Exciting Happenings: Me and my work featured on Crushable.com!

I did this interview a couple of months back, and then my life went into overdrive with my new job that I completely forgot to actually talk about it! Which is crazy seeing as I was damn excited about it.





The really awesome Tom Rosinski, who is a writer and graphic designer at Crushable.com, contacted me saying he really liked my work and wanted to feature me! Click here for the full interview.


Crushable is a really great fashion/design/entertainment/culture online magazine, based in America, I suggest you save it as one of your bookmarks.

Woo!

Naja Conrad-Hansen: Designer and Artist from Copenhagen

I've just come across Naja Conrad-Hansen's work in the latest issue of Varoom! Magazine and have to share it. She's so talented and her work is beautiful, edgy, with a hint of darkness and horror, firmly rooted in fashion.

"Graduating from Danmarks Design School in 2003 with a Ma in Visual communication and a background in fine art; she started her profession as a freelance designer and artist in 2003. Her practice embraces illustration, painting, graphic design, art direction, and making silk-screen prints + definitely more. Inspirations comes equally from the worlds of fashion, hardcore music, and traditional art and design and in general observing the world around her. The illustration style is basically about "finding some untouched areas of the mind and stimulating the eye and imagination. Naja Conrad-Hansen has worked on projects ranging from Max Mara to the solid perfume Filth, as well as an award-winning children book. Her works have been included in a wide variety of fashion/graphic magazines and books. She also designs print and pattern design for different clothing labels including limited edition print for her own brand Meannorth."

I love ink work and the selective use of colour works very well. Her figures have that similar distorted feel like Julie Verhoeven's fashion figures do, and there's so much energy. Also I love how she uses text as well, that always goes down well with me. I would love to be able to create work on a level like this. This is another example of an artist who inspires and makes you depressed at the same time. Take a look at her portfolio site, Mean North, there's tonnes to wade through.

All this work posted is copyright to Naja Conrad-Hansen.

Coveting: Simon Cook's Christmas Cheat Sheets

I saw these and thought they were brilliant. Simon Cook is a very talented illustrator, but also a genius in my books for inventing these 'christmas cheat sheets', which is his "attempt to solve the age old problem of buying clothes for your better half at Christmas time... So basically you fill out one and give it to your boyfriend/girlfriend (or whoever you're expecting a present off), or get them to fill out one for you so you don't blow a surprise by asking for a particular."

Pretty damn simple, and simply damn pretty too:

Clicky for bigger.

This is the girls version - there is also the boys version too. Here's a few close ups:

haha, ring size. Won't be needing that.

I love the retro typography and the really limited colour use, feels very 50s and vintage and I like that. It also has that screenprinted feel which makes it seem very personal and tailored.

I really want to use it myself but don't have anyone to give it to =/ Save parents. And they never buy me clothes. They know better than that.

Great idea though. Found via Drawn!

You can read and see more about Simon Cook aka Cookie over at his website and blog, which is full of tasty things like:

and

and

Beautiful.

All images are copyright to Simon Cook of course. Chuh.

Recipe Look

I was told about this site aaages ago by Tom, the creator of Recipe Look, when he commented on an old post about my illustrated recipe book.

I then went 'that's a really great idea for a site!' in my head, and then... didn't do a lot about it. But my illustration yesterday about the muffins I made reminded me about it, and when I had a little look again, it's going really strong.

Here's what it's all about:

"Are you fed up with normal recipes and their pesky, text based formats? Do you want to see some life breathed in to your lunchbox inspiration, some spectacle in your spatchcock chicken? Recipe Look is here to save you supper time. It’s packed with interesting food ideas and they’re all drawn out by hand, so you can easilt see what you have to do. What’s more, you have the chance to make your own ‘recipe look’ and send it in to us. We’ll simply make it the right size and stick it on the site; you’ll be famous in minutes!"

Which I think is a great idea - I do love food illustration and illustrated recipes and it's really inspiring to see loads of recipes submitted from all over, as well as how people are drawing them - the idea is to use the least amount of words as possible so the recipe comes across purely in the drawing.

This is the most recent one from the site, sent in by orboc:

So that's the basic idea. I'm going to email the muffin recipe in so you might see it up there soon.

It would be nice to have coloured/arranged the recipe in Illustrator as doing something hand drawn never comes out exactly the way you wanted it to. But I am still Mac-less and have only MS Paint at my disposal. Yeah... not ideal.

Soon. Hopefully. Probably not :(

David Fullarton - Illustrator from San Francisco

I found David Fullarton's work a while ago now (I've completely forgotten how I came across it, possibly just from my own mintynet meanderings, possibly from another blog) and I'm finally getting round to posting about it.

I absolutely love it. It's got all the factors that make me take notice of another illustrator's work - collage (graph paper mwahaha), hand rendered type, mix media, amazing drawing skills, wit and a touch of melancholy. I can't stop looking through his Behance portfolio - definitely check it out.

I love this one. Made me giggle.

He's also done a series for the Sisyphus Office Exhibition, Houston 2009. - "The artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices in and around Houston in order to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life."

Heh. I think we've all felt like this at some point.

I just really love his entire visual language, and the fact that it's entirely handmade is always a winner for me - digital is great but I love the feeling of having something finished (or not) in your hands.

It just reminds me that I really need to keep drawing - I've basically stopped at the moment, haven't done a collage or anything for bloody ages. That makes me sad. Time is so precious these days though, I get home from work every night at about 7.30-8 and end up going to bed at 10 at the latest cos I get up so early... so any creativity (outside of placement - I'm being creative all day there) has to be done at weekends really. And I haven't had a spare weekend for weeeeks so I'm feeling really antsy at the moment because I have a massive to do list. Some of which includes redoing the header for this blog, redoing my website (I don't like it anymore ha), and making my twitter page and avatar pretty. And those are the easy things.

All of which I could do right now if I had a mac! I was bought the entire CS4 suite for a graduation present which is so ace and I can't wait to use it... just need something to install it on :P Cos I bloody hate windows and photoshop. Eugh. Worst combo ever.

Anyway, my placement is going really well, despite the fact I was ill (swine flu? hmmm) last week so missed a day and a half. Including being deathly ill on my birthday. Which was so crap. But I'm all good now and getting proper stuck in, I'm really loving it there. Worcester is so nice as well, really pretty town. (city?)

Enough rambling. I could ramble all day. But apparently I'm going for a run in 20 minutes and I semi don't want to. But fatness has occurred and I must. Sigh. Turrah.