Garden pictures

New Empress Magazine

I had a nice surprise in the post this morning...

Issue 3 of New Empress is now available from these stockists:

• The BFI Southbank shop in London.
• Wardour News in Soho, London.
• Cornerhouse in Manchester.
• The New Empress webshop.
• The Prince Charles Cinema, London.
• Riverside Studios, London.
• Watershed Media Centre, Bristol.

Pumpkins and Peaches

My Grandad Cyril has been growing beef tomatoes, and has been very generous in sharing them with us. He is 87 years old, and his garden always looks full of colour and completely beautiful. I made him a drawing of some of his tomatoes in watercolour and charcoal (Lewis cheekily calls it "pumpkins and peaches").

No one knows where we go, when we're dead or when we're dreaming

Here are some photos I took last time I went back home. I love nasturtiums, they are so vivid, and the way they grow makes them look like fireworks or explosions. These pictures were taken in my mum's garden:

I've just taken 4 paintings to Mustard Cafe in Norwich - the original Nikola Tesla drawing that WeAdmire turned into tshirts (and probably the most popular of all my t-shirt designs), a painted portrait of the daschund from my comicbook "Les Jardins...", and two of the Mata Hari illustrations, are now all available to buy (framed) at my favourite cafe in Norwich. Mustard also make amazing coffee and really really good food - pictured is their Ginger & Lemon cake and a flat white:

Unfold Poster 19: Tune-yards at Paradiso 6/6/11

This is why I was building cardboard mountains.

The animal featured in this poster is an endangered species called the Mountain Bongo which is native to Mount Kenya - there are less than 100 mountain bongos in Kenya living in the wild. More than 300 are living in American zoos, but the plan is for them to return to their natural habitat in Kenya eventually.


I really recommend you listen to the tUnE-yArDs - the new album W H O K I L L is available now, and they are playing at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, on 6th June.

We end up around the mountain that I climb to lose you

I am building a set for a new commission

Here's a little scrap I found from nearly 5 years ago, when I first began to use a mapping pen:

Jazz (aged 11)

My Jazz. When I was sad, he would always find me. He would sit with me quietly while I painted, and sometimes he would let me draw him. He was a very timid cat, but he would look you right in the eyes. His brother, Hebe, would try to grab his tail when he walked past, and chase him all over the house. When they were kittens they washed each other. They were ill and abandoned, and my dad asked us which one of them we would take home, but of course we couldn't separate them. We picked their names from The She Book of Cats. Jazz was an "exciting cat". He used to sit cool as a cucumber and look at next doors dog through the wire fence and conifer trees while the dog went insane at him. He especially liked to be stroked on the forehead, on the spot just above his nose, and scratched under the chin. He would stretch out and we would stroke his soft belly and tiny ribs and he'd stretch even further, plucking with his claws. Some nights he would wake me up at 2am, miaowing and miaowing, and I'd call to him "Its alright Jazz!" and then he'd be off, back into the night. He just wanted to know we were there.

He was like a sleek black panther and I loved him.

Back 2 Bikes

a few reference pictures taken at Back 2 Bikes this morning

Here comes the sun, do do do-do

Hello!

Apologies for the lack of recent entries... straight after New Designers I went to Phuket for 2 weeks and Hong Kong for 3 (glorious) days! It was my first time in Asia and the whole trip really inspired me...there are so many ideas floating around in my mind, as soon as I'm back home I intend to delve into them!

Hong Kong is wonderful...I want to be back there now! I love the constant heat that feels like walking inside a hot cloud. I love the red taxis and how good they look next to all the green trees and plants. I love the way the city suddenly blends into trees and mountains as you get further out, and just how the mountains are always there in the distance, these lovely soft lilac shapes. My Grandad was based in Kowloon in the 1950s and has told me so much about that time and place, that the night I arrived and saw the mountains all around me from the taxi window I felt like I had entered one of his stories.

I've taken lots of pictures on the Diana+ and we also bought a Supersampler from the Lomography shop on Hollywood Rd in Hong Kong, so it will be exciting to see what those pictures look like. I also took a sketchbook with me, so once I'm reunited with my scanner I will post some of the images and comic strips I've started drawing.

Dalmation Horse

I bought a Diana+ camera last year and took lots of rolls of film with it...it made me really think about composition and tone and made me pay more attention to the things around me (even though my Dad likes to joke that it would be better to put the film in a paper bag and punch holes in it.)
I left one roll undeveloped (probably because 120 film is so expensive to develop unless you have your own darkroom) but recently, it kept niggling at me and I decided I couldn't leave it. The wait seemed endless, but the results were exciting...