Holly Wales | Illustrator & Educator | felt tip marker pen collage handmade colour illustr

Collaboration with City Edition Studio

2012-01-26T09:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a special collaboration for Jono Lewarne at City Edition Studio - Jono's girlfriend Amy never quotes this famous mariners proverb quite the same way each time she says it, so for Christmas he asked me to draw some sea-farers and their ships to produce a series of prints to surprise her with at Christmas! Printed as a set of 2-colour Risographs.

Buckminster Fuller - 5 part interview on 'Psychic Phenomena'

2012-01-26T03:43:00.001-08:00

Buckminster Fuller states that "man must learn to think for himself, rather than follow blindly what he has been taught." "As the astronauts stated, the words 'up' and 'down' have no meaning. The correct words are 'out' and 'in'. This was confirmed when mankind learned the Earth was round, not flat." Buckminster Fuller Archive

The Life Aquatic

2012-01-19T03:18:00.000-08:00

After finishing the book cover for The Bloody Chamber i really wanted to explore that way of working; summarising themes in a limited amount of space and also the opportunity to use hand-drawn type. A lot of illustrators have produced responses to The Life Aquatic which made it more of a challenge and also like I was becoming part of a special underground club at the same time.

And talking of, Wes Anderson - check out the trailer for his new film Moonrise Kingdom - as if you haven't seen it already, internet.

Abelha Cachaça

2012-01-17T14:42:00.001-08:00

This is a label I designed a few years ago for Abelha Cachaça, an organic cachaca brand from Bahia, Northern Brasil, which you can read all about here.

Silence

2012-01-17T03:34:00.000-08:00

I saw The Artist directed by Michel Hazanavicius at The Barbican last night. I enjoyed the self-referential moments where the idea of the silent film filters into the script itself (the heavy feather, the relentless noise of the public...) but ultimately I thought it was an incredibly tragic film; not so far from the truth, with an end which left me feeling defeated.

Another great silent film and inevitable love story, from 1925, this time by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which I was lucky enough to catch last year, performed with a live score.

The Bloody Chamber (sketchbook)

2012-01-16T08:01:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be interesting to post some photos of my sketchbook for The Bloody Chamber project. I tried to make the most of the long deadline and was working on this for quite a while, on and off, between November and January; as such I ended up with loads of loose ends and which was a real luxury, and not really possible on short projects.

I used the time to draw and re-draw things observed and imagined, celebrating the imperfections which appear in drawings when making a copy of the previous one.

The Bloody Chamber for The House of Illustration & Folio Society

2012-01-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

Cover illustration.

'Then out into the cold morning, harking after that black, vague shape...'

'A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside.'

'If you spy a naked man amongst the pines, you must run as if the devil were after you.'

I decided to enter the Folio Society competition run by the House of Illustration, to illustrate three scenes and a cover for The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

I became interested in acknowledging the different levels of translation required between text and image, and dealing with different levels of abstraction. It was also important that they worked sequentially, even if they will not be seen directly side by side, so working all four up at the same time and reassessing them as a collection became an important part of my working process.

Figures

2012-01-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

A collection of illustrated figures from various projects I have worked on.

Finnhamn

2012-01-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

After my trip to the Swedish island of Finnhamn in the Stockholm archipelago in December, I started to illustrate some of the buildings we found there; shops and houses abandoned for the Winter; swept up by ice cold howling wind and damp, these huts and homes stay strong for the intervening months. I love their simple construction and the shapes they make.

Annie Hall by Woody Allen

2012-01-07T07:59:00.000-08:00

I saw Annie Hall at The BFI last night as part of their Wise Cracks: The Comedies of Woody Allen series.

His mum's right, Brooklyn is not expanding, but it doesn't stop me using the ultimate apathy of the universe (or watching films I've already seen and then blogging about them...) as a way out of doing January's tax return.

The Lady

2012-01-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

The story of pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and the academic and writer Michael Aris; a true story of love set against political turmoil. Directed by Luc Besson.

I saw this at The Barbican last night and it's really sticking with me.

Zdeněk Miler

2011-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

I was introduced to the mole-based films of Zdeněk Miler via Alice Stevenson's wonderful blog earlier today and I can't stop watching. I have been teaching on the Motion Graphics pathway at WSA this term so I have been thinking a lot about illustration as sequence; one informing the next, or in this case, the next informing the previous.

I love the way Miler uses clever framing to tell a story; first you see the underside of an elephant - an abstract brown mass - then he elaborates by switching to a zoomed out side-profile. To top it all his visual language is rich and gorgeous and makes me want to live in a forest more than ever.

You can watch the full collection of mole stories here.

Wrapping Paper

2011-12-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

I have made some winter-influenced wrapping paper for disguising gifts under the tree this Christmas. It was screenprinted with Bobby from Telegramme at OPEN. I decided to experiment with a split fountain gradient between a darker, teal blue and a bright blue, which gives the effect of a 3-colour print. Each sheet measures 50x70cm and is printed onto recycled newsprint.

I produced a very small run of these sheets for wrapping up presents for my family and friends, but there are a small number available to buy for £1 per sheet. Please let me know if you would like one!

The Seven Seas

2011-12-12T03:46:00.000-08:00

Some drawings of ships and their sailors from my sketchbook for a very special collaboration...

Snow Problem @ Catch on Tue 13th Dec

2011-12-12T02:25:00.000-08:00

Flat-e / NCC Xmas Party @ Catch - 22 Kingsland Road, 13 th December starts at 8pm with bands Kurtz, Details, Carl White - DJ's Solution vs Problem - Visuals Straight2video.

