Brat and Suzie

I want this shirt alot. It's red, it has a squirrel on a bike...

Brat and Suzie do lovely illustrated shirts, I spotted them at the Bust Craftacular event in December..so hard to resist spending money. I fell in love with the squirrel, hope I manage to buy it soon!

http://www.bratandsuzie.com/

Kuniyoshi @ RA

Caught this on Saturday :) Good. Times. Delicious detailed woodblock prints of epic battles. Many with oversized animals :D

Part of the joy was definitely the descriptions that went with the prints, telling the storys. Example: "He disappeared beneath the sea and reappeared moments later with a crocodile under each arm. An unprecedented feat."

The picture at the top shows a bird that thinks it has landed on a nice branch but in fact, unfortunately, it has landed on giant lobster whisker!

Yay!

Sinister storytelling + beautiful prints = <3

Bug Bazaar @ Millenium Gallery

Claire Moyniham - Embroidered Bug Ball

John Dilnot - Screenprint

Lots of gorgeous drawings and pieces set up like victorian insect collections...like this screen print by John Dilnot. Claire Moyniham's embroidered felty bugs on balls charmed me as did Nora Fok's insects made of found objects in nature....leaves and twigs :)

Other interesting things...Jenny Tillotson's scent whisper...biomimcry...brooches connected smehow so one person whispers into their brooch and the other persns brooch releases a puff of perfume...mimicing how this beetle releases a scent to defend itself...but this is more romantic and interesting. I just googled her and she works at the innovation centre...I thought her name sounded familiar!

There were also amazing insect robots, hexapod robots by micromagic systems.

And I learned that Chinese art used insects to represent the beauty and bounty of summer. Excellent...as I used insects to represent similar in my story :)

Cath Kidston

Unplanned, I spotted a Cath Kidston shop and as I've never been in one I popped in for a look...too girly pink and floral for my taste but I quite like this elephant print :) and I did get myself a nice bright blue doorstop.

http://www.cathkidston.co.uk

David Noonan @ Chisenhale Gallery

Creepy life size 2d silhouettes and giant collaged prints of mimes and dancers. It's odd standing alone in a room with all these figures. That's what I liked most. It's sort of melancholy.

Farmily prints and Japan

I'm pretty happy with these experiments - flocking on photographs :) I had a bit of trouble with it because the glue kept sticking the photographs to the screen...then tearing...then the flock didn't stick everywhere...then I blocked my screen with glue..I guess it takes some practise :) I like it so hopefully I'll get it right next time. Its lovely to have flock on a photo. The sillhoettes are me and my family...I'm gonna take them as gifts for my relatives in Japan.

Off to Japan tommorow! Exciting! I haven't seen my sister for a year or everyone else for 4 years...we'll all be different people... I've been reading Japanese for Busy People on the bus. And for now I guess I'd better pack!

A week ago...

I found this amazing dress in a charity shop and gave it to my mum :D I love the print :D

Lampshades, Curtains, Atoms and Insects @ Wellcome Collection

Saturday, Stephanie and I had Wellcome Collection fun :) It was their first birthday so there was music and origami glee and mini cakes and lovely goody bags :D Plus the talk we went for in the first place. Twas about science inspiring design starting with Da Vinci, William Morris to Modernism to Timorous Beasties who did a window for Wellcome a while back. It was good hearing about how they designed the window and stories behind some of the prints...with mosquitos and veins etc. Oooh and Christopher Dresser got a mention cuz he started as a botanist. I love him...I don't know why exactly. But I went to the Christopher Dresser exhibition a few years ago at the V&A about 3 times.

http://www.timorousbeasties.com/about/projects/wellcome

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/

Esther Coombs

Just discovered Esther Coombs via Print&Pattern and she has also made cake stands with old crockery :) only hers are actually stuck together and printed :) Her drawing is loveliness. I really want to do more drawing.

Moo and Print&Pattern

I read the Print&Pattern blog and a couple months ish back it mentioned that Moo were having a sticker competition. I entered and was one of the winners :) yaay. So you can buy a sticker book and one of the stickers will be my crocobird. Moo said the winners would get info and a link on their website though and then changed their minds, which is annoying. But yay sticker :) And yay to my sticker being one shown on Print&Pattern.

From Atoms to Patterns @ Wellcome Collection

I heart the Wellcome collection! It's free AND open till 10pm on a thursday. This is genius! More stuff should be open later in the evening...some people work in the week and don't want to cram in on a saturday!

From Atoms to Patterns is really interesting and beautiful. I love the connection between science and design, and that these designs are representing something real yet just look like beautiful geometric patterns.

Seduction: Sex in Art @ The Barbican

Araki

Duchamp

Egon Schiele

Hans Bellmer

Aubrey Beardsley

Shunga

Juliao Sarmento

Then the next day it was Seduction at the Barbican. A multitude of bizzare cocks :D cocks morphing into animals/object, flying around, changing scale. Yes.

I really liked the old stuff, roman pottery depicting sex etc. And Japanese Shunga prints. Indian paintings. There's so much detail. And landscape. And expression. Chinese ones were very landscapey and had poetry :)

Juliao Sarmento did big porn sillhouettes, which naturally interests me. I like sillhouettes. And sex. Pretend I've said something more intelligent. I can't think of anything. Shame.

