This has definitely been a long time coming. 112 days to be exact.
That’s how long it’s been since my solo-show Prickly, where I celebrated the cactus and all those who embodied their attributes (strength, resilience, vibrancy, quirkiness and of course being a little prickly). Leading up to the show I collected all my sketchbooks, gathered photos, brought together all of my palette references, typed out quotes and descriptions on my old typewriter, scanned all of my looseleaf tests, experiments and drawings, and compiled the best and most influential of the bunch into a 37-page zine.
I had never put together a publication that documents the behind-the-scenes of my work so it was really cool to rediscover all the bits and pieces that went into making the then finished collection. I love, love, love the process of creating - not just the process of painting but everything from conception of the idea, to the countless studies and drawings that lead up to the very first marks made on watercolour paper. I guess that's why I'm such an over-sharer (sorry) on Instagram.
Rocket and I put together a cheeky little video for you all, so you could see inside the zine and so I could tell you a little bit more about why I wanted to make it. I have lots of things planned for the future, one of which being more active on the ol' YouTube channel so please, please, please give me some love on there if you're keen to see more!
There is a limited run of these beauties and half have already sold! Available in the Furry Little Peach Store for $20 with free shipping worldwide!
Although I don’t consider myself to be an “internet artist”, I am definitely an example of a creative who has built a brand and managed to make a name for myself online. I speak about the internet, accumulating a large audience and it’s importance to my practice a lot in interviews, but something I realised recently was that I’ve never really taken any of you on the journey from first point of contact to conception and completion. One of my most recent commercial illustration projects is a perfect example of how publishing your work online can translate into real-life work so I thought, why not? Let's dooooo it.
Recently I had the pleasure of working with the boys from Kisschasy on a tee graphic for their farewell tour. I’ve worked with bands and musicians before on everything from merch and promotional material to album art, but this was different because Kisschasy was one of those bands for me. You know one of those bands you completely wreck the CDs from over-listening as a teenager? It’s one thing to work for bands you think are cool, but it’s another to work with a client who’s music you’ve loved for over a decade.
A few weeks ago, just after I had learned the band was embarking on their final chapter and I had wrapped my little paws around those e-tickets, I made an Instagram post with a bear graphic I had designed for my collection with The Club of Odd Volumes. Although it had nothing to do with the image, I paid homage to the band in the caption and thought nothing of it.
“I just bought tickets to Kisschasy's last ever show in Sydney - the end of an era! Album covers were something that really sparked my interest in illustration and design - one of the first things that made me think "I really want to make that!". I remember United Paper People being intriguing to me because in comparison to the other CDs I owned, it was unusually painterly and had such a rich palette. It's kind of weird seeing it on their farewell tour poster 10 years on!”
The next day I received an unexpected email from the band’s bassist expressing a mutual love for my work and that they hadn't realised I was aware of their music. I was ecstatic, and what’s more he proposed we work together on some tour merch - it’s not often you’re told by another creative you respect that they think your work is great, and so I was in. Coincidentally they had loved the bear image, but it already had a use, so I suggested they come back to me with some animals they were interested in having on t-shirts in a similar style. They came back with two, a bear and a tiger, and so I began sketching.
For me, sketchbook entries are just as important as the final piece because they act as a roadmap to guide and navigate you through the creative process. After getting down some ideas quickly I refined a couple of the sketches and sent them off for feedback.
In the end we went with the tiger and so I widened the stripe-type to make it more legible and less subtle, the only other feedback was that the band wanted to make reference to the fact that this was their final tour, and so we settled on ‘The Final Roar’. I photographed the sketches and brought them into Illustrator to start the digital leg of my design process.
I find that working on my freelance work can be difficult sometimes because of the isolation. Working at Cypha, I’m able to ask for other people’s opinions which in a lot of cases allows me to see things that I couldn't actually see while working so closely to an image. I’ve started to realise the importance of having another set of eyes in my freelance work-flow because of this, and so I asked Rocket to take a look at the design and let me know if there was anything he would tweak. He made a suggestion of rotating it a little, and at first I was hesitant because I had the final image at a certain angle in my mind, but after trying it out was elated with the change! Rotating it just a few degrees meant that the illustrative type became more legible.
I finished off my design and emailed it to a couple of people to see what they thought (people from all walks of life and experience levels - my boss, a friend who was a fan of the band and a friend who had never listened to their music) then, nervously I sent it off for feedback. I’m quite confident in my creative work, especially when it comes to the depiction of animals, but sending work off to clients for approval is like freefall, you don’t know how it’s going to end and at this point, there’s nothing you can do.
There isn’t always going to be a moral to my stories (you can breathe a sigh of relief), but I guess what you can take away from my experiences is to be open to sharing your creative process with others.
You never know who's eyes will land on your work or where publishing it to a global audience will take you, and
You're sure to find flaws and/or improvements that you hadn't noticed before (especially if you work in solitude).
There is little more valuable than a fresh set of peepers.
This project ran like a dream - I got word back from the band, plain and simple: they loved it.
During preparation for Prickly the wonderful boys from Voena came to break my long periods of loneliness at the home-studio and film some BTS goodness for their online series Focus. We spoke about art, my inspiration behind the collection, and most importantly Zayn leaving One Direction (the wound was still fresh).
I hope you enjoyed this little insight into my studio - let's blame the excessive rambling on the sleep deprivation.
It's probably my least favourite part about having a studio.
When you're a creative who also creates for work, one of the hardest things can be defining the line between being on and off the clock. Just over a year ago, after a few months of having first moved out and having lived in a matchbox - the kind of place where your bed room, kitchen and living space are actually all the same room - I thought ENOUGH! I'm sick of the backaches that come with working on your living/bedroom floor.
However, when I finally got a studio I realised that I hadn't anticipated the aches and pains that came with splitting your life between home, work and a separate creative space. This past month-and-a-half, in preparation for Prickly and the late nights that would ensue, I decided to take my work home with me. Having moved out of my little matchbox and shacked up with Rocket (bigger budget apparently equals much bigger space), meant working from home was now back on the cards.
Everything was awesome, instead of going from home to work to the studio and back home, I would only need to make a trip to work and back. Confusing? Exhausting. The new arrangement meant less travel time, and more time to frantically but passionately create a collection of works, which needed to be stretched, framed and installed before being deemed ready for anyone else's eyeballs.
With the dust settled and Prickly over, I was excited to be back in my wonderful studio this morning for the first time in a month, which of course (you guessed it) wasn't without baggage.
I've been looking for a place to express myself for a while now.
I mean, I already have plenty of outlets to do so in visual ways - Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook (Twitter is probably the closest thing to a text-based platform I use but the 140 character cap means my voice is limited ) and of course, there is my work - but nowhere that I have the ability to do so in my own online space, and no where that I feel comfortable doing so in a text-heavy format. So, I thought, seeing as I've (finally) gotten around to updating my website, maybe this can be that space.
I don't want to start whatever this is going to be, by saying I will post consistently or often - because I may not, but I'm pretty excited to finally have a place to put all of my thoughts about everything or nothing, available to anyone or no one.