Come join us and get christmassy! Flyer by Neasden Control Centre

PROFIT Magazine

2011-12-07T04:49:00.000-08:00

I did these illustrations as part of a pretty quick editorial job for Canadian magazine PROFIT, which looked at employees getting bored in meetings, managers inspecting new business ventures for flaws and the cost of exporting goods.

Stockholm to Finnhamn

2011-12-05T13:34:00.001-08:00

At the weekend we took a boat two and a half hours from Stockholm to the archipelago island of Finnhamn, and I drew all the things I saw along the way, as the houses spread out and the huge rocks grew out of the water. It felt good to catalogue and organise these things in the order they appeared, with a time limit on each drawing because the boat moved so fast.

David O'Reilly - Vectorpunk Animation

2011-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

"...so you see there is really no need to mimic other styles and media."

That's all.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks at the RSA

2011-11-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

Learning

2011-11-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Figure 24

2011-11-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

I was drawn to these structures found in a book in the library, by their names and descriptions as much as their shapes; Single Cables Arranged Radially, Nets With Non Uniform Meshes, Pre-Stressed Systems. I'm also interested in how they are displayed; using grids and systems to display similar objects. I am trying to get away from producing single images for the t-shirt collection and interested in how I can use the format to display things in more than one way...

Encyclopedia

2011-11-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

I'm working out some images which will form a new collection of 7 t-shirts to be sold by a new Californian based brand over the next few months. Here are a few things from my sketchbook after having spent the day drawing from my almost-unweildy collection of children's encyclopedias.

Goodbye British Summertime

2011-10-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

New drawings.

New patterns

2011-10-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

New shape-and-colour compositions from my sketchbook...

How To Keep Your Hired Help

2011-10-29T15:08:00.000-07:00

I've had this article from Successful Farming (!!!) for a few years, although I can't remember how I ended up with it; and I've been hooked on what makes a good leader since I found out Tony Blair has the Simian Line on both hands.

Good advice for anyone intending to work with anyone else.

Underwater 35mm

2011-10-25T14:22:00.001-07:00

The summer seems already a long time ago, but I found these pictures which were shot on an underwater 35mm camera on our last day in Corsica before we set sail for Toulon; the sun went in, and water started to fill up inside the cheap plastic camera - a combination of which resulted in these hypernatural images... I'm glad I finally got round to editing a series.

Winchester School of Art Illustration Workshop

2011-10-25T13:54:00.001-07:00

Today I led a workshop for 100 (!!!) eager first years at Winchester School of Art who I was meeting for the first time. The morning took the form of a series of drawing tasks, completed one after the other, leaving little time for reflection or criticism while making, which can often be a crippling problem. I was interested in demonstrating how putting the same image through different processes takes it somewhere new / changes it beyond your imagination / creates surprise / adds (or takes away) drama / has unique results, to prove that a degree of repetition can lead to new answers just when you think you've exhausted every opportunity...

In the afternoon Mia Frostner from Europa and I ran a lightning-fast speed monoprinting workshop, in which more than 100 prints were produced in less than 2 hours! Well done everyone!

Converse

2011-10-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

I produced this image to be printed onto a 140cm wide canvas for a Converse press event, along with Neasden Control Centre and 6 other artists; we were each given a pantone colour to produce a piece of work which would work in a single hue.

Selecting colours is one of the first things I do when working so being force-fed something I wouldn't naturally choose, and then being unable to work with complimentary colours was really challenging; I played with percentages and halftones to reconstruct these parts of these pages from one of my sketchbooks.

Photos from the press event coming soon.

Frieze Family Space 2011

2011-10-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here is the finished Family Guide I illustrated with friends Europa for this year's Frieze Art Fair. The illustrations are based on artist Pierre Huyghe’s aquarium which was a live ecosystem created especially for Frieze 2011. The walls were really well used and fully populated with millions of new species of sea-monsters by Sunday afternoon!

As usual Europa and I experimented with 4 special pantone colours; this year using a bronze on a bright white matt paper to make the ocean floor sparkle, along with some pretty hot fluorescents.

Each year I have introduced more and more figurative elements into the Frieze Family guides, part in response to the client and part to see how I might treat the composition differently. I went a lot further with this one and while I'm not sure it works in the very detailed parts of the aquarium, I can see how it might work backwards, and abstract elements might help to build up something figurative. I'm going to experiment with this way of working and see where I get...

'75 Peters' opens in Brisbane

2011-10-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the wonderful Archigram architect Peter Cook's 75th birthday, I have been invited along with 74 other artists to produce a portrait of Peter for this show in Brisbane.

Thank you Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T13:57:00.001-07:00

The Feynman Series (part 1)

2011-10-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

What's Next?

2011-10-05T03:50:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, we visited Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives. Everything had been left in it's place; from her tiny workclothes hanging on pegs, to work-in-progress frozen in time; dozens of tools left to rust but all more organised and laid out than she may have had them; it was still great to get a glimpse into her world though, and while looking through the library this week, I found an article she wrote for Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art, which she illustrates with this picture of Stonehenge. It occurred to me that the thoughts I was having about stiles were similar to bigger questions raised about these monolithic structures on an altogether different scale. Similarities in material, texture and form; it makes me want to ask how should they be used?.

