An Illustration of My Allotment

This has been the first full year of having my own allotment, so here is a little illustration to celebrate. It's been a hard year for gardeners apparently, but I did manage to successfully grow a few tasty things like cabbage greens, sunflowers, parsnips, potatoes, lettuces and courgettes amongst other things that I wouldn't have room for in my courtyard garden at home. For the purpose of the drawing I've been a little bit creative with the truth...

My pumpkins weren't as huge as this!

My watering can isn't as funky as this.

There is an allotment cat who always says hello when I'm there. I don't know it's real name but I call him Licorice. He's really black and white with a big black patch on his mouth and I've never seen him wear a sun hat.

Recent Watercolours

Winter Garden

Badger Nap

Red Cello Blue Boots

I thought I'd post some images of the watercolour prints that are up in Pensieri over Christmas. I've no idea if anyone will like them enough to buy any of the prints, but at least it was enjoyable painting in my evenings. My fella has been mega busy trying to finish his new album, so I've needed something to do. It's definitely more interesting than watching telly. My favourite one is 'Badger Nap'... Because I really love badgers!

Illustration Friday: Zoom

This is an A4 watercolour and pencil illustration of Midnight Mary zooming around on her motorcycle with her cat, Blanko clinging on at the back.

From the 25th November, it will up in an exhibition at The Place Theatre in Bedford along with other work from the Circus of Illustration. It's part of The New Writes Nights, hosted by Novus Theatre who  want to zoom in on new local playwrights.

Circus of Illustration at Pensieri

Pensieri (34 Ram Yard, Bedford) is one of Bedford’s fantastic independent shops. A place for delicious coffee, scrumptious cakes, remarkable gifts… And illustration!

The latest exhibition to grace the walls of Maria’s gorgeous boutique is from The Circus of Illustration a collective of professional illustrators from Bedfordshire. That includes me! We've been promoting illustration through various weekend workshops in our town, like at the Drawing Room on Mill Street or at the latest Pride In Bedford mural in Queen’s Park.

On display, there is a mixture of beautiful original art and prints for sale, so do drop in and treat yourself to coffee and cake and enjoy the exhibition. It’s a great opportunity to pick up some unique presents for Christmas.

Here's some photos taken by Andrew Foster of the gallery wall. Many thanks to the talented Kristian Purcell of The Higgins for helping us do the hanging. We would have been lost without him!

Snowmen

Here are a few snowman illustrations ready for Bunnycup. Again there are 12 in the set and Ashlea should have them ready for machine embroidery users in time for Christmas.

Pensieri Preview

Red Cello Blue Boots 

Winter Garden

On the 14th of November the Circus of Illustration will be exhibiting some of our work in Pensieri, one of Bedford's gorgeous independent cafes/ gift shops. It will be up until January.

I've been working really hard on getting some work together, I have some linocuts and a couple of embroideries, but it's the painting that's been keeping me busy in my evenings. As my day to day artwork is digital I think that illustrating in my free time needs to be created away from the computer.

These pieces are nearly done, just a few touch ups in Photoshop and I think I'm there. I've one more watercolour that I want to finish then I should be ready to frame them. This body of work has no theme, I just like drawing cute girl characters. I have no message to the world, I'm not an true artist, just someone who gets her kicks from drawing things that look cute.

Christmas Village Applique

Over at Bunnycup Embroidery Ashlea has just stitched out some of my Christmas village drawings. She's transformed them into some really cute applique designs. I hope all machine embroidery users out there will find a lot of fun in using these in their Christmas projects.

Midnight Mary Sketches

Midnight Mary and her white cat, Blanko, are a couple of characters that have been swimming around my head recently. 

Maybe all these years working on my own at home are starting to send me a bit mad. I started doodling these little characters whilst watching a twee baking programme on the telly.

Mary's a schoolgirl, and a sort of goth, but she'd rather wear knitwear than black.

Cute Bears: A Step By Step

Here's a step by step on how I work up my cute characters for Doodle Press.

This week I have been working on some 'Thank You Teacher' designs using the owl and tortoise characters from our super cute Happy Hollow range.

Source: doodlepressltd.tumblr.com via Doodle on Pinterest

Source: doodlepressltd.tumblr.com via Doodle on Pinterest

Carousel pattern

I thought I'd fool around with the carousel animals a little since I love them so much! I spotted a competition via Twitter over at Tigerprint, that I can't enter unfortunately, but I liked the brief so I thought I'd try it as an exercise.  

I can see this pattern working quite well as school stationery or in soft furnishings. I would have liked it in my bedroom as young girl, maybe matched with some hot pinks. They're cute carousel animals, but the black and white scheme is quite sophisticated so I wonder if there's actually a clash of styles here! 

There are some really nice entries on the site, so if you fancy your chances I think there is still a week to go if you want to take part.

Carousel animals

Here are three of the twelve carousel animal embroidery designs I have finished this weekend for Ashlea over at Bunnycup. They are simple but cute black and white illustrations. Someone mentioned  that these line drawings would be good to print out and use as fun coloring page for their children on a rainy day or as a indoor party activity, so if you think your kids would find that fun too then let me know if it was successful!

Other posts on this blog that might make good colouring pages for kids are:

Karate Kids 

Gingerbread men (could be good at a Christmas party)

Blossom Babes (They are like little flower fairies)

Playful Cats 

So feel free to print and colour and if you'd like to stay up to date, I'm now on twitter @madamebogg

The Drawing Room: My Thoughts

Photos By Andrew Foster. Wanna see more? Check out The Circus of illustration facebook page.

