Mike Swaney II

Mike Swaney's new paintings are all about hands and fingers from a recent exhibition at Ever Green Projects in San Francisco.

100% Orange

'It's my birthday so I am celebrating by sharing this beautiful book; The Two Birthday Cakes', by 100% Orange is an illustration company formed of husband and wife Kenji Oikawa and Mayuko Takeuchi who together have published over thirty books. I only wish I could share more illustrations from it as I love them, but this is all I can find.

News

This blog has been concerned mainly with graduates of the Scottish art colleges for the past few weeks. I am hoping that I also get to my final possible degree show at Grays in Aberdeen this coming week. I like to get to these shows; see what talent is coming through and see the new designers and artists before they get absorbed by industry etc.

I have had a strange and busy year so far and I have also broken my coccyx so I also have to have an operation this week which will hopefully enable me to sit down in comfort and return to some projects which have been on hold.

So here come the pigeons!

Jarvis

I have just treated myself to this charming and funny book by Jarvis, published 2017 by Walker books, about a mole trying to get home,. It has lovely collaged illustrations with wonderful details, and sub-stories waiting to be discovered.

Yumi Kitagishi

A delightful maze of underground homes by Japanese illustrator Yumi Kitagishi

Katarzyna Bogucka II

More beautiful graphic illustrations by Katarzyna Bogucka for ;'Stefek Burczymucha' by Maria Konopnicka published in 2010. 

Katarzyna Bogucka I

Katarzyna Bogucka's wonderful clean, graphic illustrations for Chory kotek by Stanisław Jachowicz, published 2010. Katarzyna often uses collage to work on her compositions.  

Katerina Gorelik

I have admired Katerina Gorelik's work now for almost a decade and I was thrilled to see she has a new book being published next month called 'Bears on Vacation'.

"This is a light and funny picture book about three Polar Bear brothers who took their first vacation on a tropical beach. The book is about something we are all  familiar with: intemperance and passion. The Bears are akin to kids: they want everything, a lot of it, and right now! if it’s ice cream, then all the way to a sore throat; if fruits, all the way  to diarrhea; if sports, all the way to bruises. How could it be any other way on vacation!? But at the end they leave with the best memories." Katerina Gorelik

Matti Pikkujämsä I

Matti Pikkujamsa's illustrations for 'Hipinäaasi apinahiisi' written by poet Ville Hytönen (Hipinäaasi apinahiisi, Tammi 2013) is a tale of two lonely and socially excluded characters who find each other and find friendship and happiness. Matti's illustrations are some of my favourites with a wonderful painterly style combined with superb visual layout and design.

Sophie Demery

Sophie Demery is preoccupied with the sea and all things nautical so her graduate show for illustration at ECA had a series of posters and books all about it's wonder and folklore . Sophie's images are created using printmaking, collage and digital techniques into tiny zines of knowledge and poetry.

Joanna Spreadbury

I love beautifully crafted things and also an appreciation and wish to preserve old crafts. In Japan craftsmanship and tradition are celebrated and held in a reverence that preserves and perpetuates these skills, here much much less so and we are barely clinging on to some ancient knowledge. So it was with joy that I met Joanna Spreadbury and saw her degree show for product design. Joanna has been working away at gathering some amazing skills and knowledge by spending time on the Western Isles of Scotland with crofters and learning some of the vital skills involved with working the land and using all of the available resources. Resourcefulness is great motivation for sustainable design and a skill that once learned is not forgotten.

"On an island, when resources are available, you gather them and work them to the best of your ability. Meeting crofters on the Western Isles revealed to me their ingenuity and relationship with the land, pushing me to ask: do we know how our belongings are made, where their materials come from or who made them? Working with Scottish Blackface Sheep, which are prevalent on the islands, I looked at the whole sheep and how each of its parts can be crafted into useful objects. Sadly, many of these skills are fading and so I present artefacts that explain how they are made, inspire engagement with the hands-on process and question the future of traditional making." Joanna Spreadbury