All Hail 'Sowen.

Here are some drawings from my university project this term. It is an authorial project about my hometown of Halesowen. Through mapping the little quirks that make it just so, the people there, & places that mean something to me (like the busstop where I used to meet and part with an old boyfriend, where I peed on New Years Eve, where my parents go for lunch every wednesday) I hope to explore the feeling of association and safety that can be found in the most mundane or seemingly tiresome objects and places.

< one week left on the project, so better get back to it.
The finished piece is to be a folded map-construct with these such drawings interconnecting and making paths to each other. Hope it swims.

A Very Stationary Christmas.

I knocked up this little Christmas image today as an idea for a card. It came about as the various real-life glues on my desk have all donned a hat.
The hats are from The Big Knit campaign. in which little hats are knitted for Innocent Smoothies in order to generate money for the charity Age UK, & having now accumulated 3 of these snugly-topped smoothies I have found they fit perfectly on top of my pritt sticks & PVA bottles. I extended this image's sweetness by imagining all inanimate stationary objects needing to keep warm, and how they might go about it.

It should be noted that in the bottom left hand corner of the original drawing I attempted to include a rubber in full jumper. Ironically, I thought it best be rubbed out, as he looked very upset lying there, with sleeves but no arms... Remember, rubbers are for life, not just for Christmas.

You Gotta Go There To Come Back.

Currently I have maps on the mind, as that is the direction in which my present uni unit is finding itself. I became really interested in a collaborative project by Oh Momma a while ago called What's Your Type? in which creatives were asked to recreate their favourite letter(s) however they wanted.
Here are my A & Z, the alpha & omega. Z is my favourite letter of the alphabet as it turns up last, but I like A as a new beginning; if you looped the alphabet they would be together, yet they seem so far apart.
To make my letters I recreated OS maps of John o' Groats and Land's End; the A & Z of the UK.

You can see all of the beautifully diverse entries here.

In-Flight Magazine.

My university magazine Slapdash emailed asking for art to include in the next issue. I sent these over; past works that have never been sent anywhere before. The top two reassure me that I can use coloured backgrounds, despite a lot of my drawings just existing on the paper they were made on (usually white). I am taking this post as a personal reminder to colour in my work as I try to colour in my life.
Liberally.