My grandma died last week. She was 92. She’d had 3 husband and a number of adoptive families throughout her life, was taken in by nuns at one point, and went by 6 different names at various different times (most before her mid-20s).

I took some poor photos of photos from her old album, something about the added fuzziness of the copies seems apt – memories, identity, loss – all that.

Something she left behind: a book of poems, written in perfect copper-plate hand-writing, in a way more personal than any photo. Or maybe i just think that because I am a ‘book person’ and have pile upon piles of sketchbooks from over the last dozen years?

So long, grandma. We miss you.

In addition, I am currently loving Sketchbook Magazine – they are filled with pretty things!

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

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…

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

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

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

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: