These cushions are my latest cockerel fabric creations, made with love for Blanca and Alain, my dear friends and neighbours at La Casa del Arco in Vejer de la Frontera
Click here to see a photo of the cushions in their new home
This fabric design evolved from a stencil project I started in 2012,
since when Mr Cockerel has adorned numerous hard and soft surfaces.
Last year I spent many happy hours in the Photoshop turning the original image (above) into several repeating patterns (below)
the last of which got made into a baby cushion in light cotton canvas.
I’ve been really keen to make myself an item of cockerel clothing ever since, so I ordered custom printed fabric samples in several cottons until I was totally happy with the size and colour of the design, and then got cracking with sewing an A-line skirt.
It’s had a very enthusiastic reception and I’m cock-a-hoop!
I was inspired to try and capture the humour and vibrancy of these beautiful and ubiquitous buses when I was in Guatemala in the autumn of 2014.
The buses are imported from the US or Canada once they retire from the school run and are then dolled up and converted, usually by a team of two people, who run them as public transport on specific routes, crammed to the gills with paying passengers, luggage and even livestock, hence the name Chicken Bus.
I used this photo which I took in San Pedro on the shore of Lake Atitlan as my model
I made this rather wonky sketch from the photo and scanned it into Photoshop
I copied the fat side of the wonky sketch, flipping it over to make a symmetrical template
and then set about making a careful pencil drawing
I scanned the finished drawing
and coloured it in Photoshop layers; at this stage the image looked a bit plain and flat
so I added more detail to the pencil drawing, scanned it into Photoshop
and applied the cut out line work over the coloured bus.
I had a lot of fun making 15 different coloured versions of the bus before I’d decided what to write in the destination boxes. In the end I added various invitations and questions (afterall, you can change your destination if you dance or dream) in Spanish before grouping them into three sets of five buses to make simple poems.
The background is scanned paper.
¿Listo? ¡Tranqui! ¿Paz? ¡Gracia! ¡Amor!
(Ready? Calm down! Peace? Grace! Love!)
¡Venga! ¡Guapa! ¡Sueña! ¡Vamos! ¡Vuela!
(Come on! Beautiful! Dream! Let´s go! Fly!)
¿Feliz? ¡Baila! ¿Cuando? ¿Donde? ¿Ahora?
(Happy? Dance! When? Where? Now?)
A friend I´d met on my travels asked where the bullet holes were since Guatemala has a somewhat deserved reputation as a trouble spot, so I added a few to the Peace? bus.
And I’ve just picked up the first paper versions from my printer…lovely colours, thank you Pepe.
Last summer Jackie Cornwall commissioned me to design the cover for her latest novel ‘The Three Witches‘. It’s the first in a series of six books that will make up ‘The Icarus Mendoza Sequence’, a thrilling adventure story spanning three decades of the life of the gifted and troubled Icarus Mendoza.
Jackie told me the outline of the entire sequence, emphazising the themes for each book and the colours she associated with them.
The backdrop to all the books would be the fictional town of San Amaro de la Frontera, which Jackie based on Vejer de la Frontera the beautiful Andalusian pueblo blanco (white village) where we live.
Almost immediately it struck me that the six book covers could feature a continuous townscape, representing constancy and refuge, and that the section of townscape depicted on the front cover of the first book could appear on the back cover of the second book and so on for the entire sequence to make an interlocking set.
A symbol representing the specific adventure theme for each book could then be superimposed over the townscape.
The first preparatory sketch for the six book covers; the vertical symbols looked a bit stiff
I sketched the symbols ‘looming’ to liven up the composition and give them a threatening feeling.
Working from photos I’d taken of Vejer I sketched a montage of views.
I decided to experiment by drawing the townscape in charcoal so that I had a ‘negative’ image
that I could scan into Photoshop, splicing all the sections together and inverting it to make it white. I also removed the background
This turned out to be very labour intensive, I had to draw, scan, invert and splice two extra sections of town before I had an image long enough to cover the estimated length of all six covers.
I wanted to create richly coloured backgrounds with interesting textures so I opted for watercolour paint, using the wet on wet technique on heavy weight paper with a rough grain, referring to the notes I’d made on Jackie’s colour preferences for each book.
The ultramarine watercolour background for ‘The Three Witches’ cover
At this point Jackie clarified which symbols she thought were apt for each book and offered suggestions to replace those which weren’t.
I drew each symbol in pencil and scanned it into Photoshop.
Then I cut out the line work and coloured it to match the background
Finally I added the text.
Here are the finished covers:
And here’s the interlocking set of six again, you can click on it to make it larger.
The Three Witches is a ripping yarn; my favourite quote is
“Dance, like romance, is one of those sweet, cruel mechanisms by which little girls are enticed into a life of slavery.”
It’s available to purchase now on Amazon.
I made this portrait of my parents’ dog Sam as a surprise Christmas present and luckily they were delighted.
