Everyone likes a good love story, and with wedding bells ringing all over the place this summer, I’ve found myself a very busy lady creating my ‘Once upon a time’ illustrated ceramics. The piece tells a story, woven together from the threads of a couples tale.
It all started quite a few years ago now, when a very close friend asked me to make a bowl for a wedding gift. In those days I focused heavily on loose coloured florals, but we wanted to create something completely unique to the couple. Armed with a list of the couples interests (the place/ how they met, where they’d travelled, foods they liked, sports they did, funny quirky behaviours and nicknames they’d acquired) I began work. I ditched the colour and worked in black to help bring everything together. I’d love to see a picture of that first piece now, but due to a lack of backing up and a broken laptop I lost them all. Another lesson learnt the hard way!
Over the years I’ve refined my techniques, materials and methods. I ask the person commissioning the work to provide me with the couples ‘story’. The more information the better. I then research places, source images and create a kind of mood board. I look for any common themes that I can use as a basis for the composition of the illustration. I sketch out general shapes and then off I go. The paint that I use is great as it creates such a solid flat colour in one stroke, but also slightly terrifying because it’s pretty hard to remove if I make a mistake. This often results in cramp as I’m holding my dipping nib so tight. No pain, no gain and all.
Once complete, I glaze by hand and fire in my trusty kiln. I’ve illustrated on all sorts of things, cake stands, platters, wedding favours, wine goblets, plates, mugs, ceramic bunting, tiles, jewellery and decorations. You can see more examples here.
There is something really satisfying about creating pieces of work to order.
I’m not sure whether it’s handing over the completed item, knowing it has been made with a particular person or story in mind, or the relationships that I build with my customers along the way, but I like that I can help make someones vision a reality and that the end result is always a personal one.
Either way, when I’m packing up my pieces ready for delivery, I can’t help but get a mixed feeling of nervous excitement and anticipation, and despite the fact that I’ve been doing this for a very long time now, I still find myself asking the same two questions. 1. Will they get there in one piece? 2. Will they be everything they hoped they would be? So far, so good.
The pieces below were for an intimate May Day Wedding. I hand made and coloured each of the 50 guests a heart shaped favour with a hand written message from the bride and groom on the back. The hearts were painted with a smooth clear matt glaze, and finished with a sweet pea decal and co-ordinating ribbons to compliment the flowers in the Bride’s bouquet.
As you can probably tell, I’m a little bit obsessed with detail. Not just in the way I draw sometimes, but also in the way things are put together. When we decided to create a hand illustrated map to accompany Apologies, I have None’s record ‘London’, I could barely contain my excitement.
With a limited run of 100 copies came the potential to make something really personal. So, after a number of discussions about the perfect paper colour, paper weight, wax colour and stamp design, (I’m not sure if I mentioned that I’m a complete stationery geek) everything was ordered and ready to go.
I’m not sure why exactly, but being involved in the process start to finish is something I just have to do. This isn’t always convenient for everyone involved – halting the map folding because I had to make sure I was there to oversee it, making sure the boys were ‘doing it properly’ and casting an eye over the envelope stuffing to make sure they all went in the right way up. Sealing the envelopes nearly pushed me over the edge. Making sure we used the correct amount of wax (no drips please) with our faulty lighters was tense at times, and positioning the carefully chosen ‘A’ on our quickly drying wax a challenge to say the least.
Hand writing each name in pen and ink on the front was the final touch, and with this came a great sense of relief (and bed time).
I was thrilled with the end result and genuinely think it was worth the effort. So much so that I made myself one – sealed it, never to be opened again.
A little while back I was commissioned by Dutch punk rock band Sweet Empire to create a new shirt design for them. Recognising my love for drawing animals, the band challenged me to create a piece using three extinct animals. Drawing animals that I’ve never seen before comes with its problems, but after a little bit of research and a lot of artistic license I created this, featuring a woolly mammoth, an irish elk and a dodo.
The guys have just had these printed so they are now available here, or grab one when they tour the UK 25th-30th June.
Work in progress – I drew each animal separately paying particular attention to the scale of each of the animals in relation to the other.
Things I learnt along the way: The dodo stood about a metre tall, the woolly mammoth about three metres tall (about the same as an african elephant) and the irish elk two metres tall with antlers stretching a staggering three and a half metres from tip to tip. Mind blowing.
Once all of the animals were complete I created them a lovely landscape to live in.
Apologies, I Have None are a band that I hold very close to my heart. The first piece of artwork I did for them was a good few years ago now for 2 Sticks and Six Strings. In those days they were a two piece. I have very distinct memories of sitting in the kitchen covered in printing ink at 3am, rushing to get everything ready for print the next day. I’m glad to say our time management has improved since then. I’m not sure my nerves could handle that kind of pressure long term.
From the very beginning, the lyrics have been the starting point of my work. I struggle to draw, paint or create anything that doesn’t tell a story or reflect it’s subject in some way. It’s the little details that excite me, however subtle they may be, it’s important just to know they are there. Each piece I’ve made for Apologies has it’s own story. Some of them intertwine and cross over. One day I’ll take the time to tell them. For now you can see them all here.
So ‘London’ has been my greatest challenge yet. It is the most personal record I’ve heard in a very long time, which is only magnified by the fact that I feel that I’ve lived it in some respects. It has been near on impossible to be objective and detach myself from the way I feel when I listen to the record. That aside, the most important thing was that the artwork was as personal and relevant to the band as the songs inside it. Embracing the emotional roller-coaster, I put on ‘London’ and began work.
The first thing I do when working with any band is to listen to their music on loop. I scribble down lyrics that form vivid pictures in my mind, that help to set a scene or evoke some sort of emotion. These are usually my starting point for creating the right tone or feel for the artwork. With Apologies, I also made lists of all the of the places they mentioned and that were personal to them.
I used my lists to sketch out and draw each individual element using mainly pen and ink, pencil, watercolour and acrylic. I made a conscious decision to try to capture the ‘feeling’ of a building or a place, rather than using lots of intricate detail to create accurate copies. The majority of the drawings were from life or pictures that Dan took with the record in mind; the laundrette they used to live above, the 26 bus, a map of the area they live in.
Once I had all the elements, I used photoshop to bring everything together. The outside was to be darker, heavier, a little more looming and claustrophobic. The inside was to have a feeling of openness and a glimmer of hope on the horizon. I really enjoyed this part, this is where everything started coming to life. I find using photoshop really enables me to play around with colours, and use drawings in ways they were never really intended. Layering up lots of images really helped to create the heavy sort of feeling I was hoping for.
To tie everything together, we wanted to capture the tone of the record in just a few words. After a fair amount of deliberation, it turned out these lyrics pretty much said it all. ‘There is always an answer, there is always a lesson’ and ‘With no back up plan or way out’ were hand written and worked into the inside spread of the LP and CD. I added the Apologies, I Have None logo to the front – taken from Josh’s cab, and the work was complete.
So there you have it. All I have left to say is that this band deserves your time. If you buy ‘London’ you will not be disappointed. The release date is 19th March.
Check out Apologies, I Have None for more details. See full artwork here.
