I made these couple of drawings for Illustration Friday’s topic, Sweet. And honestly you cannot help be in awe of baby rhinos, they are so delectably squishable!
In 2013, the BBC broadcast their wildlife documentary series, Africa, narrated by Sir David Attenborough. In the memorable and heart felt closing scene we saw Sir David cooing with a blind baby rhino, and it was the most tear jerking sight.
Look at the mess I made! What you are looking at is the sculpture I made for the Midway cause, I created a wire armature, covered it in kitchen paper towels then I used this as a base for claying.
I invited students to pick away at the clay albatross, revealing these endearing colourful plastics with which we are all too familiar, in the hopes to do a little story telling myself!
I hope this little project expresses in a small way how much I appreciate the giant effort that Chris Jordan and his team are putting into highlighting our human meddling in the environment on Midway Atoll.
These cards are based off my original watercolour and ink paintings.
This is my very first run of professionally printed greetings cards and I’m very excited to be able to present them to you!
The card is a thick 350gsm, FSC credited paper stock which are satin coated on the outside and look very, very nice! I’m so excited about being able to start selling my artwork on my website, if you’d like to support me, why not have a butchers?
At Kingston University I was introduced to etching and monoprinting. Using the tragedy of Midway Atoll as inspiration I used these printing techniques to create a series of albatross inspired images. I etched an infant albatross begging for food from its parent, oblivious to the fatal consequences.
Happy Birthday to my sister! I painted her a piglet for her 19th birthday, entitled ‘PIGment of your Imagination’. I used Flickr again for inspiration and introduced straws into my paintings, blowing into straws creates these shots of colour off the main image, very fun!
A team of activists, led by Chris Jordan, have been documenting the environmental tragedy that is unfolding on Midway Atoll. I have been so deeply touched by their work that I wanted to share this with others.
These islands are located in the North Pacific Ocean, and although they are remote, the remains of our consumer lifestyles wash up daily onto the shores. Toxic swirls of plastic flotsam from all over the world find a permanent home on these small secluded islands, at the expense of the inhabitants.
Every year thousands of dead infant and adult pacific albatross litter the island, among them are thousands more albatrosses slowly choking and starving. The birds decomposed bodies reveal the colourful culprits: milk tops, combs, pens, cigarette lighters etc. a signature of our insatiable consumerism, which lie nestled amongst the fragile bones and gentle feathers of these curious creatures.
Through skilled photography and storytelling they have produced a film, Midway: Message From the Gyre, [not yet released] that follows the lives of the great pacific albatross and their struggle against the never ending tide of plastic.
The way these gentle birds churn this plastic poison through their bodies with these deadly consequences is heartbreaking so I amassed a fair amount of research and began thinking about how to relay their story to my fellow students at Kingston University.
The time has come — I've had enough of scanning shopping through the checkouts — I have been working on a few images that might help me see an end to working in money hungry multinational companies and allow me to start achieving some financial independence!
I will upload my selected designs to a card printing company and impatiently wait for them to arrive, when they do they will go straight up on my online shop. All the images I have made using ink and watercolour, my favourite medium.
I have huge appreciation for the photographers who share their work on Flickr, and I am really thrilled I can use their artwork to inspire my own.
Here is a little selection of that inspiration!
Kangaroo - inspiration from OzinO
Fox - inspiration from Jeroen Stel
Owl - inspiration from carlyestella
Using Flickr as my inspiration I found an photo from Jeroen Stel - Red Deer Cervus elaphus. And combining this with my love of the The Endless Forest, I produced a stag wearing candles which I thought fitted the ‘tribute’ theme.
Tribute
3rd May 2013
Here are two past Illustration Friday’s I have submitted.
For ‘wild’ I used a grizzly bear and for ‘farewell’ I depicted a deer nuzzling a hare.
Wild
12.4.2013
Farewell
26.4.2013
These are stills from my first every animation! This was a weeks task set by Kingston University. I made a little plasticine pig which I have depicted through the video scoffing himself until the cupcakes have their revenge.
I took over 300 photographs, and then used QuickTime Pro 7 to assemble and bring the short animation to life, and I pinched a soundtrack and ‘Scoff’ the movie hit the big time!
This was is my first ever Illustration Friday topic. For ‘urban’ I chose my favourite aspect of urban life, the pigeon! I love pigeons so I couldn’t pass up the chance to depict one using my favourite media.
I sculpted the head and body of this clay octopus around a supporting wire armature, the arms were sculpted separately upon their own armature and then pushed into the body.
After a coating of PVA to give it a glossy finish, Octiprey was born!
This was a one day fine art project.
I gathered my thoughts about the dairy industry and produced a piece to reflect my opinions! I used fineliner, ink and water to make these drawings, I really enjoy the sense of melancholy in these drawings.
This was a communication project where I was asked to describe what my dream job was when I was a child.
I had always wanted to work with animals, and these fineliner drawings that I produced reflect on the animal charity experience I have done in recent years.
This project required us to do something unconventional with a shipping container, I made a bee observatory. There is a circular seating (made out of plasticine) in the centre and a plastic covering over the hives so that people can view the bees without the bees escaping into the container.
Beekeeper suits are frequently white or an off-white colour, in part because it’s believed that this has a calming effect on bees, so, the interior walls of the container are painted white. There are little flaps on each side to allow the bees to come and go but keeping the rain and other elements out. And to complete the design I added a little bee friendly roof garden so that the bees wouldn’t have to travel far for sustenance!
These drawings are a mixture of ink and collage, the model sat in the middle of the room, clutching an inflatable banana and with a blanket over her.
This project on found objects had me rummaging in Kingston's skips and recycling boxes to find interesting items.
The cat scratcher like podium is made from sheets of glass and bottles filled with food colouring, and in the final few hours I constructed a cat out of masking tape.
I blagged it and told my fellow students I was making a comment about a cat’s natural behaviour in a home environment. Turns out red food colouring dries like blood so it looked like a murder scene. They bought it!
For the first project at Kingston University we were asked to create a significant “thing” to represent the borough. I instantly pushed my group to do something on the living conditions of the swans that live on the nearby River Thames.
And by chance some Kingston University students were, with help from a local scuba team, hauling out shopping trolleys that had been dumped in the river. More than twenty trolleys were retrieved, all full of junk and all transformed from their shiny industrial finishes into what appears to be curious pieces of coral. The silver colouring had gone and these strong earth greens and rusts took over.
Along the river you can also see where the swans have made magnificent nests with crisp packets, plastic bags and other floating pieces of litter, perhaps a little organic material but not much.
We made a mural representing this side of Kingston, including the thuggish nightlife who’d think nothing of pushing each other around in stolen supermarket trolleys and dumping them into the river for a bit of a laugh. We composed this elegant swan made only from cardboard and toilet tissue paper nesting in pollution, the end result has quite a significant shock value.
My favourite part of the project is the tiny little maquette I made which still hangs in my bedroom.
For my summer project at Kingston University, called Worth vs Value, I decided to focus on religion. I feel that religion is worthless and in contrast Darwinism is extremely valuable historically and scientifically.
I sculpted the creatures of Darwin’s study, including the Galapagos finches and Galapagos giant tortoises, devouring the pages of the book of Genesis. For my own peace of mind I read the book and felt no guilt in its destruction. I took a series of photographs which I then presented to my new class on the second day of starting the course.
I made the creatures from airdrying clay and gave them a coat of PVA for a bit of a sheen. I relished the cracks in the clay as I thought it described how ancient and imperfect evolution is.