I find a lot of these thoughts keep coming back to the functionality of things; of images. They can no longer be left as they are; enjoyed, or understood over time - they all need to have immediate impact and readability. Are we in a hurry to assign images with a purpose because we want to be able to achieve immediate certainty? Do we cling to the feeling that if we know something for certain we can move on to the next much more quickly?

Stile over Style

2011-10-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

A stile is a structure which provides people a passage through or over a fence or boundary via steps, ladders, or narrow gaps. Stiles are often built in rural areas or along footpaths to allow access to an adjacent field or area separated by a fence, wall or hedge. Unlike a gate, there is no chance of forgetting to close it, and should the stile break, the fence remains intact (livestock cannot escape). However, stiles may well be difficult to use for some disabled people and people with limited mobility.

We found this series of stone stiles in Cornwall this weekend while negotiating narrow footpaths with half-height doorways in the hedgerows, presumably for tall badgers or ferrel children.

I like the stile as an object because it is so concerned with function, it forgets the ridiculousness of it's form but in doing so blends seamlessly into it's environment; many of these Cornish stone versions could at a glance be accidental formations; rockfalls at convenient junctions - you're not sure whether the bit you're standing on is an intentional part of the design or a lucky stepping stone; most also have spaces or cavities between the stones which cater for dogs - cleverer than sheep in learning that they can go up, down, under, and over in that order.

Someone should tell them though, that the view on the other side really is this good.

Maps

2011-09-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

I have been commissioned to illustrate quite a few maps lately. Here are two from some very recent projects I worked on for US clients.

Iconemesis / iPhone cases for iPhone 3G

2011-09-23T12:06:00.000-07:00

I recently collaborated with Iconemesis to design 4 new cases for iPhone 3G. I'm really happy with these - treat yourself to one!

APG Gallery, Sheffield

2011-09-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to be part of this group show at APG Gallery in Sheffield.

Creatures, Characters and Communication
3 Cs in Graphic art - A Group Exhibition of Original Screen Prints

September 24th - October 22nd, 2011
Preview Evening, Friday September 23rd, 6-9pm

Feat. Ian Stevenson // Russell Maurice // James Nash // Sarah Abbott // Matt Sewell // David Litchfield // Jane Faram // Bob Milner // Steve White // Malarky // Holly Wales // AustinVonNew // Neasden Control Centre // 45 RPM

For this new exhibition at APG Works Sheffield, artists from various backgrounds have been brought together by the curator, Steve White, to explore various applications of "Creatures, Characters and Communication" within graphic art.

Loss

2011-09-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday night, someone broke into my studio at OPEN and took everything. I lost over 6 months of work, most of which I'd never published online or offline; it's all gone into a big black hole like this one, and it's like it never happened. It made me think a lot about what we do with our time and how so much is now made of documentation; the need to document, to represent, to display; as proof or as a replacement form of memory.

I wonder what I will make now I have arrived at B with no idea how I got here from A.

Burgermat Show @ Beach London 15/09/11

2011-09-12T14:39:00.001-07:00

I'm part of this show at Beach London on Thursday 15th September, curated by the lovely meat-eaters at Burgerac. Come on down!

The Art of Sitting

2011-09-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

A selection of chairs for a recent project.

Campsite Architecture #1

2011-09-09T05:25:00.001-07:00

While living under the shade of pine trees, olive groves and Swiss stormclouds this summer, one thing began to really interest me; campsite architecture. I will document this over a series of posts but one of the biggest things which struck me was our unquestioning need for electricity in any form we can get it. Extension cables snake around trees, occasionally weighed down by pine cones or submerged in a flurry of leaves; microwaves and electric grills sit upon treestumps and cameras charge their batteries nestled safely under shrubs.

They form unspoken boundaries between pitches, at the same time as opening up opportunities; if we buy an electric lamp, we could add an extra 3 hours to our day... (This thought multiplies at lightning speed and within a week there'd be a washing machine and a smart car, a couple of skyscrapers and international space station) We become hungry for it but there's also something taboo here; our neighbours scurry nervously too-and-fro from plug sockets, wrapping phones up in plastic bags (presumably to stop a wasp from laying its eggs in the microphone right...) and hanging them from trees. It is a bizarre performance structure and I am hooked.

Frieze Education 2011

2011-09-05T11:40:00.001-07:00

I've been working on the activity guide for 5-12 year olds this year at Frieze Art Fair and made a lot of drawings in the process... Once again this project forms a nice collaboration with designers Europa and the finished thing will be out next month! This year's theme takes on the depths of the aquarium as a performance space.

New bikes

2011-09-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Food!

2011-09-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

These illustrations were part of a pitch I made a little while ago for a project which ended up going in a different direction. I enjoyed working on them because they needed to look very detailed and realistic, yet uncomplicated; but it made me realise how important subject matter is, as I find them all kind of sickly to look at!

Swiss

2011-08-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

A pair of sandwich bags I was given when buying a sandwich in Lucerne rail station last week.

Intermission

2011-08-01T02:47:00.000-07:00

I'm flying to Hamburg later today, to join NCC as we travel across Euro-land in our portable studio making work as we go with whatever we find, inspired by Portable Dwellings. London, you have been amazing.

2001: A Space Odyssey at Folly for A Flyover

2011-07-25T10:17:00.000-07:00

Keeping the space theme alive, and to celebrate the return home of the Unknown Fields division on Saturday, I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey outdoors at Folly for A Flyover while the sun set, turning Hackney Wick a rare shade of gold for just a few moments...

Last Minute Holly Wales

2011-07-25T08:56:00.000-07:00

August 1st sees me set sail across Europe with Neasden Control Centre on a month-long 'residency without a residence', to live outdoors, to draw, write, and take part in whatever comes our way, inspired by Portable Dwellings.

If you have a commission, get it in by Friday! My pens are at the ready.

TITLED

2011-07-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

I've always been fascinated by language and it has probably been one of the driving forces behing me as an illustrator. I have notebooks just for collecting titles in; prospective titles edited down from longer sentences, stolen from conversations, things taken out of context; to one day become the parameters for a new project. Sometimes a title is enough to win me over in buying a book, and rarely do I get the same sense of optimism and hopeful possibility once I've finished reading the whole thing.

A title can be very suggestive, and two or three words can cover a lot of ground; the gap between them becomes a thing in itself; huge and full. (There is something I like about this to do with wholeness.)

Pictures have always had a close relationship with titles, but in this internet-world where the filename becomes the closest you'll get but never see, and images are borrowed and freely redistributed out of context, there became something interesting about selecting titles from a book and displaying them without illustrations.

At the Q&A at [On...] Innovation & Ownership, someone asked the panel a question I have heard a lot of times from students; 'do you think that looking at blogs and having access to so much illustration is more destructive than useful?' Seeing so many images on blogs can be paralysing for an illustrator, but ideally words have the opposite effect, and become a starting point for work.

(image credit The Pictoral History of Magic and the Supernatural, Spring Books 1964)

G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art Architecture Design and Film 1923-1926

2011-07-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

"The industrialisation of construction depends upon materials. Anyone expecting to reach the industrialisation of construction only through the active and contemporary form of organisation is wrong."

I read this today and I think it sums up wonderfully what I was trying to communicate about the importance of making over talking, at the [On...] Innovation & Ownership event hosted by It's Nice That last night. It comes from a book I bought at Tate on Tuesday when I went to see the Vorticists show which showcases content from the journal G: Material Zur Elementaren Gestaltung from 1926.

source: G: Material for Elemental Form Creation from An Avant-Garde Journal of Art Architecture Design and Film 1923-1926 edited by Detlef Mertins and Michael W. Jennings

WET Magazine

2011-07-13T07:43:00.001-07:00

(image credit - Bedford McIntosh)

Amazing covers for WET, The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing which was published in Venice and Santa Monica in LA between 1976 and 1981 by Leonard Koren.

You might have noticed a theme here; if it's celebrating swimming, I'm into it.

Its Nice That / Innovation & Ownership

2011-07-13T03:39:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night I will be speaking at the ON [...] Innovation & Ownership event, hosted by It's Nice That.

Holly Wales, joined by Bobby Evans from OPEN, will be exploring the ‘Ownership of The Visual’, thinking through making, and a thumbs down to the buying and crowd-sourcing of detached ideas; "we are interested in curating a space where experimentation can be nurtured and cultivated in order to realise our ideas."

Flatland - Carl Sagan

2011-07-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

small thoughts for a tuesday

2011-07-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

"What is the nature of the search? Really it is very simple; at least for a fellow like me. So simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life; to be aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something."

from The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy (1961)

I am thinking often about 'search' V 'research' and how either seem to behave whilst in progress. If you pinpoint a singular moment from the search, you take away it's pretext or subtext, and are left with something - not useless - but a flag to depart from in a new, albeit random, direction.

This element of random occurs so much in terms of the way we are presented with singular images, that narrative often finds itself disrupted and changed on the fly, by the individual, but not necessarily out of choice.

With that in mind, which way do we proceed?

Unknown Fields Division (...)

2011-07-12T08:39:00.001-07:00

(image credit Baikonour - NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Good luck to the Unknown Fields Division travelling research circus as they arrive in Kiev, Ukraine today for the start of a 10-day exploration of the CHERNOBYL EXCULSION ZONE to BAIKONUR COSMODROME, Kazakhstan. An exciting project which I have been following closely as Neasden Control Centre joins them as artist in residence.

(image credit Pripyat swimming pool - Martin Stens)

As part of the Unknown Fields programme, I was lucky enough to hear scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse Honegger speak at the AA School - I've been fascinated by her research into the insects found near to Pool B30 at Sellafield nuclear plant, but what I found most interesting were her repeat studies of forms collected and observed from the Chernobyl exclusion zone and further afield, following wind direction patterns to places where the natural world has quietly, furtively been mutating at breakneck speed, illustrated in sequence. I love the repetition of forms, the minor alterations, and the composition of all the elements together.

(image credit - Cornelia Hesse Honegger)

By chance, I had used a similar idea to illustrate part of Buckminster Fuller's definition of synergy for this year's water projection film for Latitude Festival. It takes the form of a collaboration with Neasden Control Centre and you can see it live at the festival this weekend!

Origin Coffee - HONDURAS San Miguelito

2011-07-08T03:54:00.001-07:00

I recently illustrated this packaging for Origin Coffee as a collaboration with Falmouth friends A Side Studio. It's available to buy from the Origin shop here.

Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky

2011-07-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I watched Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky (1972) and began making imagery to reflect the feel of the film; I was intrigued by the houseplants, numerous vases, birdcage and details within the house but made a conscious effort not to depict anything which could be a direct interpretation of the set, props or actors. I based a lot of the shapes which I generated these images from on patterns in brickwork, tiled ceiling detail, long grasses and then abstracted them. This isn't really a conclusion to this project, but a junction - it's been good to work on something so on-going in between everything else.

I guess I see this as a development of the work I made based on Twin Peaks by David Lynch, although I was keen to look at narrative in a slightly different way. I read something where 1960's LA painter Robert Irwin talks about 'a narrative which folds in on itself' which has been an underlying theme here in terms of how I am working with materials.

4 days in the Lake District

2011-07-05T08:38:00.000-07:00

Adding to collections already begun by others.

Short lessons in dam building: adding to structures already begun by others; making one part of the dam stronger weakens another, and taking stones from the shore to throw to the other side makes the river too wide to cross.

Our camp at Lower Wray, Lake Windemere in Cumbria this weekend.

Life Drawing

2011-06-30T04:47:00.001-07:00

I've been going to life drawing classes for nearly six months now and slowly beginning to understand what I'm looking for, both in the structure of the body and in the drawing as an object in itself.

Tal R

2011-06-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

I was shown A Ship Is Not An Island (Et Skib Er Ikke En Ö) a 10 minute film by Tal R recently and wanted to put together a collection of some of his work. I love how each painting feels like you're looking at the one before from a different perspective, one minute you're outside the black hole looking in, next you're inside one looking out. His painting style has been described as "kolbojnik", which means "left-overs", I really like this; it makes me think about negative spaces, reversed out and turned into something all on their own, imaginary shapes with no names, redundant, spare; gathering up the debris.

Latitude Festival - Fallon Films

2011-06-21T09:20:00.002-07:00

LATITUDE 2010 / Water Projections Installation from Fallon Films on Vimeo.

This year I am working with Fallon Films once again to produce a series of animations to be projected onto huge walls of water at Latitude Festival. Here's the footage from last year as a taste of things to come...

The New York Times - Lives

2011-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

I continue to illustrate a weekly column, Lives, for The New York Times. Because it's so frequent, I often forget to document the things I'm doing for it, so here is a small selection.

Flags

2011-06-15T10:20:00.001-07:00

I've been deconstructing international flags down into their component elements, ordering, cropping and re-ordering them in sets. This is the sort of exercise I've done using vectors but never with drawing; initially I began using a framework I drew in illustrator as a reference point, then later removed it once I felt as though a natural structure had started to evolve.

Sketchbook

2011-06-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

I've been drawing a lot again in the last few months, especially outdoors in the forests of Leipzig and Epping. I got really interested in the form/shape made by leaves, logs, seeds, flowers, twigs and branches and how they form natural compositions wherever they fall. I found I was always drawing the outline of things, to define the composition, but then when it came to adding detail found in the leaf veins, bark, disintegration etc, the original outlines got in the way. So I started to block in a lot of the colour, the way I'd been used to when working with vectors or with my hyper-real object drawings, and then add the detail in right over the top; it felt really strange to work in this way by hand but I'm beginning to see how useful it is in getting the information across, also a lot more quickly.

This just made me think of a great print by my pal Jono at City Edition Studio called "First I Do The Colouring Then I Draw It In".

Nike

2011-06-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

New drawings of vintage Nike shoes from a series of items for sale on eBay.

Ridin' on 9

2011-06-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

Some new drawings of bicycles. I am continuing to exploring how much information I can leave out of a drawing, and avoiding using line to describe form. I have tried to balance areas of detail with empty space and solid shapes to emphasise a shape which feels as though it is on a journey. I enjoy isolating objects from their surroundings but would really like to start building up narratives in a single image with these drawings, which would obviously affect the scale and speed at which the originals are drawn.

Speed Tests #1

2011-06-05T04:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's nice to make something quickly.

It reminded me of this drawing I did for a project by If You Could in 2007.

Gravis Contra

2011-06-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

I absolutely fell in love with this limited edition rucksack by Gravis and was lucky enough to find a brand new one on eBay this week. If I could design rucksacks, they would all look like this. Thanks, Gravis!

Sketchbook

2011-06-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

I don't often post unfinished drawings or things from my sketchbooks, but I liked these pages from some work I've been doing this week for German magazine Fräulein.

Le Quattro Volte

2011-05-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

I saw this film at the barbican yesterday. It "follows the transfigeration of four beings or substances; a goat; an old man; a tree and a batch of charcoal" and contains no dialogue except for that of the goats.

new T-Shirts

2011-05-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

Four new t-shirt designs based on the idea of by-products left behind since the miner's strikes of the 1970's at Pool B30 in Sellafield. Let me know if you're into these, I'm looking at different ways of printing them right now...

Flohmarkt #02048

2011-05-16T07:48:00.001-07:00

I love the way things are (dis)ordered in fleamarkets; stacked, piled, stockpiled, hoarded, leant, propped up, covered; but always with some consideration for genre (of object) or at the very least, scale; basic school photograph rules apply to display, such as small at the front, big at the back. I often wonder, how much stuff remains at the back for months, years, untouched? Used in itself as furniture, shelving, support structures for the rest. And how much of these display tactics are curated by the shoppers themselves?

Stasi Museum, Leipzig

2011-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

I've slowly been making edits of all the things I collected pictures of on last month's trip. One of the most unexpected places we ended up was the Stasi Museum in Leipzig; we arrived at 10am, to find not so much a museum, but an invitation inside by a series of hand drawn marker pen signs, the nib dragged to exhaustion across sheets of corrugated cardboard; inside, shelves, boxes and cabinets stuffed full of unlikely moustaches, bugging devices, microphones hidden in bricks, and a cleverly engineered machine who's only job was to open and re-seal envelopes, perfectly. So as not to fade the printed items, floral curtains covered most of the windows and blew in the wind (the reflection of some of which you can see in these pictures), making it feel even more as though the operators had just popped out...

Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow

2011-05-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

In Poland, I climbed down the 54 flights of wooden steps into the Weiliczka Salt Mine outside Krakow (pretty much perfect after watching Cave of Forgotten Dreams). I have been making images based on the things I saw there, including a print for a t-towel which will be available in the shop soon.

Where Diamonds Once Lay

2011-05-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

A t-shirt design for a project I worked on with McSweeneys in San Francisco. This design was never printed. Based on the mining process where diamonds are released from volcanic pipes by surface erosion and washed into rivers and sea for the fish to enjoy...

Isolation in Poland

2011-05-05T03:08:00.000-07:00

I spent April between Berlin, Krakow and Leipzig. I realised that a lot of what I am doing with my work is often focussed on methods of isolation; to take something out of context, to see by itself, to look at it properly, without an interference of excess information. I am interested in the times when this process of visual isolation happens for us, and when we have to do it for ourselves. Here are some frames I met isolating vital information in Poland.

For a sunny day...

2011-04-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

My favourite scene from Quicksilver.

Friendly Power

2011-04-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Scanner fuck-ups I made from inkjet prints, which separate the colours in gradients in a real trippy way.

Superunits

2011-04-05T03:05:00.000-07:00

Joel Tettamanti

I've been following photographer Joel Tettamanti for a couple of years, as he trawls the world for people and the structures they live in and make use of. My favourites are from his 3 series from towns in Greenland; the way the snow eats it's own route around the brightly coloured buildings; the landscape takes the structures hostage; stealing bits and rejecting others. The leftover shapes feel like a kit with which to build new things.

J. Bennett Fitts

Today Bobby showed me the pictures of another photographer, J. Bennett Fitts who lives and works in LA. These pictures are from his series No Lifeguard On Duty. I've loved abandoned swimming pools for as long as I can remember; there's something tragic about taking away the only thing they have to give; and a particular insult - to fill one in with grass. I like the ladder which never reaches the bottom, the rainwater and frogs who replace the paying guests and the fences once designed generously for privacy become places to hang aggressive 'no trespassing' notices.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

2011-04-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

1. Pictures of hands. Santian cave, Spain.
2. Stone tools.
3. Geometric symbols from Spain and dotted symbols from Niaux, France.
4. Countryside with hunting scene, made by bushmen.
5. Skull from Olduvai Gorge.

Last week, I saw Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog in 3D; a dreamscape story of the Chauvet cave, discovered in 1994 in Southern France by explorers looking for air vents in the rock. My favourite moment, an aging perfumer (presumably someone straight from Patrick Süskind's imagination...) is found lurking alongside a mossy embankment on the hillside, and explains he is using his specialist skills to discover new caves, but that right now, he can only smell the grass and trees. We wait with trepidation with each breath.

I've just been exploring my bookshelves for some images to go with it, and this is what I found.

Variety With Identity is Possible

2011-03-27T03:57:00.000-07:00

I've been interested in how I can begin to tell a narrative over a series of images for a while now; this is some work I made recently about looking at the same thing from three different points of view; playing on distance, from the microscopic to the epic. I'm looking at how it's possible to isolate something in a single image when it is supported by a sequence, while trying to get the biggest number of things from the smallest number of elements.

Variety with identity is possible, discussed by Peter Nencini.

Build it as a Monument to That Spirit Which is Yours - And Could Have Been Mine

2011-03-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand has been one of my favourite books for a long time, and featured recently on my It's Nice That bookshelf, but I forgot to mention it was also released in 1949 as a film.

Howard Roark is Ayn Rand's embodiment of the human spirit, and his struggle represents the triumph of individualism over collectivism.

I find this an ever-increasingly relevant thought, as we work for ourselves, by ourselves and produce things that are not lost by anyone except us.

Czechoslovakia 1966-68

2011-03-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

I started reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Berlin last summer (and I got so hooked I decided to make it last as long as possible). It is set in Prague in 1968 at the time of the Prague Spring soviet invasion, and plays on the effect of an individual's history to tell an incredibly descriptive story of the spaces between their relationships, and what divides them. I find these divisions really interesting - they are so often unspoken, instead we spend much of our lives concerned with things in common, likenesses, similarities, sameness; and I begin to wonder what the effect of having the same differences might be...

I love coincidences, so was happy to find myself watching Daisies by Vera Chytilová last night, which I'd been trying to find in 2004, but had forgotton I was looking for (the best kind of find...) Made in 1966 also in Czechoslovakia, it was banned immediately. It becomes an animated, torn up, stripped down aggressive collage; with some amazing visual treats hidden away in the elaborate ever-changing sets; giant leaves, flowers, isolated, pressed, pinned.

Reading and seeing them together, I feel like one is a visualisation of the spaces in the other. But of course this might just be random...

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology's student newspaper, The Tech, from 1971, on the use of the word random as a noun - "A person who happens to be in a particular place at a particular time, a person who is there by chance; a person who is not a member of a particular group; an outsider.")

Brussels / Amsterdam

2011-03-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I took a train to Amsterdam (via the wonderful Place du Jeu de Balle fleamarket in Brussels) and met with some really great people, pets and things.

Animals I Met in 2010

2011-02-28T16:34:00.001-08:00

I met all these great guys and photographed them on my Olympus XA2 during 2010.

Falmouth

2011-02-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

A great weekend in Falmouth working with graphic design & illustration students at UCF, speaking at The Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society with Bobby from Telegramme, and tea on the beach with A-Side studio and Stranger Collective. Thanks to everyone and all the dogs who let me throw them a stick!

