Giant Sea monsters

Here's the black and white version of an illustration I've been commissioned to do for some Whitstable tea towels.

I now want to do a massive map covered in giant sea creatures. Fish are scary.

Christmas Critters

Here's my three new Christmas illustrations for Fawn and Thistle's Christmas cards.

These designs and three more can be found at Fawn and Thistle HERE


And you can also get some lovely little mirrors  and label stickers too:

Cat Tee Mission x Fawn and Thistle

This month Fawn and Thistle have donated our 'Cat Bee' Illustration to Cat Tee Mission in the name of kitty charity.  It will only be available for one month and all profit is donated to charity.

//What is Cat Tee Mission?//

"Our aim is to assist in the rescue of unwanted domestic cats around the world, and the preservation of big cats in Africa, through the sale of our tees and other merchandise. 100% of the profit from all sales is donated to charities around the world who work in these areas. We support no kill groups and conservation organisations, and you can too with your purchase. "

I've always had cats, so it's nice to be involved with Cat Tee Mission and if you want to get yourself some good karma whilst getting a cute tee, you can buy the Cat Bee tshirts and tote here: clicky click.

New Blood

I've been a bad blogger recently, but I've been so busy! I'm hoping to have some new illustrations to put up soon, but for now I just have this:

You can now buy original screen prints on New Blood Art! At the moment I just have my MA pieces up, but am hoping to get more work done soon. My profile is here : http://newbloodart.com/artist/show/1493

We've also got a new catalogue for Fawn and Thistle which you can have a look at here, now I've finished studying we're hoping to get lot of lovely new products, such as t shirts and totes, but for now our stuff can be bought at the Turner Contemporary in Margate (we got our first wholesale order yay!)

And it's all over

All of my MA work is now up on the walls and handed in...now I don't know what to do with all my time!

Final MA Work

My final pieces for my MA are now framed and up, ready for the degree show exhibition in a couple of weeks.

The East of the Sun one also comes in a gold version. I'm pretty pleased with them, though I could quite happily not look at them for a few weeks, so stressful!

So close

Here's the final images I'll be working from for my final MA pieces, now all I need to do is screen print them.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Wolf Alice

Work in Progress

Just a quick image filled post with my most recent sketches for my final MA pieces. More wolves and a bear!

The Peryton: Printmaking Techniques

In continuation of my Bestiary print making project, here are the last two I'll be doing for the time being. I've printed the Peryton as a Linocut and Screen print. They're pretty big, so excuse my photography.

I personally prefer the lino cut, I feel it suits the subject matter more.

A Company of Wolves

I've been rather lax on the blog recently. I'm extremely busy and am coming to the end of my MA...eeek! I think I'll probably have some kind of melt down over the next month.

Any way. here's some preliminary drawings for an upcoming screen print

The book of skulls....plagiarism?

I've put off writing this post for a while, but...what the hell!

I was recently bought The Book of Skulls as a present. It's a lovely book, full of lovely, lovely skull art. I highly recommend it...just look at the cover.

But imagine my surprise when I was flicking though it and came across this image.

(I can't find a better image online)

It looks remarkably similar to something I posted back in 2009. (his was made in 2011). http://kikimcnee.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/fashion-anatomy.html it was part of a uni project, creating a theoretical fashion exhibition. Ours was looking at how woman altered their body shape through clothing to obtain grotesque shapes that were considered ideal at the time. The illustrations looked at what it would be like if these artifices would look like if the skeleton was actually altered.

This may all just be coincidence, but it's such strange subject matter that it seems too odd...

I've had instances before when I've seen things on clothing and magazines that looks similar and could be dismissed as coincidence, but this is just too weird.

Anyway, I should be in that awesome skull book.

Shameless Etsy shop plug.

So, I've gradually been updating my Etsy shop, and It's finally starting to look respectable. What I'm most excited about are my new pocket mirrors though! Yay for pocket mirrors!

Stag and Swan Pocket Mirrors

Swan Pocket Mirror

A5 Framed Ramskull Print

A4 Nature Girl Giclee Print

Mini Framed Cameo Print

Mini Framed Lovebirds watercolour Screenprint

Mini Framed Love Grows Giclee Print

Mini Framed Stag Giclee Print.

All can be found on my Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KikiIllustrations

Mix tape: Trick's That'll Blow Your Mongrel Mind

In an attempt to get some inspiration for starting my big Wolf Alice screen print, I've made a little mixtape (even though my last one wasn't that long ago!) inspired by all things wolfish and lycanthropic.