I worked from a photograph I took while we were out for a walk a few months ago, first I made a pencil drawing which I worked over in water resistant pen, then I applied several washes of watercolour paint.
These are my mini art works for tonight’s (22nd December 2014) fundraising party organised by the community group Arte Vejer.
They’re post card sized and will go on sale for 5 euros each along with the mini artworks of other contributing local artists.
Here they are in more detail:
Both drawings were made with charcoal which I fixed before applying a wash of acrylic paint and a crackle glaze. The glaze was then stained with white acrylic paint and bitumen in beeswax with a smear of glitter gel over the top…very festive!
I recently finished painting one of my plane tree patterns on a wall plastered with mud in my friends’ straw bale house.
Simple lines in white emulsion paint are very effective on the beautifully coloured and textured mud, which still has straw poking through it in some places
This is the digital version of the design, you can see its evolution here in one of my previous posts
About seven years ago I painted the mural below in the same house, also on a wall plastered with mud, it was then visible in the main living space.
They’ve since built the new internal mud plastered wall to create another room for their expanded family so the first mural is hidden inside the new bedroom.
I enjoyed the whole experience of painting in white on mud so much (and I’m also a bit vain and missed seeing my art work from the living room) so it was lucky that my friends happily agreed to my proposal to paint a mural on the new wall and we settled on a theme of leaves.
This is the bare mud wall
I made this plan for the mural in Photoshop, using the cut out, inverted line work of my original pattern
I then ‘Photoshopped’ it to the photograph of the bare wall to check on the layout before transferring the design to the wall
I started by projecting the image onto the wall and drawing the outline in white pencil but ran into technical difficulties with the electrical equipment. I had to resort to plan B which meant tracing the pattern using chalk on the reverse surface of a printed template and then penciling over the chalk lines, which was far more messy and time consuming but ultimately effective.
This is a detail of the pencil drawing
Here is the partially completed mural
and a head on view of the completed mural without the added domestic decoration
This was a really enjoyable project, completed in many short sessions over a period of several months, combined with delicious lunch visits to my lovely friends.
It also fulfilled my ambition to complete a painted version of one of my digitally designed patterns on a real life wall.
This little cockerel cushion is the latest addition to my ‘textile range‘, made from a fabric sample printed with one of my cockerel designs.
I made the baby cushion as a gift for the recent arrival who lives in the house where I sketched the original cockerel, which turned into a stencil
which has since adorned many walls….
and even a few items of clothing……
I was a bit sad to find out recently that despite his regal appearance the cockerel I drew was firing blanks and was put up for adoption, but he died of shock just before his new owner turned up to claim him….just shows, a cocky exterior hides a multitude of insecurities….
About a week after my Dad had a mild heart attack in the spring of 2014 he had an angiogram to find out which of his coronary arteries might need stents to open them up and improve the blood flow to his heart muscle. He asked the cardiologist if the stents would stop his supraventricular tachycardia – also known as SVT, a sudden acceleration of the heart rate which usually resolves without treatment and causes no harm.
The cardiologist replied “No, this is plumbing and that’s wiring”.
When my Dad told me the story this picture sprang to my mind, almost fully formed.
I started by researching related images and sticking them in my sketchbook and then set about making some sketches.
The power switch and plug represent the sinoatrial node, or pacemaker, which is the area of heart tissue that generates the electrical impulses which cause the heart to beat. My Mum has had a pacemaker fitted so this part also refers to her.
The fairy lights are a celebratory representation of the electrical impulses which drive the heart, they are also inspired by the ring of flowers or thorns which typically adorn a sacred heart and by the nostlgia for the childhood Christmas times when my Dad would take the lights down from the loft, untangle them and replace the dud bulbs ready for my Mum and me to decorate the tree.
Once I was happy with the basic layout I enlarged the rough drawing,
traced it onto my working surface and began to collage.
I used sheet music for the lungs/wings because music, lungs and wings all need air to work properly.
The map which forms the background for the heart and blood vessels is of the Brecon Beacons, my Dad used to lead trekking holidays there for apprentices of the engineering company where he worked as a training instructor. He told me that he’d had a clear out of his old maps and I said “I’ll have them!” but he’d already taken them to the charity shop so I went straight there and bought them back.
Once the lungs/wings were collaged I added charcoal outlines and stuck on the map pieces.
I then applied a wash of acryilc paint and more charcoal outlines and shading
All the plumbing and electrical components were made in the same way:
I drew them onto thick paper,
applied a wash of acrylic paint and reinforced the outlines and shading with charcoal,
cut them out,
and stuck them on.
The electrical flex and glow from the fairy lights are painted with acrylic.
Working with collage, drawn collage, acrlyic paint and charcoal in this way was really fun and liberating.
Details: 36 x 41 cm, mixed media comprising collage, painted collage, acrylic paint and charcoal on paper and card.
Here’s an update of the 2CV pattern I made earlier in the year, it’s inspired by classic Citroën colour combinations