Omnicrom #2

2011-02-28T07:56:00.000-08:00

I've been working with omnicrom again... these are some tests from last week for a series of full-colour risograph prints I want to make. Keep your eye on the shop!

Beards

2011-02-20T05:14:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about beards a lot lately. Gentlemen, here are four which I found in the Winchester School of Art library for your consideration.

Pole Position

2011-02-04T11:19:00.000-08:00

I found these two diagrams in a second hand childrens encylopedia. The description next to the diagram said "Scientists have found evidence that the north and south poles have somewhat moved". I love the disconcertingly vague explanation of the whole thing.

Der Mond

2011-02-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

I bought a book called Der Mond at the Arkonaplatz Flohmarkt last summer in Berlin. Today the spine broke and all the pages fell out, beautifully, as single sheets. I could see some of the best illustrations by themselves. So I thought I'd share some of them here. I love buying books in foreign languages; all the guess-work involved in working out what the hell the illustrations mean is somehow a lot more fun.

Its Nice That / Bookshelf

2011-01-27T16:41:00.001-08:00

Image courtesy of Owen.

Last week I was asked by Bryony Quinn at It's Nice That to talk about my top 5 books for their new Bookshelf feature; it was a pleasure and I thought I'd re-post it here incase any of you missed it.

Interaction of Color Josef Albers
This book is concerned with seeing what happens between colours. I love how it discusses something often so instinctive and personal in such a rational manner; it makes me look further than I have already gone, at the same time as working backwards to break down the assumptions I’ve made. It also promotes Albers philosophy of “thinking in situations”, which I was happy to uncover alongside my own interest in ‘thinking through making’, which looks at a part of the design process which I don’t think can be ever be pre-planned, organised, scheduled or described.

“We are able to hear a single tone, but we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single colour, unconnected and unrelated to other colours. Colours present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions.”

The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist and philosopher in the 40’s, and concerned with individualism. I was first given this book when I was 18 by an engineering student and have treasured it ever since. The Fountainhead is about an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his own vision, against those who attempt to live through others; those who place others above themselves. I love the development of the thoroughly complex relationships between him and all the different clients and friends who misunderstand him; to me it has also become both a romantic and comical interpretation of the creative industry we are working in today.

Loose Associations & Other Lectures Ryan Gander
“The route of a ball during a half-hour ping-pong game is about the time it takes to read Loose Associations. The match is played by only one person on a half-table facing a wall, and the player is not a professional, so the ball bounces on, as much off, the table.” A description by Emilie Renard of this book; which is a collection of objects, ideas and stories put together by artist Ryan Gander and narrated in a way you might experience it as a performance or lecture. One subject follows the next seamlessly as if you were listening to a stream of consciousness, and each anecdote is backed up with an example-of-a-kind and a series of pictures; this book should be the bible for every blogger. Mine is a bootleg copy I was kindly given by friends Europa who designed it to be published-on-demand.

Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) Steven Henry Madoff
This book is just one long line of enquiry after another for anyone interested in progressive art education; I got hold of it at the John Baldessari Pure Beauty exhibition at Tate Modern when I started my post as Teaching Fellow at Winchester School of Art in 2009; I am endlessly interested in ways people have approached the problems (and there are problems!) we face – from temporary art schools built on the side of hills (The Future Academy, 2006) to the question of whether we still need buildings at all. Every few months I find myself reading a lot of these essays over again; something to do with reading about a practice you are engaging in radically changes what you understand from the text; I think this book is a goldmine and I couldn’t do without it.

Kiss Kiss Roald Dahl
Most of my favourite fiction comes in the form of short stories; and the best I’ve ever found belong to Roald Dahl. There’s something about short stories which induce a sensation of contentment in me; something to do with the way they wrap me up and set me free again in a small amount of time. My favourite story from Kiss KIss is William and Mary. William, a dead philosopher and controlling husband, arranges to have his brain and a single eyeball set in a basin in his home, in order for his wife Mary to continue to pay attention to him; except his plan has disastrous consequences when she flaunts all his rules by smoking in front of the eyeball and watching TV all day – much to the distress of his vulnerable state.

Life Drawing

2011-01-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

I started a life drawing class this week. I haven't been to one for nearly ten years so it was great to get that feeling of total and utter concentration back. Interested in trying to describe form with as few lines as possible, spaces, interruptions.

Golden Arrows / Gallery 263 Cambridgeport, MA

2011-01-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

At the tail end of last year, a beautiful invitation with a painting of my favourite plant - the unruly swiss cheese - arrived from Nerissa Cooney and Alexander Hage, the designers behind Golden Arrows, working out of Boston, MA. They asked me to supply them with images to help cover the walls of their new studio space at 263 Pearl Street in Cambridgeport, where they are taking up residence until March. These guys are the sweetest and have some really nice work in their portfolio so it saddened me to find my wallpaper did not arrive in time for their December deadline... and it was still missing a month later! Just as I had resigned myself to the familiar mantra 'always use recorded delivery Holly you cheapskate' once again, Alex got in touch to let me know my collage had finally arrived - made from a selection of photocopies I took from one of my sketchbooks, it's great to see it up on the wall along with all the others!

I love fun projects like this, using the internet for what it was intended - bringing strangers together!

Workspaces

2011-01-21T07:59:00.000-08:00

The Modernica factory.