Tricks That'll Blow Your Mongrel Mind  8Tracks

1. Sam Sham and the Pharoahs - Little Red Riding Hood

2. The Cramps - Teenage Werewolf

3. TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me

4. Dead Man's Bones - Werewolf Heart

5. Florence and the Machine - Howl

6. Fever Ray - The Wolf

7. The Rocks - Save the Wolf

8. The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog

9. Spinnerette - All Babes are Wolves

10. The Ramones - Howling at the Moon

11. Shakira - She Wolf

12. Duran Duran - Hungry Like The Wolf

13. Patrick Watson - Where the Wild Things Are

14. 22-20s - The Devil In Me

15. The Flamingoes - I Only Have Eyes For You

16. DeLooze - Nature Boy

17. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising

18. Cat Power - Werewolf

The Enfield screenprint

As my bestiary project is primarily a project where I'm experimenting with print making, I've decided to turn some of them in to screen prints as well as lino prints. The first one I did was the Enfield.

I'm not massively happy with this, the colours came out less subtle than I was aiming for and the third layer doesn't show up enough, so a lot of the detail has been lost.
Most recently I've done the Peryton screen print which has been far more successful. I'll post it up later.

So, lino or screen print?

Nouveau-style Custom Bloglovin' Button

As a means of procrastination, I've created a little art nouveau inspired bloglovin' button freebie for people to use. Google reader is closing down soon, so what better time to move all the blogs you read over to bloglovin and nab yourself a pretty button for your blog?

Installing it is easy.

1. Right-click save as on the above image and save it to your desktop.
2. Join up to Bloglovin' if you haven't already and follow their directions on how to get a little widget for your blog here.

http://www.bloglovin.com/en/widgets

http://www.bloglovin.com/help_icon

3. To put your own image in, upload it to flickr or an unpublished post on your blog and right click and copy it's location.

4. Replace bloglovin's basic image url with your new image's location. For example, this:


http://www.bloglovin.com/widget/bilder/widget_watkins.gif?id=663992
" alt="Follow on Bloglovin" border="0" />

becomes this:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyrJXi6s3Ww3zze-83k3gwBMIPxAlm0RalVNutHVWv-u4wOmzpQKEAHIqhy7ZVb-3HaOgrx44fbUxL843uQcD9g5cKqV9aP_88l_LUm4fFeMfwkPaHedEYSHYok1RZ9LmAE6HXj9opjVW/s1600/bloglovinwidgetfineliner.jpg
" alt="Follow on Bloglovin" border="0" />
Ta daa!

It's pretty straight forward. If you do decide to use this button, be sure to leave me a little comment so I can see it 'in action' on your blog!

Fawn and Thistle Shop

Fawn and Thistle ( the name I collaborate under with Sangita Southgate) are happy to announce the launch of our online store!

Drop in at www.fawnandthistle.com or click the link to the side.

We hope you enjoy it and we'd love to hear your feedback. You can look forward to cushions, pocket mirrors and many more fun goodies coming soon!

An '8 Tracks' mix tape for you

I'm busy setting up the Fawn and Thistle shop/still working on a lino cut, so I thought I'd share a mixtape with you. I've seen a few other bloggers doing it and thought it seemed like a good idea, as I'm pretty much constantly listening to music whilst working and am often inspired by it.

This one is kind of cohesive, but mainly just some of my favourite songs that weren't too loud (coffee induced headache!)...

 Stars have their moment...  8tracks

1. Patti Smith - Because the Night

2. Nick Cave - Spell

3. Bat For Lashes - Horses of the Sun

4. Radiohead - Blackstar

5. Yeasayer - Madder Red

6. Nick Cave - (Are you) The One That I've Been Waiting For?

7. Patrick Wolf - Bluebells

8. David Bowie - Rock and Roll Suicide

The Enfield and The Leucrota

So here are the first prints of two of the creatures from my Medieval Bestiary, plus one failed one of The Catoblepas.

Enfield

Leucrota

 

 

 

I'm really happy with how these turned out, considering they're my first proper foray in to the world of Lino Cutting (and especially as I did them on my own DIY press ie, me standing on them under a big bit of wood!). The large areas of solid colour didn't work well, however - I don't think my body mass equates to the pressure of a printing press (thankfully) - so I'm adding in a bit more detail to the prints. May also experiment with colour.

Catoblepas

With this one, I thought I'd try a more textured, thicker paper. It did not work, but I still kind of like it.

Overall, I like the outcome and really like the way linocuts look, it's got a very specific and bold quality to the line I like. What do other people think about the process? Do you like it? Or think it's too time consuming / outdated?

More to come, I'm working on the Peryton, and those feathers are taking a long, long time.

A Little Freebie

I've created a little desktop wallpaper for the people who read my blog (I know there's only a few of you!) but I hope you like it. Just click on the image, save as and then go about setting it as you background the way you usually do.

it's only sized at 1440px x 900px at the moment, but if you'd like it in a different size, just leave me a comment xoxo