We made it as democratic as possible, which funnily enough resulted in what looks like anarchy. It was free to join in and the only rules were no swears and no saucy body parts (the rule was broken, but David used his skills to transform the offending article into an elephant). People of all ages, cultures and abilities got stuck in together. Families and individuals arrived to find a welcoming lively creative space. 

The room was a shop front, so passing pedestrians would stop, and have a good look at the hustle and bustle of the spectacle inside. Some were intrigued enough to join in and find out more, others took photos. The public seemed genuinely amused with what was happening.

PHEW! It got so hot in there! The south facing glass frontage magnified the heat of the warm September sun. The smell of marker pens mixed with the odour of busy bodies wasn't exactly fragrant, but it didn't seem to bother anyone. Everyone who participated did so with much enthusiasm.

The naughtiness of drawing on walls and furniture, activities that are usually strictly forbidden at home really delighted the children who took part. 

We couldn't control what or where stuff was being drawn, so it was a surprise to walk around the room once the shop was emptied. So many little details (a beautifully swirly table leg), and written messages ('Paul Young woz here'), and naughtiness (a catheter attached to a whoopee cushion) and odd characters (a cloud throwing up a rainbow) were discovered.

The day was a huge success. The final head count was almost 250 people over the 6 hours the pop-up shop was open for.

If you want to see the fun results of a day of collaborative buzzing doodling energy, the Drawing Room is at 24 Mill Street in Bedford until 23rd of September. It's opened to go into on Saturday 22nd where you can check out Anne-Marie Stijelja's Mail Art  exhibition in the adjacent room!

Finally, a HUGE THANK YOU goes out to Kayte Judge of We Are Bedford. For the Circus, putting on this event has been a doddle compared to all the boring admin, fine-tuning and stressful meetings required for organising these empty shop projects. The behind the scenes work shouldn't go unnoticed and it's not easy to do. So Kayte, on behalf of the Circus of Illustration, we salute you. Thanks for giving us this opportunity to put on our illustration show for Bedford.

Preparing the Drawing Room

The Drawing Room is an interactive art installation taking place at 24 Mill Street in Bedford on Saturday 15th September between 10am - 4pm. It's free and open to the public.

The Circus of Illustration have been busy in our evenings and weekends preparing the room. We've collected old furniture and trinkets to create a pure white room shop front, which will act as a canvas for people to doodle on throughout the Saturday. We want people to scribble on the papered walls, floor and furniture.

It looks very clean and snowy, but it won't stay unpigmented for long! Andrew Foster took all these superb photos after our last night of prep. We ran out of white duck tape during this last papering session, but thankfully Rachel rushed to the DIY shop before it closed to restock. David struggled to cover the armchair without making it look like a puffer mushroom, but he managed to maintain it's shape after a few swears! 

Here's a photo of Rachel Lovatt and myself (on the right) enjoying the chessboard that Andrew brought in. A chess set where all the pieces are white is rather curious! (And check out that cool lamp stand that Scarlett managed to salvage for our project. I think it looks lovely.)

I do cutes!

During the day, I work as a cute artist for Doodle Press. I've been there since 2008 working in-house. They are an amazing illustration and design company based in Lancastershire. We provide design and illustration for greeting cards, packaging, product design and crafts. I usually work on cutes but I have done traditional scenes and florals too.

This a small selection of my cute work taken from the brand new and gorgeous Doodle Press website so if you're interested in our work you should get in touch.

The Drawing Room

The Circus of Illustration, the collective of local illustrators who I like to hang out and plan events and workshops with, are planning an event called The Drawing Room . It is taking place in an empty shop - 24, Mill Street in Bedford on Saturday 15th September from 10am to 4pm - as part of a series of events organised by We are Bedford. 

The Circus and the public are creating an installation in one of the shop windows, so come and check it out! The idea being that at the beginning of the day we start off with a plain white space with white furniture and objects and by the end it will be decorated with all sorts of fantastic doodles. We encourage people of all ages and abilities to come along on the day and join in the fun - you don't have to be a great artist. You can stay all day or just pop in for 10 minutes. 

In the Drawing Room we will be doodling on plain wallpaper and pieces of furniture. There is no theme to the drawings - anything goes - just keep it clean!  It could be patterns, people, animals, diagrams or even an underwater scene. I'll post some photos of how it goes!

Linoleum cut #2: Little girl

I'm still experimenting with lino cutting at home. Still a few tweaks needed on this one, but here is my progress so far.

Karate kids embroidery designs

Here are three of twelve little illustrations I've just finished for Ashlea at Bunnycup Embroidery. They are karate kids. Ashlea will eventually stitch them out using her amazing skills on her digitzed embroidery machine and make them available to download for other embroidery hobbyists to use in their projects.

My first linocut

Living in Bedford means that Edward Bawden's illustrations are often on display as there is a large collection of his work at the Higgins. A lot of it are lino cuts, so I thought I'd give it a go with my fox character here.

Here is my lino. You carve the lino where you want there to be white space. I got a bit carried away and went through to the back! I patched it up, no problem!

I rolled on some black acrylic printing paint, pressed some paper on top and lifted it off and... It actually looks really cool! I'm so pleased with it!.

Here is the dining room now. Er, I think I got carried away. I started printing on everything! Now to tidy up before my boyfriend gets mad!