More ampersand-ery antics

After my initial Daily Ampersand Project post, I'm discovering more and more lovely ampersand-ery goodness.

The awesome Snakes and Suits have a pretty hefty range of ampersand related clothing and accessories, and all you need to feel a bit special and smug.

I love this, defo need it in my life. I used to have a Times new roman ampersand as an earring and I lost it :( argh.

I also really like this pattern being designed out of repeated ampersands, something to try myself I think.

Good stuff.

Also, the very talented Sophie Henson designed her own ampersand after being asked by Pitch Design Union in Chicago to be involved in a collaborative project. Read her blog post about it here, and take a look at what she created:

Credit to Sophie Henson, not me.

I really like what she came up with, really cute :) I'd like to see the rest of the collaborative project too.

I first mentioned Sophie Henson a while ago in a post all about pencil illustration, she's been up to some great stuff recently, including designing for USC's new Abandon range. I really want this hoodie:
the design is lovely, just shows what an amazing doodler she is. Christmas list!

Her recent work is giving me envy, I'm so itching to get in front of photoshop and spend days whacking new work out; I have so many ideas right now and it's killing me not being able to do it :( But I am still mac-less and there's no way this laptop can handle photoshop anymore. It's so frustrating. I can do hand drawn stuff all I like and that's fine, but I'm a layered kind of girl and I need layers. I need detail. I need the undo button, tbh.

Pencil Power

I want to post today about a few illustrators that really inspire me, who all work with pencil predominantly. I'm a huge fan of good ol' fashioned pencil drawing in illustration, and I'm constantly trying to improve my drawing because I think it's important in this crazy digital world to still have these skills.

I've just discovered an amazing illustrator through a recent post by the guys at It's Nice That, who only goes by the name Henri.






Pretty damn awesome. It's all about Playstation.

Next is my favourite, I think I came across her a while ago in Grafik magazine, her work has inspired me so much. Esra Roise:




This one I love; there's something so personal about it. Reminds me that I need to draw the contents of my handbag soon. Actually I might just draw my handbag, it's very pretty.
Tapes! I love tapes, drawing them is somehow really exciting. These are just beautifully drawn.

Some of these are drawn from photographs, snapshot-style, which was a source of inspiration for my Seven Sins project.

Next up is Denise Van Leeuwen (what a great name!) She works with text occasionally and her images have a super-surreal feeling to them; purposefully out of proportion and quite stunning:





The colours are great as well, love that blue hair!


Sophie Henson is also great, lots of hand drawn type (which of course everyone knows I love), she draws with pen rather than pencil but her work is equally tasty:



This is great, love this image so much.

Another 'contents of your handbag' type illustration. The blue tone of this makes it extra special, I guess it reminds me of biro doodling. And is that a cassette tape I spot? ;)


I hope people get as much inspiration/tickly sensations from these illustrators as I do. Their work blows me away. Also, do you know of any awesome pencil/pen illustrators out there that I don't? I'd love to feed my visual habit.


In other news, the kind people at Creative Wolverhampton have posted about my Seven deadly sins handmade book! Which was so exciting and unexpected ^.^ That's a really good blog actually, I've been following it recently, especially if you live/study in Wolves and the surrounding areas, with news, interesting bits, things like that. Check it owwwwwt.

I'll be posting again really soon, seems I have lots of things buzzing around in my head that I want to talk about. I had a job interview yesterday and I have an interview for an Illustrator placement tomorrow... that's very exciting.

Lastly, I saw Wolverine last night. Go see it. Effects are immense, Gambit is a legend (he's always been my favourite), and well... girls, it's Wolverine. Just go watch.