Photoalbum pears

poultry litho print

Red Cabbage

Working on prints for the shop project. I've done a two colour litho print of a red cabbage, the alignment didn't work as well as I'd hope but its been a great experiment working with lithography.

Will be selling the prints or at least have them for decoration in the shop we're doing. 12th June Hanbury Street. Put it in your diary.

Aquatint and sugar lift etchings

I have used a new process of etching this week, using aquatint and sugar lift which acts as a type of paint mixture so its similar to my lithography as I've painted on the image and worked with texture. These two prints are for my shop group project, we are doing a food market themed shop where we are rennovating a gallery space for a day and turning into market stores selling home ware products that look like traditional market foods. I've made these prints to hang up by the stalls.
The top print is of a close up look of a green cabbage, and the red print is of salami.

A sea shore

I entered a competition at the beggining of the year for a children's book based on the north west coast and this is one of the images I entered of a sea shore. I really love this as its a very playful way of using inks and watercolour washes, textured with no line.

lithography

Here is my first lithograph print from the workshops I've been doing at camberwell. Its a really enjoyable process, takes a lot of patience and remembering all the steps but its very worth it. This is from a photo I took in Freshford countryside. I used crayon, oils and anything greasy to draw on the plate to produce this image.

Showing at Fact and Fiction 3 at the Amersham Arms New Cross in the upstairs gallery space tonight 21st May 6-9.

mcmillan childrens book competition

Volunteering at The Create Place

First day volunteering at the create place, in Bethnal Green. Its a not for profit organisation which do sewing workshops, book binding workshops and various creative goodness. Its a really inspiring place to volunteer at, and today I was given a task to illustrate instructions on how to make bunting. Heres what I produced with paper, fine liner, felt pens and assembled in microsoft word! due to lack of design programs, which still worked quite well!

Puffin Book Cover Competition

I entered the Penguin Children's Design Award which was to design a cover for James and the Giant Peach.
I wanted to show the magic happening on the cover when James trips up and the magic seeds drop all over the place, and the insects in the roots of the peach tree start to grow human size.
It was quite a late decision to enter the competition, so I didn't spend as much time as I wish I could have, I'm glad I entered though and gave it a go.
Also it was lovely to read the book again.

shadow puppets

mcmillian children's book storyboard

Here are my inital drawings for my children's story. Very rough quickly drawn, quite funny characters formed by this process which I can take and make them look better with more time and attention.

The story is about a brother and sister, Henry and Emily. I need to write the text but I may decide to keep it just a picture book.

So, the story:

Its bedtime and the children want to stay up and play games. They start to play shadow puppets.

Henry keeps making dinosaur shadows,

Emily makes a butterfly, and a rabbit but Henry's dinosaur eats everything up.

Emily is annoyed and tells him to stop

but the dinosaur shadow is still there.

It starts to move out the room and the children follow.

Down the stairs,

To the kitchen

where the dinosaur eats all the food.

the kids follow and hide under the table.

The dinosaur leads them to the lounge

they watch fearfully

then the dinosaur spots them and is about to eat them!

BUT emily stands up and changes the dinosaur into a bird

as it was only a shadow all along.

It flies out the room and the children are safe

now they're sleepy and fall asleep.

mum and dad find them asleep on the floor and take them to bed.