Goodd

Goodd  is a great shop and gallery space in Glasgow that stock my cards. I'm pleased to spot the cards in the photo shoot for their new product directory.

Arts Council Christmas card

My illustration for a Christmas card designed by Intro, for Arts Council England.

Art Attic

A couple of pieces that I made for the Art Attic event held on the 11th December.

Ink on pink sticky-back plastic.

Emma Calder's Moody Days

Emma Calder has started a blog dedicated to her new Moody Days sticker book. Above you can see the front cover and some brilliant early fingerprint designs that were inspiration for the book and animated trailer.

Worth keeping an eye on the blog as she updates it with more work about the project.

Moody Days will be published on 8th March 2010 by Thames and Hudson.

Also check out Miss Louise goes to Paris.

My Shop is Open

I'm pleased to say that my online shop is now up and running. Amongst other things there are packs of my new hand printed Christmas cards. 

Please take a quick look.

Mike Mills / Fireworks

I bought this little publication of firework drawings by Mike Mills a month or so ago from Concrete Hermit and thought this was the right time to show it. Mike Mills says, "I read that fireworks were first used in China in the 12th Century to scare off negative spirits".

All images taken from Nieves, where you will find many fine books.

Stockholm and stripes

Just back from a short break in Stockholm.

Proud of my striped tape collection.

The Hambledon is ten

I was lucky enough to join in with the Hambledon's 10th Birthday celebrations. It was great to see the shop in the flesh as I'd previously only browsed at their wonderful wares via the Robert Ryan illustrated website.

Shots of the balloon clad shop and of my end papers in the book designed by Sandy Suffield to mark the occasion. It can be viewed in full here.

Also, some of my cards are now available online at Minor Mail.

And feeling nostalgic about Glasgow School of Art after watching this.

Numbers

I've always been into numbers and when a date comes along like it has today (09.09.09) I get a bit more excited about it than most other people. I'd been eagerly waiting since 1988 for my Birthday to arrive last year on 08.08.08.

Above is a piece I made for Lisa (Happy Birthday) and my Birthday invite last year.

Slowcoast

On 21 June my friend Nick Hand set off from Bristol on a sponsored bike ride around the coast of Great Britain. He's been making soundslide films along the way of artisans and uploading them on his Slowcoast website.

The images above are taken from Nick's Soundslide interview with Paul Smith. Other personal favourites are of Old Town Outfitters, Bill Bontoft the stick maker, Tilda Swinton's and Mark Cousins' Pilgrimage Film Festival, RS Bowie Bike shop and Aardman animation. But they are all so very inspiring. It's such a worthwhile project, 3707 miles in (and counting) he's raised money and shown us the rich variety of dedicated artisans that populate our coastline.

Cards at Constructive Lives

I first came across Constructive Lives in a Design Week article about its identity and shop fit by Multistorey. As soon as I saw the stunning design, based on the geometric Ndebele wall murals of South Africa, I got in touch to see if they would like to stock my cards. I'm happy to say they did and the latest delivery of cards arrived last week.

Exciting pattern sheets

My fascination with patterns and grid systems started young. I recently rediscovered this Altair design book in my parents loft, and was interested to read in it that the patterns were developed by the biologist Ensor Holiday whilst he was convalescing after a car crash in the 1960's. The patterns were the result of complex mathematical research into the recurrence and links between certain designs all over the world, from the pottery of Italy to stained glass windows in a French cathedral to patterns on Persian tiles. As Ensor Holiday's work progressed his friends would pester him for designs to take home, as everyone felt an irresistible urge to colour them in.

I created my own skeletal grid out of decagons as the basis of an end paper design (top). This is a work in progress image of the piece I produced for The Hambledon's We are Ten publication. I shall tell all about this when it launches.

And for other grid / pattern fanatics- there's a perfect book out there called Grid Index by Carsten Nicolai. I might just have to update my exciting pattern sheet collection.

notion magazine

There's a showcase of my work in the latest issue of notion magazine (issue 40).

They describe my work as 'Power-polka spots for a fresh kind of pointillism...'

shapes

A collection of shapes in my work and around about. Including an A3 'May be' commission which is about to make its way to the client.

MJ

A small tribute to Michael Jackson. 

The badges are by London based Lazy Oaf.

The other three Images were found on drawger.

 From the top

-MJ by Mattieu Lavoie, who said "The first time I had goosebumps looking at art was in 1983.  Thriller was on TV."

-Michael when he was 12 by Claudia Pearson.

-A photograph by Tina Saey of an Egyptian stone carving at Chicago field museum.

David Hockney

Frame grabs from a very inspiring documentary about David Hockney. Filmed, Directed and Produced by Bruno Wollheim, as part of the Imagine series for the BBC. Only available on iPlayer for one more day.