Waitrose Kitchen February 14.'

I'm really enjoying working on this lovely commission for Waitrose Kitchen 'Feel-good food.' This month it's all about mushrooms, turnips, fennel, mussels and kalamata olives! I made the Italian baked aubergine whilst working on this and it was delicious! 

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!

2013 Favourite bits

2013 was a really fun year, I embarked on lots of lovely illustrated adventures and projects and I'm so excited for the new year! I'm very thankful for all the opportunities and grateful to be doing something I truly love.

Here are some of my favourite things that happened last year…x

At the beginning of the year a giant egg was delivered to my door and I spent a few weeks hand illustrating it to raise money for Action for Children as part of The Lindt Big Egg Hunt. My design was shortlisted for The Association of Illustrators 2013 awards.

I worked with the lovely team at Vita V Organics to produce their first two salad dressing labels.

The Financial Times commissioned me to illustrate a feature celebrating 100 years of the Chelsea Flower Show.

I got the privilege of working with creative agency babyGrand on some illustrations for Radley. The project was commissioned to celebrate 15 years of the brand. This was one of my most enjoyable jobs, I loved the theme and brief, unfortunately the illustrations weren't used in the end but I really enjoyed the process.

I was really excited to be asked to draw for Stylist magazine - this job was a reminder of why I love being an illustrator, you never know what you may be asked to draw and illustrating a timeline of the bikini line is no exception!

I worked with Anova books on my first commission in publishing. shortly followed by…

...a book project for Rodale inc. I created over 66 illustrations of veggies & herbs and gardening projects, all to be revealed fully next year!

I'm currently working on a project with Youth Sauce - an organisation who works with young people to provide creative workshops, courses and mentorship. The project 'Walthamstow resolutions,' is based on new years resolutions of Walthamstow residents and culminates in an exhibition in Walthamstow mall in the new year. I'll post more info about the project soon. 

Does anyone have any good new years resolutions? I seem to have a few too many at the moment but i like to see them more as achievable goals rather than promises of things that will never happen :) 

Thanks so much for stopping by and taking a peek at my blog. Wishing everyone a very happy and healthy 2014!

N by Norwegian

I was recently asked to illustrate another article by Toby Young (I first illustrated a Toby Young article for Stella magazine a few years ago.) The article 'How not to do New York,' examines the reasons Toby failed to 'take' New York. It was a fun piece to illustrate with funny anecdotes that conjured up great images. I chose to illustrate Toby as a small character representing his feelings of insignificance. There are five illustrations altogether so if you're flying to Norway check them out in the flesh in N by Norwegian magazine. Special thanks to Rickard Westin for great art direction.

I'm currently finishing up a deadline on a book I've been working on for the last few months for Rodale, it's getting to the end now and it's exciting to see it all coming together. It will be out in February 2014. I've also worked on a book for Anova books which is out in March and I have some illustrations in the January and February issues of Waitrose Kitchen magazine so watch this space for new work coming soon in the new year!