Welcome to rachelsays... The blog of Rachel Lewis, containing my thoughts and musings on illustration, design, fashion, music, cakey-bakey goodness, culture and things that I generally find cool. There's also a good chance my own illustration work will pop up on here.
All work on this blog is copyright to me unless I state that it isn't. Obviously. Don't do stealing, kids.
So come on in, have a look around, and leave a comment if you like what you see.
Wine. Everyone loves wine. Nice nice nice. I generally prefer the red variety, on a friday night to melt away the worries of the week. Or, as tonight, on a tuesday night because it was already open and I like to numb things. Wine labels are quite fascinating to me, as an illustrator/designer it's nice to look at the care (or not, in some cases) that are gone into their designs. Who hasn't bought a bottle of wine because the label was nice? (especially if it's half price, that's always good too.)
So imagine my glee when I discovered that Basso & Brooke, those crazy fashion designers best known for their fearless prints, have teamed up with little known wine company Turning Leaf (well I'd never heard of them) to design these amazing bottles. The first image is from this spanish(?) site, the larger images were kindly emailed to me from Turning Leaf themselves after they saw this original post. Aren't the designs amazing? Here is bit more about the collaboration from Turning Leaf themselves:
- As well as curating a blog for Turning Leaf, where Basso & Brooke will open up their little black book of secrets, the designers will also be developing a range of bespoke, limited edition products with Turning Leaf.
- Some limited edition products will be available to Turning Leaf customers and others via exclusive retail partners.
- The blog will reveal ‘what’s hot’ during the Spring/ Summer months and will be hosted on the Turning Leaf Wines website
- Over the next six months Basso & Brooke will also be launching a series of Turning Leaf events, including an exclusive retail partnership and a pop up shop in April.
- Basso & Brooke will be visiting the Turning Leaf vineyard in California's Sonoma Valley near San Francisco, following their London Fashion Week show on 23rd February
The pop up shop sounds amazing - more info from me on that soon....
Here is a good article from the FT about the collaboration - discussing their inspiration from Jeff Koon's collages, with this great bit - "Brooke presented Dennison with the flamboyant bottle and said, “It’s not particularly conservative.” Dennison inspected it. “And Turning Leaf has traditionally been a conservative brand,” he said.
“But you’ve got to be on people’s lips,” said Brooke. “You’ve got to think out of the box.” Dennison warmed to the idea. “This is going to catch their eyes,” he said. “Then catch their fantasy.”
I think that idea is great - Turning Leaf's motto is 'Taste the Colour' and you certainly get that feeling from the designs, which have snow leopards and volcanoes (how apt) intertwined, among other things. Wine is always seen as so serious - even when you drink it, you feel somehow more restrained, and sometimes wine is fun and you want something that isn't all Serif fonts and cream, heavy matte paper. You know?
As soon as I find more of the shots of the bottles, I'll post them. In the meantime, Basso & Brooke's website is here -beware, you can do nothing but click to open an email, but it's still pretty, and Turning Leaf's site. Here are some images of Basso & Brooke's amazing fashion design to get your juices flowing...
Just beautiful examples of what can be created with digital printing techniques and genius handling of colour. Oh, to wear something like this... and have the legs for it... ah.
All images credited to where I found them, etc etc.
Now, clearly I'm a sucker for furry animals, but ones with an east london mafia theme and cockney accent? I'm so there.
Travelodge have come up with this great advert for the Zzz Squad, with some great lines in there. Also I do enjoy the shredded pillow and 'Lucky Frank' (not so lucky) on the front of the dustcart. There's some definite 'ahs' in that advert (especially Jon AKA Mad Dog) which I'm sure Mr Sleep would tell you to man-up or something.
Considering most hotel adverts are cheesey or have Lenny Henry in them, this is pretty out there, for hotel-land. Still gets across that you'll have a great nights sleep (apparently) as you'll be looked after by some cute mafia-types who will scare pigeons for you. Rock.
You're getting a plethora of fashion posts, I must say. Lucky you.
I bought Company's first High Street Edit the other day, mainly because it's printed on lovely matte paper. Simple things eh? But seriously, the design layout of it is great and I really enjoyed reading it. There are loads of great looks and trends in there and I'm in danger of wanting it all. Here's one look that caught my eye:
I'm not a fan of khaki usually but it's out there a lot and these high waisted culottes are quirky. What I'm interested in is the layering of cycling shorts under more shorts. Hmmm, I thought, I like that. I finally ended by long hunt for lace cycling shorts with a find on missguided, and also by cutting up some lace tights I bought that were too long for my little legs.
So I've now taken to wearing them up skirts and shorts a lot. I don't own any culottes though; I have awful memories of some blue cord ones I had when I was about 8 and that is a horror that's hard to shake off.
I love free stuff. Especially when I have no money, such is now. You might say 'Yeah but you've got a swanky new job in London, you must have money' I say, oh no friend, not when nasty bank people decide to decrease your graduate overdraft! I have been given warning, I knew it would happen, but 'a year after graduating' seemed like so far away... now I know it's not. So very soon, a large proportion of my interest free overdraft is being ripped from under me like a proverbial carpet, and I haven't earned anywhere near enough what is needed to pay it back yet. Especially as I'm also trying to save money to move out of my parents house as the commute into London is literally destroying me. You know what? Students don't deserve student discount... I think graduates are more in need. I've never been so poor in my life! Graduate discount please.
So, I've basically imposed a minimum 3 month ban on shopping/spending. I've allowed myself the odd coffee (or in this case, diet coke) and the odd alcoholic beverage, but that's it. No clothes, no books, no CDs, no cinema (yeah, like that's going to happen, with Iron Man 2, Sex and the City 2 and Eclipse all here to tempt me) and basically, no fun. Boo.
So free stuff is what it's all about. I've been raping my boots points (I had so many.... waa) and grabbing every free newspaper and magazine in the street (Metro, ES and Stylist are now my staples), so I was tres happy when I saw this in the meal deal section:
I had a blood test* on thursday so was in Boots in dire need of sugary substance. I saw that they're giving away Nails Inc nail varnish when you buy 2 bottles of diet coke! So bargainous. Considering my medical need for diet coke, I figured this was very worth it. I realise that there's no sugar in diet coke but... it still seemed to work so sssh. I picked up the first one in from the left, as I'm all about pale shades these days and this is a great purple/grey colour, really interesting:
It matches perfectly with some tights I've got too, was very happy.
In fact, it's very much like that Chanel 'Greige' that everyone's been going crazy over - yes, that's grey and beige, folks! Here's the Chanel one:
So, I've now got a designer-ish nail colour for free. Ace.
I'd never bought Nails Inc before but I'd heard they were good: I've been wearing this since thursday, (it's now sunday) and it's held up really well, only chippage on two fingers:
And that's my fault from where I'd picked it. Ha, look at my weird bent fingers, I'm sure this angle exacerbates it, i'm not that strange. Nice colour though huh? I love it. Apparently it's worth £10.50, which I don't think I'd ever pay for a nail varnish, but if they last this well... And I'm sure these are going to fly off the shelves, there's great deep reds and purples too.
So now I have my latest beauty/consumption fix, for NUFFIN'. Hurrah! I'm sure I'll be posting/whining in future about my financial situation, so any other free stuff that I can "review/keep" would be amazing. You know, for research purposes. Of course. /shameless
*Pretty sure it's nothing to worry about. I'm not dying, just getting many many stomach pains. I am a complete nightmare with getting blood out of me; I have very deep veins (she had to stab me 3 times!) and I go totally weak, sick and dizzy as soon as any is taken out of me. I have no problem with the sight of blood at all, it's just this horrible aversion my body seems to have with letting any of it go. God help me if I ever meet a vampire, I wouldn't survive a sip!