Source unknown

The American Museum of Natural History in NYC

Via Andy Beach

I found the Workspaces blog last weekend after finding they'd kindly featured OPEN. There is nothing I find more exciting than looking at people in the process of making; the places they do it, the concentration they use, the application of their hands and eyes to a particular task; it becomes the negative (exciting and seriously understated!) space around their product itself. These are some of my favourites from the blog.

The Future Academy / Metronome No.10

2011-01-21T04:32:00.000-08:00

In July 2009 I was in Oslo visiting my friend Kim Hiorthoy - on the last day we visited a bookshop and he bought me a book called Dwelling Portably 1980-89; it is a collection of zines known as The Message Post written on a typewriter, in incredibly small type (in order to save paper) in a yurt in an undisclosed location in a forest in Washington State. The authors are long-time outdoor-livers Bert & Holly Davis, who have collected tips from other home-less (not homeless) people for decades. I love the amount of detail it gathers together from individuals finding their way, outside the confines and rules of our towns and cities.

I've extracted a little content from this fantastic catalogue here;

Wild Sprouts Update: Mustard Seeds Sharply Flavoured.
Having the 'Wild Sprouts' article has given me lots of feedback. The young sprouts from the seeds of the mustard family, including black mustard, peppergrass and wintercress, are very tasty. But some are so sharply flavoured that many people will only enjoy eating them raw if they are mixed with larger amounts of blander sprouts, such as alfalfa or wheatgrass. William Chapman, NY.

There is Much Good Camping in Northern California.
The river canyons are largely empty and beautiful. I've been mining for gold on the North Fork American between Truckee and Sacremento. Pretty good gold at end of summer. Paul Rinne.

I recently uncovered Dwelling Portably again after reading about Metronome No.10 in Art School; a project carried out in 2006 by The Future Academy, which is an instruction manual for artists who wish to live and work portably and features unusual yet vital hints for our social and economic survival. The above image is the cover page from Metronome No.10 - intentionally designed in exactly the same format and spirit as Dwelling Portably.

Metronome No.10 was published while living in a portable publishing studio, and covering 2000 miles of the great outdoors looking for Bert & Holly. During this production period the Future Academy artists "built a ‘hill-lodge’ into the side of a south-facing slope in the woods, digging out the mud bank and setting up tarps and poles to insulate the 3x2m cavity against the pouring rain and wind."

This kind of thing makes my day, especially after a month of varying my working-time-and-location; from libraries, to cafes (old and new), to the poorly lit corners of the Barbican, from my desk at OPEN at 6am to 4am in my kitchen. I wanted to see what it would do to me, and as January comes to a close, I'm really glad I did. Even if I didn't get to sleep outside once.

The Pony Express

2011-01-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

I was pointed in the direction of the Pony Express by new flatmate (who comes to London from Las Vegas via Vancouver and keeps my American dream alive on a daily basis). The Pony Express was a mail service crossing the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the High Sierras from Missouri to California which only ran for 16 months in 1860. I absolutely love the idea of this, everything about it, from it's tiny lifespan and full-on harrowing intensity - it was one of the most dangerous jobs around. One of the ad's for new riders read 'Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.'

This was the oath sworn by Pony Express Riders.

I agree not use profane language, not to get drunk, not to gamble, not to treat animals cruelly and not to do anything else that is incompatible with the conduct of a gentleman. And I agree, if I violate any of the above conditions, to accept my discharge without any pay for my services.

I want to investigate the route here further for Adam Hayes' Make Maps project...

Make It In Paper

2011-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

I'm back at Winchester this week and I've been enjoying some time in the library; yesterday I found this book I hadn't spotted before, lost in the needlework section; called Make It In Paper. I love all the illustrations, especially the nervous-looking pyramid-tiger who looks like he only walks on tip toes.

Make It In Paper has the most rigorous set of instructions for children I've ever read. "If your work is fussy and cluttered with unnecessary detail you will find that you have wasted both time and paper" - I absolutely love it. I've found I've been entertaining some abstract thoughts lately about rules and the sheer thrill you get breaking them - more rules please!

Happiest Newest Yearest

2011-01-03T13:05:00.000-08:00

To begin a whole new year, embracing one or two massive changes, and many more smaller ones as a result, is suddenly quite an exciting prospect. And to greet it all, I offer you something new to me, The Man Who Planted Trees by Frédéric Back.

Diesel U:Music

2010-11-13T04:11:00.000-08:00

I had the exciting opportunity to design the new Diesel U:Music House Party Mixtape invites and tickets, all art-directed and broadcast by good friends and studio buddies Telegramme for Maragret London. It was great to put to use some ideas I've had for good-badly stretched type and designing against the clock (literally, I set myself 10-15 minute intervals to stretch'n'drop groups of elements together). The project was wonderfully produced by James at Telegramme onto 300 tape cassettes and the printing was all risographed by Hugh at ManyMono.

Frieze Art Fair 2010

2010-10-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

For the third year running, I have art directed and illustrated the Family Guide for Frieze Art Fair, as a collaboration with good friends & design studio Europa and the brains behind the content for the project, Hannah Murgatroyd.

The theme for this year’s illustrations were based on Simon Fujiwara’s artwork for Frieze 2010, a new site-specific work, Frozen; an installation based on the fictive premise that an ancient lost city has been discovered beneath the site of the fair. Throughout the fair, visitors will encounter archaeological digs, displays of found artefacts and graphic panels describing a historic civilization that was once a hub of art and commerce. This was a great theme to translate into illustrations suitable for 5-12 year olds!