Eye of Orisis

It has been a crazy day, at 2pm I found out I was off to Malta as part of the Leonardo Project (at 4am tomorrow) because my friend and colleague is ill and so unable to go. I will try to do her and our students proud, and I will be back in a week. Take care have a good week where ever you are and what ever you do. x

Rachel Pank

Rachel Pank is an artist, printmaker and illustrator from London. Rachel's work has a wonderful juxtaposition of dense colour and fine line and adore this bird cage piece. (thanks)

Aya Kateda

Two tiny concertina books from Aya Kateda an amazing creative force, and half of the wonderful 'moustache sisters'

Sally Anne Fitter

Sally Anne Fitter is a painter who focuses mainly on still life's and Norfolk seascapes. She is a painters painter who creates richly textured surfaces whilst maintaining a strong sense of design and celebrating colour.

Jacinthe Chevalier II

Colour and joy from Jacinthe Chevalier.

Jacinthe Chevalier I

Jacinthe Chevalier's work has a joy and naiveness of childhood, Jacinthe is, "passionate about the wider world of images, and creating them is her preferred way of communicating reality and all the fantasies that inhabit it."

Isabel Hojas

On the eve of mid summer, I thought it most appropriate to celebrate with an illustration by Isabel Hojas beautifully made from cut green leaves. Isabel also produces beautiful watercolours and has many published books for you to explore.

Claire Brewster

Claire Brewster's exquisite paper cut birds and insects tiny scraps of paper cut to make shadows and magic.

Leda Catunda

Leda Catunda is a Brazilian artist who combines fine art with textiles, her paintings, because of this technique, resemble giant Indian mirror work embroidery. Instead of mirrors though they contain images of familiar things trees lakes and flowers as well as photographs.

Presentation of Hippopotamus

Today was the unveiling of Glenrothes Hippo Parade, eighteen wonderful hippo's decorated by primary school children in the area. We also presented the hippo that my students and I have been working on to the Mayor of Boblingen , Wolfgang Luetzner. I love the reactions caught in this photo.

Birthday

Today I received a very appropriate card from Finlay and Bellissimo. The perfect card from a blackbird killing cat, luckily today I had a sense of humour about it, yesterday I didn't.

Ellie Hodesdon II

Ellie Hodesdon also produced these colourful tiered concertina books as part of her graduation show in Visual communication at GSA.

Ellie Hodesdon

'Three Billion Women' is a mechanical picture book about women's rights around the world. Ellie Hodesdon has managed to take horrible facts and make them viewable, through wonderful woodcut illustrations rendered in two colour prints that resemble old educational book illustrations or educational charts. In a time when everything is gratuitously and graphically over illustrated, through photography etc, it was great to see these statistics rendered in a medium that made them approachable and absorbable as information.

Oona Brown

I managed to get to Glasgow school of art degree today, and see the good eggs and bad eggs of Oona Brown. I liked her use of the expression good egg bad egg and the idea of sealing egg thieves in their own bad eggs.

Astrid Jaekel

Above; Hans In Luck, Below; Astrids studio at ECA

I stumbled across Astrid Jaekel's studio when I went off the beaten track at ECA degree show, temped by these large articulated puppets of an old lady and a cat. The puppets are part of a character study that Astrid has been developing based on; 'The old Boys' by William Trevor.
Astrid is working partially with silhouettes and shadows, but she is also a painter and printmaker. I would love to see her produce a shadow theatre production but that's my bias, I love shadow puppets. I am really interested in where Astrid's work goes in the next year and looking forward to her degree show next year.

New Book . . . it's all about spiders

I am playing and I shouldn't be I still have such a lot of work for work to do, but I am inspired and you need to strike while the irons hot, and so here is the happy fruit of my weekend, I hope to have a book finished in the next few weeks. It also explains my current obsession with illustration . . . sorry.

Gillian Chantler III

'Rope Dancer's' by Gillian Chantler another lovely image from Gillian's sketch book.

Laura Davis

Laura Davis's 'Sleep is for the Weak, Brain Battery' poster (Top) from the years ECA Illustration Degree show. One of Laura's experiments with screen printing, I hope she experiments much much more with this medium now she has graduated.

Gillian Chantler II

Gillian Chantler's Concertina Books, "Originally coming from a background in jewellery I like things to be tactile and process led. this has particularly led to an interest in screen printing for small scale books and textiles."

Gillian Chantler I

I managed to treat myself to a visit to Edinburgh today specifically to try and catch some of the Degree Show as I knew that I would be too busy for the rest of the week. Here is a selection of drawings from Gillian Chantler's sketch books which I though were charming and akin to hieroglyphs.