Last week

We had a successful opening of our In Residence exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art. It was lovely to see everyone and catch with people I've not seen for a while. Thank you all for coming! It was a beautiful evening. The exhibition is open until Friday 28th June. Come and see if you are in Edinburgh. We are on 1st floor in the Evolution House on West Port, 10am-5pm.

Here are some pictures with my new drawings and prints:

 And fellow Illustrators in Residence, drawings and prints by Cat O'Neil...

Lasercut illustrations by Astrid Jaekel...

 and linocuts by James Albon:

 From other news,  Zoe from Playing by the Book hosted an online aution with one of my prints. The auction was the last in a series of events we organised to fundraise for our volunteering trip to Ghana.
Big thanks to everyone who took part in the auction and to Zoe for organising it. If you are interested in children's literature, check out her blog as it is pretty amazing.

We are off to Georgia in a few days, a trip I really look forward to. It has been an exhausting few weeks (actually it has been an exhausting 10 months...) and I really feel like I need a break. Also Georgia is in my top 3 favourite places I've visited and I am happy I am returning there this year.

In Residence Exhibition!

As you might already know I've been working as Artist in Residence at Edinburgh College of Art for the past year. And now all of the Artists in Residence and Studio Assistants are having a group exhibition coming up!

There will be some exciting new work by my illustrator pals: Astrid Jaekel, Cat O'Neil and James Albon (James designed our poster). And also awesome new pieces by other artists and designers from Film & TV, Glass, Jewellery and Product Design!

I decided to create something a different than usual and have a little break from my children book stuff. No cute animals this time! What is more I thought it would be good to get out of my comfort zone and exhibit the original drawings and collages. This is totally new for me as I've been exhibiting both traditional and digital prints so far but never the original pieces. I am really excited about the process and also slightly worried about the final result!

Come and see our show! The exhibition opens next week Saturday 22nd - Friday 28th June 2013, Evolution House, West Port, Edinburgh.
See you there!

updates

Last few months have been rather busy with all the projects I am working on. Basically having four jobs and doing some additional stuff is quite much. It is tiring sometimes but on the other hand I love what I am doing I wouldn't give it up for anything else.

The residency at Edinburgh College of Art is going very well, I am developing some new illustrations and working towards our final show in June. The students have been busy hanging and finalising their degree show and our job was mostly to provide the moral support (and a little bit of tailoring, decorating and cleaning services here and there) as they were extremely well organised this year. The show looks amazing and it is now open to public so if you are around you should definately come!

Work at the community art centre is going well too. The creative workshops we run are always fun no matter if we make little creatures from recycled plastic bottles or simply splash the paint against the wall.  I am very lucky to be working with such a lovely team and the families and children are awesome too. I am going to make a separate post about our workshops.
 
After two months of fundraising for our project in Ghana we almost achieved our goal! And this is all thanks to you all. You are awesome! Thank you!

And finally some illustration updates. I have been collaboration with an amazing Edinburgh-based author Anna Claybourne. I illustrated her beautiful poem and now we are in the process of submiting the dummy book to various agents and publishers.

Here is one of the double spreads from the book:

I really like these guys and I decided to develop the characters further and play around with other story ideas for them. Here is a few character development sketches:

Phew.... now time to go to work:)