Seasons greetings!

 

 

I created these christmas illustrations and designs last year - and they hit the shops in time for christmas this year!  A big fat santa, christmas tree, rudolf reindeer, christmas presents and stars - what else do you need for a perfect christmas.  

Wishing everyone a very happy christmas and all the best for the new year ahead!!  Lucy x

Celestino Piatti's Animal ABC

I picked up this gorgeous second-hand childrens book a few weeks ago, as I couldn't resist the wonderful bold animal illustrations.  It's written and illustrated by Celestino Piatti who was a Swiss Graphic Artist, Painter and Book Designer, and his Animal ABC book was originally published in 1965. 

Aren't the illustrations just fabulous - and I'm sure children love them! 

Castlemaine Festival of Gardens - part 2

Here are some more photos from the Castlemaine Festival of Gardens that I visited a few weeks ago.  The images were taken at a property called 'Lixouri' which has a beautiful Mediterranean style garden.

I love these sheep and guard dog garden sculptures made from scavenged wood and metal - the sunglasses are a great touch!

Nature never ceases to amaze me with her abundance of shapes, textures and colours - and I love these poppies that look like they're dancing in pink ballerina tutu's! 

I love this wire kangaroo sculpture - very cute!  The gardens were very inspiring to visit and think I'll allow more time next year to visit a few more.  

Gocco Christmas cards

Well, given Christmas is only a few weeks away I thought it was about time to organise some festive cards!  

I decided to use my Gocco printer to create the cards as I certainly need the practise with it!  A Gocco printer is a Japanese mini screen printing system, perfect for printing cards and small images.  It's a very nifty bit of kit, where you use the one machine to expose the screens and print the image.  I got my Gocco printer last year and must admit I've struggled to get suitable results - but these cards have worked out OK I think..... 

I hand drew my images (using the special Gocco carbon pen) and like any screen print you need to create seperate images, for seperate colours. 

You then need to expose the images onto the mini screens - this is done using flash bulbs as seen above.

Here are the images exposed onto the seperate screens (the paper artwork is still behind the screen)

Then I printed my first image - you can create lots of prints so I made sure I cut and folded all of my cards beforehand.  I liked the idea of having different coloured cards, so I used a mix of colours and I also trialled different paper stock (some smooth, some textured etc).

Then I printed the second image over the top to create the final image.  Voila!  My hand screen printed Christmas cards! 

I'm really no expert on Gocco printing and I'm still learning with trial by error!!  There is lots of information about Gocco printing on the internet - and I've included some of my favourite links below;

Gocco Flickr Group

Gocco machines and supplies on Etsy - Print Addict Japan

Gocco supplies Australia - Nehoc

Gocco links from Meet Me At Mikes

And lastly one of my favourite Gocco artists - Bridget Farmer.  Bridget has a fantastic Gocco print tutorial on her old blog, with a very easy step-by-step process and pictures for each step. 

Old Australian stamps

About 4 years ago I bought several packs of old Australian stamps from an op-shop.  I didn't know what to do with them, but I do love all the colours and patterns on stamps so I've been hoarding them ever since!

I finally decided to do something with them - and created a collage style map of Australia!  I bought an old Atlass and tore out the Australia map as a background, and then collaged the old stamps in the shape of Australia over the top of the map!

It's a bit kitsch - but quite cute! 

 

 

 

 

 

More kitchen illustrations & sketches

I've been messing around with sketching some more of my collection of cups, teapots and kettles!

I've been exploring using different media to acheive different effects, and also incorporating some collage elements into the sketches.  I've been working 'blind' by just applying paint direct to paper - without putting down any pencil outlines first!  It can be a bit scary at first - but I love the freedom of working so direct and letting the paintbrush dictate the finished outcome.

I've also been inspired by seeing the work of Kat Chadwick on The Design Files recently - and bought myself an ink dipping pen to experiment with!!  Ooh - I love new media to experiement with, and this has been lots of fun!