I have discovered Aubrey Beardsley, an illustrator from 1872-1898. Lots of ink, contrasty black and white, detail and space. His drawings are beautiful and the next exhibition I'm excited to go to is Age of Enchantment at Dulwich Picture Gallery which involves much Beardsley. Mm even his name is excellent.

Hans Bellmer's etchings caught my eye, gorgeous fine twisting delicate lines forming bizarre scenes with surreal genitalia. Apparantly he is best known for dolls but that doesn't really interest me. I like these.

There are Klimt drawings there, I've always liked Klimt. And with him Egon Schiele who I've never paid much attention to before but I actually like his drawings. Intimate and raw. Next to that were etchings by Marcel Duchamp. Which I mention cuz I quite like them despite never liking his urinal rubbish. I find that sort of conceptual thing too pretentious. I like beautiful things. I guess I'm a simple person.

Erotos by Araki is repulsively compulsive. Photography. Really real, detailed and somehow beautiful as well as kind of disgusting. Close ups of hair and tongue and skin and suggestive foods and objects. Why is hair so disgusting? Hair and moisture. Ugh. I guess it's just so personal. It's strange to see it huge on a gallery wall.

Finally Heartbeat by Nan Goldin. A slideshow of photographs of couples, long term in love with families couples interacting and loving set to the sound of bjork. The music was lovely and it set a lovely mood. It was pleasant to sit listening and looking. I never usually bother with the films in galleries.

Sleeping and Dreaming

I found the energy to go out today :) to the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition at the Wellcome Collection. Good stuff. I found myself knowing things already from my sleep research and felt clever. Yay! :)

I like Nils Klingers photography of movement during sleep, using a very very slow shutter speed. That's the bottom two pictures. See more here.

Also like the drawings of a dream. 'My Dream' by Sergei Pankejeff. A Freud patient who dreamed of wolves in a tree. Freud claimed this was to do with seeing his parents have sex and that he managed to cure 'the wolf man'. Apparantly he didn't cure him at all though. Says wiki.

I was intrigued by a print by Goya from Los Caprichos. Mmm creepy and old fashioned. That's the first image. I might get the book.

Discovered Mandrake roots are actually real...I though they were mythical plants...heh. What a fool :)

And I got pointed towards Kubla Khan by Coleridge. Which was apparantly written from a dream. Mmm description.

One of the information boards said something that interests me, apparantly recent research finds that individual sleeping conditions can bring not only loss of intimacy but can lead to serious sleeping disorders. (People didn't always have their own bed and special sleeping rooms) Aha! We aren't meant to sleep alone! I knew it :) I always found it very difficult to sleep before I was sleeping with Stu, and it's still difficult if he isn't there. Now there's apparantly scientific reasoning.

Ooh and I saw an advert for Fry's Pure Concentrated Cocoa from about 1880. It was a semi transparent print, of sleepy girl with eyes shut next to a tin of cocoa, but hold it to the light and it's a wide awake open eyed girl with a cup of cocoa :D That's kind of like what I've been working on, but cleverer.

On my way out I spotted interesting looking books in the shop. So I'm considering Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, Sleepfaring by Jim Horne and the exhibition book Sleeping and Dreaming. Saw a lovely kids book - Not a Box by Antoinette Portis :D about a rabbit playing in a box and pretending it's all sorts of things and definitely NOT a box :D

I actually left the house intending to buy a dress but I hated ALL the clothes. Stupid shopping. Yay Sleeping and Dreaming.

I think what part of my problem has been is that I'm not happy with my story. It's boring and obviously moral based. And my last story was something I was really proud of and I haven't felt that at all with this story - I churned it out and stuck with it. The page above is the only page I'd say I liked. Storywise. The imagery is alright it's the story I hate. But I've gone so far down this theme now...and I tried reworking the story already. I'm not sure if I should continue for now, or just do a new story.

Sampling - Acrylic and Wool

Playing with layering, light, shadow and illustration :) I'm pretty pleased with where my experimentation took me. It's not what I imagined...but I think I like it.

Now I'd like to really push the storytelling aspect.

Josef Frank

I heart Josef Frank's designs - they are so joyful and have a sort of innocence. Bright and beautiful. See more on the Svenskt Tenn website.

E.W.Moore & Son

Joy. I just found this site of vintage wallpaper :D Delicious. I was looking through my old journals of stuff-that-i-like, and found an old elle deco cutting...looked it up and mmm.

If I told you once

This is one of my favourite book covers ever. It's so gorgeous and simple. There is clear gloss print of snowflakes and text all over it too that you only see at certain angles! :) Book is pretty good too, like a fairy tale and also real. Enchanted reality! And the grotesque. There's a part where a woman has many husbands who all die, turns out it's because she tests them by going away and telling them not to go in a certain room, but they do and inside is a stunning girl fast asleep...but it's a doll with a mighty metal jaw of teeth between its legs.

Glee! I just found The Black Rabbit! Mmmmm wool. Mmmmm animals. Mmmm child-like.

Julian Trevelyan

I love love Julian Trevelyan's child-like prints. They're so beautiful and innocent! Just so lovely :D