Summer Ices T-shirt for All Tropical

Here's a design I did for All Tropical's topical t-shirt competition on the theme of 'Summer'. What else pops into mind but ice cream, blue skies and sunshine (yes, they sometimes exist in the UK!). Go vote here and there's lots of others here with the winner getting their design put into production.

Wall Collective

At the moment I'm loving Wall Collective, it's a portfolio site with a difference. All your work is displayed on your individual wall; it's like having an exhibition of all your past work all in the same place. It's fun and interesting to see all your different work together and you can easily see the journey it's been on, where you started from and where you are now, all that's left is to fgure out what's next! Also the main page is on a random generator with your work popping up next to other great stuff all the time. Here's my wall, why not make your own?!

Ganbare Nippon: Don't Give Up Japan!

I did this for Illustration Rally and their callout for inspiring, hopeful, supportive work for the people of Japan trying to cope with the devastation that the earthquake and tsunami brought upon Japan (Nippon) on 11 March 2011. You can see mine here along with tons of others here.

I combined sakura blossoms in a deep red into a vase of flowers with hands being the vase and holding up a map of Japan in white.

Ganbare Nippon: Don't give up Japan!

Mountains Teatowel Design

Here's my design I did for the To Dry For Teatowel Design Competition, I didn't win this great Bear Hug Design did but I got into the shortlist with loads of other great designs, check them out here.

Cerealbox & T-shirt Designs

Here's a few designs I did a while back, a cerealbox for an open submission for Uppercase magazine and a t-shirt logo for a contest run by SDS Snowboards. Check out this amazing footage of an avalanche on their blog.

Work in Progress

Here's a couple of pieces I'm working on at the moment. After seeing these book cover designs by Jillian Tamaki I thought I'd try my hand at sewing some drawings. For the subject I wanted to do something on film and just happenend to have the Darjeeling Limited on hand which is a fave of mine, so drew and sewed the portraits of the three brothers. I'm still working on a background and experimenting on this one.

I'm also working on this food design which details some things on my shopping list, I want to turn this into an embroidery on a canvas bag so I can take it shopping with me to remind me of what I need!

Song Illustration: Tangled Wire by Roddy Woomble

Here's a new song illustration for the song 'Tangled Wire' on the new album by Roddy Woomble 'The Impossible Song & Other Songs' it's fast becoming a favourite. I got to see him last week at the Union Chapel in London, it was a really special gig in an amazing venue, check out the stained glass and windows giving amazing light as the sun set in my photos below.

One of my favourite tracks is 'Tangled wire' and not only because it mentions Skye, Kyle and catching the boat to the Western Isles (which I know well as Uig (where the boat goes from) is close to my heart!), It's a beautiful song about how life is like a tangled wire and how sometimes you just can't unwind things and that's okay you just have to accept that, which is reassuring to know as I feel so tightly wound and unfree at the moment. Here's my illustration for it incorporating random imagery from the song you can see a larger version on my flickr and you can listen to the song and whole album on spotify here.

Mike Landy Art World Portraits

Last weekend I was in London and popped into the National Portrait Gallery my favourites were the small room exhibitions each on a different theme. There were Sarah Lucas' portraits with fried eggs and photographs of 'Englishmen in New York' but I loved the quietness and explosiveness of each art world character drawn by Michael Landy. They included artists such as Gillian Wearing (top drawing) and the Curator/Gallerist Carl Freedman (2nd drawing) as well as a self portrait (3rd drawing).

They are each accompanied with notes of what the sitter was like and what Landy remembers of the day he drew them. The detail in them is staggering and all done in a pencil, they're so fresh and yet heavily laboured at the same time. If you're in London get over to see them they're on till 17th July 2011.

(click on images to see where they came from)