Never underestimate the power of Twitter. I would never have got involved with this if I hadn't seen the RT on my feed. Leith Festival (just outside of Edinburgh) needed a poster doing for their fundraiser, which sounds like it'll be great - Leith's Found Fashions:
'The Evening will showcase outfits designed by local designers and outfits created in association with local charity shops!
There will be Live music from Leith's Very own Obehi: www.obehimusic.com
www.facebook.com/obehionline
There will also be an opportunity for you to purchase the fashions on show and fashions that were not displayed on the catwalk!'
So I sent them a few rough drafts and they chose mine for the final designs! Nice.
I wanted to give the designs a real vintage feel, so used found imagery coupled with classic fonts (Gill Sans and Futura to name a few) and am really happy with the outcome. The first is a much more fun, kitsch tongue in cheek look & feel, with a cute curly typeface called 'Kushtie' which I love. The second is an old Vogue Pattern Design amended to include all the information and to show off the idea of Vintage Fashion.
I really wanted to go see Pick Me Up so it was great they held Glug there - killing two birds with one stone so to speak. Like I said, I was tres tired and really stressed from work so was really looking forward to a fun evening and lots of wine. That turned into 1 small cup of wine as it was so expensive! £4 for a small glass of what tasted like very cheap white wine wasn't fun :( What I really wanted was a Bulmers but they told me they had sold out - which was strange as I got there early so they must have only had a very small number. Anyway. No cider for Rachel.
I went on my own this time as I wanted to try and actually network - but actually bumped into Cynthia off my Immersion course while we were waiting to be let in, and I'm so glad I did - it wasn't really an environment conducive to real networking! So we spent the evening together, chatting about our work and what we were seeing etc. We also saw 4 or 5 others off our course too so that was really nice :)
Everyone got handed a free Mr Bingo print at entry so that was ace. Here's mine on my wall of my 'studio' (...desk in loft...)
Lovely.
Because of last time's issues with the talks (just too many people; couldn't hear/see very well), they decided to do a raffle type thing this time - there were 3 talks, 90 people in each, and you can only see one of them. To get in it was a free ticket thing, first come first served. We got there early so got a ticket easy, although it wasn't very well organised - just girls standing around handing out the tickets - they very easily got mobbed. Would have been better if they were behind a desk, and you could queue for the respective talk number. We went for talk no.2, which had Chrissie Macdonald, Emily Forgot and Sam Arthur from Nobrow. I really like Chrissie Macdonald's work for Orange (have talked about it before) and the other two seemed interesting. We met Sam before the talks actually, he was really nice and was telling us a bit about how Nobrow works and how it started, we also got chatting about Wolverhampton as he went to school there! He hated it lol. I still have fond memories of it obviously, from going to Uni there, but we agreed it was definitely a place you had to escape from!
We mooched around for a while, got some overpriced drinks and checked out all the art. There was a lot of it! Some really big names too, like Hellovon, (who makes me sick because he is so good) Hvass & Hannibal, James Joyce, Mr Bingo, Peepshow, and Rob Ryan. There was also Erin Petson, who I'd never heard of, but is my new favourite love:
Her work is amazing and seeing it on screen really doesn't do it justice. It's totally mixed media and experimental with a really strong colour palette and definite roots in fashion. Close up it's so delicate yet strong and we both agreed it was our favourite - a lot of the other work there was amazing too but very digital-heavy. Don't get me wrong, I love using the computer in my own work but I've always favoured the handmade quality and such a lot of illustration at the moment is too digital, in my opinion. It was so refreshing to see Erin's work.
When it was time for the talks we battled our way through (it was very busy... again... and hot! So hot) back to the entrance, and after asking around figured out the talks were right outside of the building and then back in again. I've heard some people say they couldn't find the talks at all, which is bad... but it wasnt that hard, bit tricky but not impossible. I think it's just the nature of Somerset House that it's very twisty and lots of little rooms that it's not the easiest to navigate.
