Mr Kartoffell gets musical

My Mr Kartoffell illustration has been used on the cover of "The Best Things In Life Aren't Things" by The Cutler.

Ginko

Ginko patterns  from a trip to the botanical gardens. 

Anglesy Inspiration

I spent the jubilee weekend in Anglesy, off the coast of Wales. Here are a few photographs; some  are inspiring me to make a collage, some are of things I found and some are of me (how vain)!

I'm loving the colours and textures of all the rocks and I had great fun playing around with seaweed on the beach...

Squid ink

This is my entry for the Windsor and Newton Ink competition. I think I must have been still fixated on the sea when I came up with this idea.

All at Sea

I started playing around with the idea of making type from various sailing knots and this is where I ended up!
I'm unsure about the level of detail on the ropes so I am going to try a simplified design too to see which looks most effective.

Claire and her ukulele

For my friends birthday I created a collaged portrait of her playing her ukulele!

Home made bilberry gin labels

Back in the summer I spent an afternoon picking billberries. I ate a lot of them and made cakes with some but the most exciting thing I did with them was to make some billberry gin! I just filled empty bottles with the berries, poured over caster sugar then topped up with gin. You have to give it a shake now and then but it turns a nice purpley-red almost straight away.

It makes an excellent cocktail when mixed with Champagne. This is how I intend to drink it!

I wanted to make the bottle look nice, so I created these labels. The "Festive Cheer/Dear, Oh Dear" idea came from Merrydown Cider (and others). One of my favourite illustrations for Merrydown is by Jonny Hannah.

Hopefully it will go down a treat.