with them on an illustration project based on new years resolutions. The project included an inspiration trip to The National Portrait Gallery and went towards them gaining a bronze arts award.

The young people created canvasses depicting their resolutions and we exhibited these in Walthamstow Mall over the course of two days. At the mall we talked to Walthamstow residents about their resolutions and created live art to express their new goals. The young people were really dynamic and full of ideas, it was a really inspiring project to be involved with, thank you for inviting me Makeda and Calvin at Youth Sauce!

Amazing artwork produced by Candyce, Ruben & Martell

Live art in Walthamstow Mall - grandfather clock showing Walthamstow residents resolutions

What's in my bag?

Here's what's in my bag currently…The latest Elle Deco mag, mini moleskin sketchbook, a couple of pens, my instax mini camera, butterfly purse, caramel cream lip butter, chewing gum, pocket mirror and hand cream x

Waitrose Kitchen January 14.'

At the end of last year I spent a good couple of months immersed in drawings of food, lots of tasty veggies, herbs & more. One of the commissions I worked on was this one for Waitrose Kitchen magazine. I'm a big fan of the mag, I pick up a copy every month so was really pleased to work on these illustrations with their lovely art editor Kat. I really like the whole art direction of the mag and the colour themes running throughout the pages, this month there's a lot of blue tones and it's nice to see some other great illustrations throughout the mag too! I've also created a few illustrations for the February feel-good food feature so keep an eye out!