Coping with Colin

I haven't blogged for over a month, oops.
I have got the excuse that I've been away for a couple of weeks. That was nice, until me and baby sun got back from our travels and caught the bubonic plague. Then we passed it on to Josh. So we've had to draw a cross on our front door this week and lie around the house being all ill. Josh has been the worst, he's now called Colin from The Secret Garden because he's been so pale, sickly and groany, whilst Sunny & I have just got on with it. Typical man. 
Anyway, we've lost a stone between us collectively and tonight Josh wants "salad" for tea so things are definitely still a bit off. 
What did cheer me up was a trip to the garage to get a film, and I spotted this in the magazine rack...

...the August edition of Surfgirl magazine 

with a lovely double page spread of my illustrations inside it (pages 66-67 if you were wondering)

I recommend buying a copy and enjoying it with a big bowl of salad.

Fartlekking all over the place

It's been very quiet on the blog front...not quite sure where the last week or 2 have gone but they have gone, and its time I posted up all of the brilliant things I've been up to. So, I went to tesco, did some shopping, saw some friends, went to tesco again, had a swim, had a sleep, tried some fartlekking, went to tesco, had a glass o wine, did some stretchy yoga mental moves, popped into tesco...

Yep, pretty exciting. I've done a few drawings too, here's the latest 'work in progress' for a double page mag spread...

flippin hippy

In the run up to the Trelawney Craft Fair (on Monday 7th May), I got my hands on a few sachets of dye and went a bit babygro mental.
Now I can't say I'm a massive fan of the 90's-flouro-rainbow-hippy-tie-dye look, but I reckon any little miniature person would look pretty awesome in one of these...

(Custom orders more than welcome, I can even make them sporting a pair of harem pants and chewing on a celery stick...)

cakes and cards and cakes and cards...

I've had about 5 projects on the go this week.

One of them is getting some stuff made for the Bank Holiday Craft Fair on at Ashford's Trelawney Garden Centre, 7th May, 10am-4pm. Come along, come along.

Cards and cards galore...

Cakes and cakes galore...

Piece of cake, dear?

watercolour, 8cm x 20cm

Cool week mate

What's been happening? Not loads but here's my week in pictures...

I did some sketchy things for the Amazing People Club.. The 'Amazing Olympians' e-book is out with Apple really soon and my portraits are being turned into moving 'avatars' so I had to fiddle around with some facial expressions!

..I showed my little bubba how to forage for food on the kitchen floor. Ok, not really...at least I hope that's not what I was doing, that would be kind of unhygenic...

 

 

 

...and I've just been sketching up some 'love circles' (as I like to call them) and getting my lino carve on for a logo (soon to be blogged about, keep your eyeballs peeled). 

 

 

what's all this about owls?

Everyone loves owls at the moment, don't ask me why. Maybe its the 360 degree rotational head thing they've got going on. Here's a little commission I got called Clive, he's got more friends on the way.

hot meerkats

This week I've been up to some interesting things workwise. Two of them I can't talk about today but theyre pretty fun and fingers crossed will be loved all over the place...updates very soon.

The one I can talk about is my good friends The Amazing People Club, who I've been illustrating for for a while now. The lovely creator, Dr Charles Margerison is a brilliant man, probably one of my favourite people. He's always got an interesting project going on. The Amazing People Club is, suprise suprise, all about amazing people. Books, audios, e-books and, what we're working on at the moment, animated 'avatars' of the people Charles has written about. I love working with APC and I'll be posting up portraits and random bits & bobs every week.

If you like a bit of history that's not how you'd imagine it, check out their webpage, follow them on twitter or on Charles's blog 

On another note, here's a nice little meerkat.

Bakey bakes

 
So today's been a good day of baking so far.
1st stop, early morning wander to the lovely Sandleigh Tea room where I stuck on an apron and cooked up a few cakes. Tried a new one today from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book; chocolate & coffee loaf...looked and smelt awesome if I do say so myself so you'll have to get down there and try a piece.

And seeing as its such a hot tropical day again I'm now sat baking myself on my decking, trying to warm up my cockles before I freeze them off again in the sea this avo.
The worst thing about this weather is it makes it a bit too hard to sit inside and get any work done...looks like it's going to be a late night tonight, but at least I'll have tan when I'm in my pj's...

surfgirl out this week...

 This is what you're looking out for on the old newsagent shelves this week!not sure what page my drawings on but I'll post a pic of the whole illustration when I get my hands on a copy. In the meantime, I'll be out making the most of the sunshine...