Strong Love
This was a fun illustration job. I made a cut paper strongman for Marmite, and it appears in this month's circus-themed Obrigado magazine.
Oh, and next time you're at a Vida e Caffe, pick up a copy to check out Michael Taylor's fab illustrations.
Holiday drawing
I spent many hours in my holidays (so long ago now!) drawing every piece of vintage crockery we have here at home. It was one of the nicest things I did all holiday, really.
It's taken so much longer than I expected, but I've finally turned these drawings into a brand new teatowel design! I was about to post my photos of it... when Blogger turned all mean and spat my pics out. Grr.
Pisces
I've been awfully slack about posting my magazine illustrations lately, but was so pleased with the way Fair Lady magazine used this one for Pisces that I got down to taking a pic to share.
Have a good weekend, everyone (and thanks for all your votes!).
Paper tigers, dragons, etc...
October illustrations
I’m way behind on showing my FairLady illustrations here. These are from the October issue (and the December issue is already on the shelves!). Anyway, better late than never.
First up was the Libra horoscope, and this is how it looked on the pages.
Tech info: pencil drawing on rough paper, scanned, with colour added in Illustrator.
The other was for an article about overcoming social awkwardness.
I’m so pleased with the way it turned out in the magazine.
Tech info: I cut the figures and lamp from sticky vinyl, then I added colour in Photoshop.
Score
I keep returning to gaze at Rob Ryan's epic cutouts since Lena reminded me of his work in her post on Tuesday. I also enjoyed finding his blog and reading about all the great projects he works on. He has an Etsy shop too!
Anyway yesterday, while doing a cutout for a magazine illustration (an article about not wanting to see the writing on the wall) , I saw an opportunity to do a little Rob Ryan-ing of my own. Of course I could have just drawn these letters and scanned them, and my wristwatch was telling me that would be the sensible choice, but to heck with it! I cut 'em!
Before cutting, I had to choose between having the letters as negative or positive shapes, deciding on the positive because I wanted the loops to have centres.
In the magazine illustration, it won't be apparent that these letters were cut because this is a background part of the whole pic. It's a pity because I think their shapes work best close up.
Hope it's an accurate representation, Fritz!I've been doing horoscope illustrations for FairLady magazine for a year now, and I reckon they improved a lot over the course of last year (from this to this).
This time around, I'm trying out a different style from last year's cutouts. This was drawn with charcoal, then scanned, reversed, and the colour blocks were composed in Illustrator.
And whoops, I somehow neglected to show these other illustrations from the September Fairlady magazine. Better do it now, before the October issue hits the shelves.
This is my usual "Whats For Supper?" page, illustrating four recipes.
And this illustration for an article about dieting for a bikini body was all made in Illustrator. Summer looms!
Did you know, a Yummy Mummy Tummy is the new must-have accessory for the modern expectant mum.
It sounds like a very good idea to me, and if you're an expectant mum, you should certainly find out more by clicking here.
But this is not an ad break, it's actually just a record of the fact that I did these three illustrations, which were used very nicely on the Yummy Mummy Tummy website.
Another magazine illustration, this time for an article in the August FairLady magazine about making medical diagnoses online.
It's odd, but these illustrations I make using Illustrator don't really feel like things I've done myself. It looks great in the magazine, but there's something about the super-smooth line quality that I don't quite like.
So for this next bunch of work for FairLady, I've resolved to get out my knife and return to my cutting again, for a more honest and variable line. I've had enough of expedience-driven illustration. Time for some hard work with room for error.
These are the What's for Supper illustrations I did for the August FairLady magazine.
I reckon I should turn these into teatowels some time.
Talking of teatowels, it's a sunny day in Cape Town so I can photograph my Summer Weeds teatowels to put them up in Etsy later. Yippee!
I cut this out of black paper last month. It's called Summer Weeds.
Now I've turned it into a print, to appear later this week in my Etsy shop on teatowels and cushion covers in shades of burnt butter and smoke blue.
My new limited edition screenprint on paper is finally complete, and in my Etsy shop. It's called Waiting, and boy, did it earn that name. It has taken a preposterously long time to get this from being a paper cutout to being an edition of 30 screenprints.
And special thanks to Another Shade of Grey for making my spoons post her "Today's Essential Read" today. Great timing!
Last week, I was very glad to meet the food editor of FairLady magazine, Nikki Werner. She's the one who writes these What's For Supper recipes that I illustrate each month.
Nikki lives in what sounds like an absolute treasure of a house that belonged to her grandfather, still complete with 50's furnishing and fittings! It turns out that she bought one of my doily cushions from Mememe last year, and it lives in her kitchen! I'm honoured!I cut this from vinyl to commemorate the passing of my smashed Arabia jug (read the full story here).
The July horoscope in Fairlady magazine is for Cancer. Flummoxed me a bit (pincers? sideways scuttling?), but eventually I settled on this.
And this is how they used it in the mag. I really like the little crop they did for the second page.
Have a good weekend!
PS: Cape Town readers, take a peek at Nice Things to find out about the new WhatiftheWorld exhibition space opening on Saturday.