The actual talk was great though, we got in in time to get a seat and it quickly filled up. The basis was for each speaker to briefly talk about 5 things/images which inspire them and their work. It was really nice to hear this from other creatives and the variety of things which inspire them and why. I loved hearing inside Emily Forgot's random mind, she definitely made us giggle the most. Sam's confession of his love of Ladybird books was great too.
After that we decided to check out all the big rooms around the exhibition where the live stuff was happening - Print Club London doing live screenprinting, Rob Ryan's fully functioning studio, Landfill Editions with their crazy Risograph Printer (which we'd never heard of and were fascinated by), etc. Rob Ryan was in his studio but we couldn't think of anything to say to him except 'you iz well good innit' so we decided not to. Great studio though, and it solved the mystery I always wondered about how prolific he is when his creations must take hours - he has minions! Many minions! Who sit there scalpoling his creations and screenprinting others etc etc. Ah. When you are successful, you can afford minions I suppose. Here's a video from Creative Review of Rob Ryan in his pop-up studio:
We ended up leaving at about 9.15 I think - I had to drag myself back to Euston and then home to Leighton so couldn't stay late with work the next day. All in all it was a really inspirational and fun evening, so thanks Glug. Just wasn't really a networking event! If I had have gone on my own, I fear I would have just walked roun don my own wthout really talking to anybody - I didn't see anybody else on their own, everybody seemed to be with friends again. Which is fine. I just think that the exhibition was too interesting and immersive to really have to make the effort to talk to new people. Especially with the lack of free flowing cheap alcohol.
On April 17th I made my way down to Carnaby St on a lovely sunny saturday for Sketchbook Magazine's Pop Up Shop. After fighting my way through the crowds and tourists around Oxford Circus (and holding my bag like a baby after it was broken by the tube barriers shutting on it!! Not happy, it literally opened for less than 2 seconds) I got to the shop on Newburgh street for a 12pm Fashion Illustration Workshop with a lovely girl called Gabriella, who is currently on her MA and was teaching the workshop.
I had a little mooch round the shop before going down to the workshop - it's a great little space. I was going to take photos but after the great bag debacle I really couldn't be arsed to dig around in it, risking serious overspill, to find my tiny camera (one of the reasons why it ripped was possibly because it was full of heavy magazines and everything I lug around with me all day) so... there. Plenty of other bloggers have taken photos though, like Diamond Canopy's Winnie, so don't feel too hard done by.
Images from Sketchbook Mag's blog, copyright to Annie Driscoll.
Oh, and free Vitamin Water though, that was nice :)
I love fashion illustration and it's one of those things that I always tried to do a bit of at uni, and love it (especially people like David Downton, so amazing) but was never any good. Drawing people has always been my weakness - I loved life drawing at uni but our course never offered enough of it, and the variety of model was very poor. I tend to draw people with strange proportions, which is fine, but not great for representing clothes.
The workshop was really nice, only about 8 of us I think, and we were all pretty much beginners when it came to it so it was good. Gabriella started right at the beginning, with proportions and how to get it all right.
I knew how it normally works, with splitting the body into sections, etc, but I had no idea that fashion illustration proportions were different to normal ones. It makes obvious sense because all fashion illustrations have really long legs, but I never gave it a thought before. You basically move the navel up higher than you normally would, and then split it up as you would from there. Aha.
The above one is an attempt at giving the model some kind of pose, with hips onto one side. Harder than it looks. A lot of my sketches came out looking like aliens.
After we had our poses though, we could then use our magazines to cut pieces out and collage over the top. I love collage, and do a lot of it, so I found this much much easier than the drawing part.
It's definitely given me lots of ideas with regards to how I could use this in my work in the future, and I really want to keep practising at it and get a lot better at the proportions. I also reeeaally need to go life drawing again, I miss it. It's just time though.. I don't get much time to do any illustration these days with my job now. Which upsets me. Sigh.
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