'The heat can melt your brain'

Its a gloriously sunny, warm day in edinburgh. Not that this photo shows it! This view from Calton Hill was hazy in the sunshine. Anyway the heat has addled my brain so this is undoubtedly going to be a bit of a miscellaneous post!

The lovely lovely Seiko Kato is currently staying with us and she made me this beautiful wee hair clip! That ornate flower bit is from the inside of a clock! Anyway she has just opened her own Etsy shop which I suggest you investigate for more antiquated goodness.

How much do I love this image by Erin Harrison? I dont know. But its quite a lot.

Oh no. I am so flipping in love with pretty much everything in Dara Ettinger's etsy shop. All the money I have is currently being pumped into boring degree show things (like frames and paper and printing) but I can guarantee that if I was feeling flash this would be the first plave i'd go.

Carson Ellis & Unity Coombes

There's a great interview on The Morning News with one of my absolute favourites Carson Ellis.
Alongside the interview is a more than generous helping of new work by Ms Ellis including the breathtakingly beautiful (and slightly creepy) image above and this splendid reworking of one of my old favourites. Well worth a look I'd say.




Oh! and I've been meaning to mention illustrator/printmaker Unity Coombes' work for a while. She does lovely lovely drawings of birds and ladies and endearingly girly things that make me want to put flowers in my hair and sit in a field. (p.s she has a shop). Her flickr is the best place to view her work.

Prints!

There are only five of my Baker's Dozen prints left. Head over to the Baker's Dozen shop to get your hands on this super limited edition print and plenty of other lovely stuff curated by Amy.

Busy, busy week coming up but hopefully soon I'll have some exciting stuff to report. In the meantime hurray! I got a merit award in the 3X3 Student Illustration Awards so I'll be in their forthcoming annual and exhibition. Lovely stuff.

Nora And Bear

So it'll be a bit sporadic from me for a while. Work and whatnot. So for now here is a spread from Nora And Bear, a children's book I finished a while back. Nora and Bear are best friends but its a bit of a secret. So they have to do a lot of hiding! Its pretty groundbreaking stuff!

Folk Art and uh...twitter.

I've been pouring over this book over the last few days trying to take in all the beautiful textile designs and patterns. Above are a few of my favourites. I've also been drawing a few of them.


Oh dear. At the start of the year I swore I wouldn't join twitter but alas I've caved. Follow, what will undoubtedly be, some rather dull updates on what I'm up to here.

Boats & Bathing Beauties

Hello. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend. I've been drawing and painting and scanning as usual, the degree show hangs in one month! No time for a break for me. Oh no! I've been trawling through Shorpy for nice things to draw (mainly 1920s ladies in wonderfully unattractive bathing suits). Whenever I'm stuck for things to doodle Shorpy is a surefire place to find something wonderful. Like this crazy boat. Or the lovely ladies above, drawn at the weekend.





There's some beautiful stuff on The Good Machinery's site. Nice collaborations with Caroline Gaedechens (one of my favourites) and lots of nice cold colours and inky blues.

We've been playing with THIS all weekend (needs flashplayer.)

OK now to work! Its going to be a pretty intense month i think!

NEW CUSTOM PRINTS IN THE SHOP

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I've just added ten new custom prints to my shop. Five custom 'Flower' prints and five 'Nikolai Sutyagin's House'. All are handpainted, signed and numbered. Hurrah.

Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens is one of my favourite films. Its bizarre and funny and horribly sad, a fascinating film. When I heard a that the original documentary was being remade into a film with Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange I was aprehensive to say the least. How would two beautiful hollywood types pull off the ridiculously eccentric Edie and Little Edie? However I just saw the trailer (via Kitsune Noir) and I reckon they may well have succeeded. Drew Barrymore seems to have nailed it in every way, the similarities are astounding. I'm really excited to see this now. If you havent seen the original documentary I strongly recommend you track it down (and also that you listen to the song 'Grey Gardens' by Rufus Wainwright. Just cos it's nice like).

Flowers

Spring is officially rearing its head in edinburgh (daffodils! blossom! sunshine!) and in celebration I have a new springy print in my shop. Its a four colour dealie and only $15. Win!

Head to over to my etsy shop to get hold of one

(fun fact, the drawing is a very basic response to a line by Theodore Roethke 'I knew a woman, lovely in her bones'. Now you know)

The Wanting Comes in Waves

I'm knuckling down and powering through in the final month and a half before degree show hand in (the actual show is in June) so when I'm not working its nice to have good things to look at. Like these etsy treats....

Naomi Murrell's lovely wee bird brooch (nice prints),


Painfully nice repurposed leather bags from HoakonHelga,


Cute sleepy raindrop minature by Ashley G



(and lots of delicate niceties from tree&kimball)

p.s the blog post title comes from the new Decemberists album. Which is awesome.

Dollhouse

My sister and her boyfriend are staying with us at the moment. On saturday we went to the Museum of Childhood, because it's the kind of slightly sad, dusty museum that my sister loves. I seem to take everyone there. Anyway its worth a look, simply for the room of creepy dolls (hilarious) and the beautiful, victorian dollshouses. I want to wear the clothes that this wee doll is wearing and live in that lovely little house.


Lovely lovely links....

St Judes Notebooks

Beautiful Jewellery by Amy

Nice Necklace by FlightPathDesigns

Sometimes I am an architecture freak. This Sliding House is incredible.

No One Does It Like You

Fascinating video by Patrick Daughters & Marcel Dzama for Department of Eagle's beautiful song 'No One Does It Like You'. Creepy and weird and wonderful, an amazing translation of Dzama's drawings.


I really really want this. Lemony Snicket's 'The Composer is Dead' illustrated by my absolute favourite artist Carson Ellis.

Tiny Seashores

Tilt Shift photography has been hugely popular on blogs for the past year and I guess the novelty has worn off a bit now. Nevertheless this video is absolutely wonderful and well worth watching (Dad I mean you. You should like this).


I was doing some mindless internet trawling whilst reserching some ideas for bookcovers when I was reminder how wonderful all the work by the Heads of State is. They manage to always come up with the simplest, cleverest and most stylish resolution to all their projects. If you don't know their work then I suggest you have a look. Because of awesome.


Where the Wild Things Are Trailer! Exciting!

Oh Pauline!

No posts for a few days largely due to the lovely weather. It's been unfathomably warm and sunny here the past week. This was the meadows on thursday evening. Long, long shadows and surprising dusky warmth. I love Edinburgh when it's like this. There is no better place to be when its sunny.


At last today I got my hands on my Tiny Showcase letterpress print. Its so nice to be able to feel the wonderful letterpress texture. There are still 31 prints left over at TS.



I've been practicing my editorial illustration skills this week. This one is for a book review in the NYT for a book about Napoleon's sister, Pauline. There's another one to look at on my flickr.

Bears & Monsters

There are a few films coming out soon that I'm really excited about but few more so than this one. Directed by Spike Jonze and co-writted by Dave Eggers is there anyway that this can fail? I guess we have to wait till Autumn to find out. But for now this beautiful poster will definitely do for me. (poster via Kitsune Noir).




Rob Hunter has some wonderful work. I love his use of colour. Its really rich and lively. Also the abundance of Bears hasn't gone amiss. Bears are so awesome.

Picture post

A wee picture I did today based on a quote I read about Iceland's financial woes- "You sell me a dog for $1 billion and I sell you a cat for $1 billion. Now we are icelandic banks".

Nice nice nice illustration from Borja Bonaque. These buildings are pretty great. I love the scuffed, scratched textures throughout Borja's portfolio.

I like all the decorative detail and antique colours in all the pieces for 'Clementine'; a new exhibition by Jen Corace. Who is awesome. Always.

Bakers Dozen

Amy has set up a wonderful little online shop full of unfathomably beautiful things (OK and one of my prints too). The idea is that 13 people make an edition of 13 of something and they go in the shop. Its lovely and simple and works perfectly! Go and have a look.

TINY SHOWCASE

ON SALE NOW

www.tinyshowcase.com

100 X LETTERPRESS TREATS! (by me!)

OK back to work.

Castles and Cathedrals

Sketchbook pages from Krakow (covered in coffee stains from my over enthusiastic blowing to cool it down)

I love these images by Valerie Hammond at Garson Fine Art. So dreamy and delicate. The negative effect is so perfect.


Wilkintie has a great selection of prints by a variety of wonderful artists. My favourite is this amazing castle by the awesome Joe McLaren.

More More More

A couple more from Krakow. Lots of cold grey and beautiful details.

Check out the beautiful new prints in the Nous Vous Shop.

Something good should be happening over at Tiny Showcase tomorrow (in truth something good is ALWAYS happening at Tiny Showcase but tomorrow is, perhaps, slightly more relevant to me.) Keep your eyes peeled!

Krakow Up Close

We're back from our wee jaunt to Krakow. A wonderful time was had by all. The architecture was beautiful, the history fascinating and the weather? Horribly cold. I'll probably post up a couple of pictures a bit later on (once I've sorted through the hundreds that I took) but for now here's a selection of close ups of all the lovely details on buildings and signs.

p.s Krakow is home to the best hot chocolate I have ever had. I wholeheartedly suggest you all go.

Nice!

Beautifully simple clothes from Sandro, via Unruly Things



Carolin Loebbert has some really great work on her site. I love the contrast of heavy greys with rainbow raindrops and birds. All the work that I'm getting excited about at the moment seems to involve a lot of nice painterly textures.


Off to Krakow tomorrow! Back on Monday!