To accommodate my physical expansion since last year I recently made myself another summer dress from my grey dragonfly fabric.
My finishing skills are improving! This time I followed my mum´s advice about French seams so the interior of the dress is much neater. 
The arm holes are edged with grey bias binding with contrasting white and yellow top stitching while the neckline is finished with yellow bias binding with contrasting white and grey top stitches.
It’s a comfy one and stylish too!
Here are a couple of pen and watercolour sketches I made on a recent trip to Vejer.
That’s me, right, in the Plaza de España trying to capture a quick likeness of la Torre del Mayorazgo (above) before the morning sun burnt my shoulders.
Drawing the beautiful view from the living room in my friends’ house on Calle Levante (left) was a more leisurely affair; just as well as it took a few corrections to get the angles of the buildings right.
I had a lovely surprise during my recent visit to Vejer (after an absence of several months) – the fabulous people at the delightful Corredera 55 restaurant had updated their business card to include the pen and watercolour sketch I made of the restaurant facade back in 2016 (below).
I knew they were planning to change their business card, in fact I prepared the file for the printer some time ago, but seeing the dinky little versions of the original painting sitting there in the restaurant made me smile.
If you’re lucky enough to visit Corredera 55 this summer I can highly recommend the baked sardines with sumac, damascan lemon, black olives and cherry tomatoes; a luscious oily concoction which melts in the mouth and goes down particularly well after the green gazpacho; a pea, mint, avocado and cucumber variation of the traditional Spanish cold summer soup.
Yum.
For my latest foray into textile design and home sewing I made myself a cotton dress to wear to my dear friends’ June wedding in London.
As usual I had the fabric digitally printed by Woven Monkey in the UK having made a white, red and pale green version of one of my cockerel variations; as my dad once said I’ve certainly got a lot of mileage out of that cockerel!
Click here to see how the original cockerel came to be…
I decided to finish the hems with red bias binding to match the cockscombs….
…and luckily enough found a pair of my favourite Fly London sandals in the exact same shade…
…and finished the ‘look’ with white nails and sunglasses…
The dress stood up well to the festivities – just a couple of armhole stitches popped during the disco phase!
And the wedding was absolutley wonderful.
My friends recently celebrated the first birthday of their delightful grandson Fred and very kindly invited me to the party. I decided to make a portrait to commemorate the event.
Freddie is already a star on Instagram so I chose my favourite photo of him from his mum’s gallery – it has something of the sage about it – and made a series of simple pencil drawings until I was happy that the outline did the handsome little chap justice.
I then uploaded a photograph of the drawing into Photoshop, cleaned up the linework and started playing about with classic pop art parodies.
The first version was an Andy Warhol style set of four coloured squares, but I found it too busy….
so I simplified it and made the colours more muted
Then I thought I’d have a go at a version of the Obama Hope poster by Shepard Fairey
I got both versions (above and top) printed, popped them into frames and gift wrapped them; they seemed to be received rather well.
Happy birthday Freddie – you lovely boy! xx
Inspired by the beautiful spring blossom which floats like confetti in the London breeze and a collection of gorgeous printed papers (right) gifted to me by a friend recently returned from Japan, I made this little pen a watercolour sketch.
To herald the arrival of springtime the good folk at Mary’s Living & Giving Shop in Bermondsey Street (where I work as a volunteer for a few hours each week) invited me to design and execute an illustration for their window.
What a lovely project – and right up my street!
I decided on a flowers, birds and bees theme in a loose art nouveau style and made a sketch to scale.
Before embarking on the window I had a little practise with the chalk pens on a small sheet of glass and assigned colours to the different elements of the drawing….
…while Kerry kindly cleaned the window in preparation for the obligatory ‘before’ photo.
(You can just see my two remaining ‘Pre-Loved Fashion’ drawings hanging up there behind the manequins.)
Artist at work!
Here are a few photos of the completed drawing, which took a couple of sessions to finish…
…needless to say the ‘here comes the sun’ caption is more of a wish than an observation during springtime in Britain!
I really had so much fun with this project and am so grateful to the Mary’s Living & Giving team for trusting me with it – thank you!
Post script
As well as being right up my street this project is also a trip down memory lane (pun central…sorry!). About 20 years ago I did some window painting at The Honest Cabbage Restaurant, 99-101 Bermondsey Street (below left)
and her sister restaurant The Honest Goose on The Cut in Waterloo (above).
The Cabbage has since been converted to The Garrison Public House – my artwork didn’t survive but that tends to be the way with mural art unless you’re Banksy.
Today I made this quick pen and watercolour sketch of an orchid; it was dark and snowy outside so I decide to reflect that in the dark background which I also hoped would make the white flowers ‘pop’!
I recently moved back to London – a rather unexpected and initially unwanted development – but it’s actually turned out to be quite wonderful…
I was having a wander around my district the other day and saw a sign outside the Mary’s Living & Giving Shop in Bermondsey Street asking for volunteers. The Mary in the title is Mary Portas, ‘Queen of Shops’, and the 23 Living and Giving shops in London all sell donated new and pre-loved fashion in aid of Save The Children. So I signed up…what better way to contribute to a worthy cause, meet new people and hang out in a gorgeous place? Not to mention the beautiful pre-loved designer gear (no staff discounts!).
During my first shop shift I felt inspired to draw some of the delightful items on display so I signed them out in the ‘borrow book’ and took them home.
I started by making some sketches to test colours and layout, taking elements from the shop decoration (by Elno Art) to use as the border.
I was pleased with the sketches but I wanted to develop them into more polished pieces which I could donate to the shop. I got the sketches enlarged by photocopy so that I could trace the layout onto lovely heavy watercolour paper without having to start the whole design process again from scratch.
Once the pencil line work was complete I went over it with water resistant pens of various nib sizes
Then with the pen outline finished I rubbed out the pencil marks and started adding layers of watercolour paint
Obviously the shoe drawing is my favourite…the actual shoes are my size but those heels are really high and my knees are middle aged!
Finally I got the completed pictures scanned…
I will be so proud to have my drawings displayed in the shop and maybe even sell them – all proceeds to Save the Children.
Pre-loved fashion – sustainable, ethical and beautiful; reuse, recycle, donate!
Update: On 21st March 2018 my lovely friend Wendy came by the shop to buy ‘Head over Heels’! Thank you!
On a rainy January afternoon my friend Marcel Snyders presented his play ‘Té Verde‘ (Green Tea in English) to an enthusiastic audience in the castle headquarters of Arte Vejer.
I designed the front cover for Té Verde back in October 2017 (you can read about the process here) so Marcel invited me to exhibit some of my art work during the event.
That’s Marcel (below) being interviewed by Paco Ariza Varo from Radio Vejer before Marcel interviewed me….
I decided to keep the exhibition small and simple so I showed a selection of my sketchbooks with my painting materials (to demonstrate the process of illustration) alongside the finished illustrations for:
I also displayed some of my fabric designs (my current favourite form of illustration!) and the dresses I made from them, as well as a selection of postcards and a computer slideshow of other artworks.
The presentation was highly entertaining, Marcel served green tea (té verde) and cakes as people arrived, two actresses from Marcel’s theatre group read the first act of the play, the flamenco musician Abraham Sevilla Serrano improvised a song dedictated to Marcel and the play (right)…
…then Marcel broke out the cava and presented me with my copy of the book
The Spanish version of the play Té Verde is now available to buy on the publisher’s website.
It’s a highly entertaining read…Good luck Marcel!