Precious little

I am working on re-branding myself, getting together a new portfolio of work, updating my website and generally becoming awesome. I’m not sure yet whether to begin a new blog, but keep your eyes peeled and I’m sure we’ll all find out soon enough!!

Some sketchy ideas for a new brand identity – Precious Little / illustration & design:

I’ve also joined the world of twitter – it can get lonely working from home some days, after all! Go ahead & add me if you’re interested, I promise I don’t bite (hard): www.twitter.com/precious_little

The Big Draw – photo time!

Saturday involved helping to run a Big Draw event that involved making a version of London that bought together the past, present and future… delicately hand-crafted from cardboard, tape and felt-tip pens, largely by the under-12s. And in the afternoon, I made zoetropes.

Unfortunately, my phone-camera didn’t do justice to the scale of this piece of art or show off the amount of detail that some 8 year olds (only some assisted by their very enthusiastic parent/s) can get onto a scale model of the HMS Belfast…

The Big Draw 2009

Working here this weekend… it will be a creative blast, so come and join in!

Pattern – Illustration Friday

My 1st Illustration Friday submission…

Introducing: pattern!

Found *another* cool podcast – Big Illustration Party Time – I’ve been listening to the first few episodes about useful things like process, portfolios, etc., and there’s definitely some good advice floating around in there, in addition to some good, nerdy stuff about the benefits of different pencils/printers/inks!

Design Work / London Deep for Mogzilla Publishing

Design & colour by me, drawing by Paul McGrory; published by Mogzilla, London Deep will be in shops/online from February.

Sketches

Illustration Island

Although I’ve been doing quite a lot of drawing and inking recently, it’s mostly been A3+sized, and as such, I’ve been too lazy to do the scan-and-paste-together trick required of me to get it onto my blog/gallery. I have a plan to replace my 6 year old powerbook with the latest MacBookPro (15 inches of shiny, high-tech goodness) and when that happens, Photoshop will be running fast enough to make the possibility much more attractive! I hope!

Until that day arrives, check out Illustration Island podcast – so far there have been some genuinely interesting chats about the creative world/industry, though I’ve only listened to the first 3…

Enjoy!! xx

Oh Look – Soviet Animation!

Vinni Pukh – the Russian Winnie the Pooh by Soyuzmultfilm. Hand drawn/animated from little paper cut-outs, and somehow much more sweet and appealing than Disney’s version. If I recall correctly, it’s almost exactly the same as the original A A Milne story, except that Vinni is a “real” bear, not a toy. Therefore there is no Christopher Robin. Apparently the animators thought that (to paraphrase) the ”is this bear real? If so, and Christopher Robin is controlling him, who is controlling Christopher Robin?! Who really exists in this world? Are WE real?!?” side of things was too complicated for children. Well, I never thought of it that way.

Research shows that they also made The Hedgehog in the Fog – I remember seeing that on TV years ago and thinking how beautiful it was then. Looking back, I wasn’t wrong:

Pondlife

A modern frog princess!

((ribbit))

ETA – The books I’ve been designing have been delayed until February – this is not entirely a bad thing, as it’s to do with the publishing company getting new and awesome distributors who want time to publicise them. Also, am trying to organise a little exhibition with a few of my illustrator/designer friends. Hopefully it’ll happen sometime later this year!

France, je t’aime

A week travelling through France is a week well spent.