The Bunnies

Separated by their differences.

Bunny Rabbit

lovely, lovely slight procrastination.

Steller

The Sea Eagle.

I saw these beautiful birds at Edinburgh Zoo and I've loved them ever since. This is a drawing I did for a previous project but never got around to posting.

Ladies

Last week I did a ton of doodles when I should have been doing something else. So in order to make it less like procastination I've made them into more than just doodles:

Beautiful Old Movie Posters

I love films and I love the cinema experience. Often however I'm put off of films because of the trailers or the posters. For me posters are the worst, some are amazing and completely sell the film for example the new Batman film teaser poster:

It's simple but detailed and instantly recognisable. A lot of posters these days are boring or ruined by photoshop happy fools. But what brought this post on was a couple of books that I borrowed from the library showcasing thirties and forties film posters. The colours and the compositions and the different styles are beautiful and although modern posters have colour and composition and are designed, sometimes I think that maybe it would be better if they tried a different apporach to a photograph of people huddled together and photoshopped badly.

Hantise - 1944 (French, art by Jean Jacquelin)

The Woman in Red - 1935 (US)

Black Friday - 1940 (US)

Les Enfantes Terribles - 1947 (French, art by Jean Cocteau

Le Troisieme Homme [The Third Man] - 1949 (French, art by Bernard Lancy

Black Narcissus [Czarny Narcyz] - 1946 (Polish, art by Henryk Tomaszewski)

Marihuana - 1935 (US) This one just looks like an advert but hey I'm interested and would watch this film just to see what it's about. Other than Marihuana.

Possession and the Law Final

Here it is, the final piece of the peculiar Possession and the Law/ Occult project. It is also my entry for the V and A Illustration Awards, you can look at other entries in the student section here.

Possession and the Law

I've been working on a delicate project recently. An editorial illustration to go with an article describing the work of police against occult related crimes. It's a bit of odd one and I haven't contemplated the subject before but I like a challenge so here is a bit of the development work.

Dave McKean's 'Pictures That Tick' was a good inspiration for me I have always liked how he scratches into paintings. So that's how I've done mine but instead of using all the various materials that McKean uses I have used paint, oil pastels and a needle.

Snob...

Louise Hubbard

A lady of many talents. She is our master lino cutter and here is some of the work she was doing last week.

to see more click here.

The Best Cake Ever

A few weekends ago I went to Glasgow to visit my mum and sister. I had the most amazing black forest gateaux I've ever had in my life. It was beautiful and the elderly man sat beside us thought mine looked so good that he had one too.

It's still only November...

but I'm already feeling the Christmas cheer. I think it helps that I miss the majority of Christmas advertising on telly but what only makes it worse are these lovely illustrations by Kathleen Hale:

"Orlando the Marmalade Cat as Santa"

"Orlando the Marmalade Cat and Grace, his wife Under the Mistletoe"

"Orlando the Marmalade Cat Under a Starry Sky"

"Orlando the Marmalade Cat and the Christmas Tree" The Illustrators - 1780-1996

A Fox is a Wolf who sends flowers...

The fox has connotations of charm and elegance, especially against the ferocious connotations for wolves. But in my opinion a fox loses his charm when he is made into a scarf.

But to some it is the height of fashion.

Faces

I've been painting again. After not having done it for a while I forget how much I enjoy it. Here are some sketches of some faces;

Michael Ffolkes

Not long ago I was back in the second hand bookshop, a favourite place of mine in Carlisle. And whilst checking once again if they had a pretty copy of the Hobbit by JRR Tolkien I discovered a book. A beautiful book of the work by a man named Ffolkes. I've mentioned him briefly before on this blog because he illustrated my beautiful Folio Society copy of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos. But this new book is called 'Ffanfare' and it's a lovely amalgamation of his works. Here are a few examples of my favourites.

Did you know...

that Capybara are the largest rodents in the world? They can reach a height of 62cm at shoulder height and 66kg in weight.

Faces

This is usually how I feel when food shopping on Saturdays.