Monday 12 December 2011

Poetry Society, Jaguar.


Here is a photo of me and my lino print, "Ted Hughes, Jaguar", at the Poetry Cafe and the Haunts of the Poets exhibition!

(Sorry for the quality of this second pic it's a photo taken on my mobile!)



The Jaguar
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion

Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor’s coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.

But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
Through prison darkness after the drills of his eyes

On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom—
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear—
He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him

More than to the visionary his cell:
His stride is wildernesses of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.

Ted Hughes

(Ted worked for two days at London Zoo. At the zoo he stood "for most of the day" doing the washing up for the zoo's restaurant. The jaguar cage was opposite him and he used to watch the jaguar in the cage pacing up and down.)

Saturday 3 December 2011

Animal Farm.



Over the summer I did a few different covers for books I love. Animal Farm was one of my favourites as a teenager. These were my first ever attempts at colour linos!

Monday 28 November 2011

Christmas Decorations!

Here are two little birdie decorations I've designed for the Christmas Bazaar at Middlesex (12th Dec to the 16th, in the grove Atrium) to raise funds for our degree show! I'm going to transfer them onto material and then pad and sew them up. They'll only be tiny (I think the original illustrations are 7cm squarish) but hopefully will look nice and festive!
UPDATE: Here are some photos of the christmas fair (which went rather well, pretty much everything I took sold!) and the birds as decorations (including them in place on my christmas tree and garland).
A lovely photo of Eileen Kwan and Helen Walters (check out their beautiful blogs too!) at the stall.
In place at mine during christmas festivities!

Haunts of the Poets!

This Thursday is a private view at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. The work represents the places and poems of poets of London (in conjunction with the Poetry Society). I created a four colour lino of Ted Hughes' "Jaguar" (Did you know that when he wrote the poem he was working as a zookeeper at London zoo?) and it was selected! All money from the show goes towards the Graduate show. I'll upload pictures of the work and the exhibition soon!
See you there!

Thursday 24 November 2011

Pig King.

Finally catching up with my posts! Here are the image I mentioned a while back from second year. It was a joint project with the fantabuluous Eileen Kai Hing Kwan (check out her amazing work!). We created a book of two similar fairy/folk tales, "The Pig King" and "Beauty and the Beast". One story ran in one direction and then, if you flipped the book, the other story ran in the other direction.
Here are some of my images:







And the final bound book:


Wednesday 23 November 2011

Folio society- The Bloody Chamber.

This year the Folio societies competition is to illustrate some of Angela Carter's wonderful stories; The Bloody Chamber, In the Company of Wolves, and Puss in Boots. Here are my submissions (the scanner once again has foiled me by messing with the colours slightly but Cest La Vie!) I still have to cut the cover, so will upload that later!


Advent images.

Now the third year is upon us we have realised how much we need to raise money for the degree show. We are having a christmas fair with cards, gifts, decorations etc but also decided to do an advent calendar with different people doing different days. Each image is only little! 7cm by 7cm!
I've got the first:


The Faraway Tree.









I loved this book when I was young. Here is a cover I've done for it.

Alice in Wonderland.







A cover for Alice in Wonderland.

Browning Version.

These were some images done in Second year for Terrence Rattigan's play. "The Browning Version". I was trying a slightly different method to my normal (oiling photocopies of my pencils and panting on the back) but discovered that after a while the colour fades as the oil dries. Here they are reoiled for scanning!






(N.B. The scans have messed with the colours and darkness slightly!)
I also had the mad idea of typing up and printing out the whole play with my images at relevant points. I then bound it all. Here is the final book: