Star cards

More greetings cards! This time I had fun with coloured cards and Letraset. :)

Birthday Ducks

Been working on a few new card designs, including this one; I just love anything with lovable ducks on. They've featured on my cards before - this time I decided to design one with a more specific message. :)

The Devil & Mr. Punch

The other day I did an illustration for Amelia's Magazine; the subject was a delightfully creepy puppet show called The Devil and Mr. Punch. It harks back to various sorts of traditional theatre, not least the often terrifying Punch and Judy shows of old. I haven't had a chance to see the show (currently showing at the Barbican) but I watched the trailer and was entranced!

You can read Amelia's review of the show here.

More mermaid

Here's another mermaid drawing. I'm determined to make a lovely book out of all this; been enjoying adapting the story in my own words, too. I get the feeling that with other stuff going on all over the place it might take me a while to complete a whole book of fairytales, but I'm excited about it. :)

Aladdin's Ring

A while ago I did some drawings as part of a collaboration with a Canadian friend of mine who writes (and who has also just started a rad new cookery blog, followable here); the story, titled Aladdin's Ring, which will hopefully soon be featured in a Canadian indie magazine called Highbrau, is a short and poetic exploration of objects that excite emotion in us or engage our memories. I had limited time to work on these, but I really identified with the themes in the piece so I had fun with it. :)

Sheep update!

Remember a post or two back, when I was drawing sheep and other adorable yarn-bearing creatures? The book they were for has very recently been released, complete with said animal illustrations by myself. Hurrah!

(thanks to Old Maiden Aunt Yarns for the pic!)

The book in question is Socktopus by Alice Yu. Alice is a big part of the craft/yarn/knitting scene in London, so although I could never knit to save my life, the rest of the book has been crafted by an expert. :) It is published by GMC and if you are a knitting or crafty person you can buy it here: [Click!] or here: [click click!] or here: [clickity click!]

The Little Mermaid

Lately I've been digging into one of my favourite old books living on my shelf, which is a copy of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales that I bought at an antique fair in Edinburgh. There's no publisher date on it, but the first gift inscription is 1928 (with a subsequent one, curiously enough, to an Alastair Campbell in 1970!).

Lovely and nostalgic though Disney's animated version is, nothing quite matches the original story, "Set forth in simple words for Young Children" though it may be! I decided to do a couple of drawings based on it. I may or may not carry on and make my own little book adaptation out of it.

(click for larger images)