The Greatest Show on Earth!

One of the things I've been up to recently was a show with The Drawn Chorus Collective.

The Greatest show on Earth featured the illustrative imaginings of all the greatest circuses, freak shows and fairs in literature have to offer. 
The circus has been delighting and enthralling audiences for centuries, and with Angela Carter through to Dr. Seuss, Drawn Chorus drew excited crowds into a world of enchantment and wonder. 

“The Greatest Show on Earth” was a collaborative exhibition between seasoned illustrators and new illustrative talent. Displayed at The Gallery on the Corner, the show ran from the 18th to the 23rd of September 2013!

(The show is also now on tour- to see the works for yourself come on down to the Mills Centre! For more info check out our facebook event.)

Invite

The gang

The pop up shop

                    Lino lion toy (more photos coming soon!) and Dynamo dog lino print and temporary tattoo                                            

Window display and my acrobat for the display

Sir Bopps, Sir Hawkins, Sir Jawks and Sir Hector- Collage

Based on Seuss's "If I ran the circus".

If I ran the circus- through horn jumping deer, whole pic (which I'll update once I can get a better photo...) and closeup.

Among the Wonderful- The Whale propelled them both with long slow vertical sweeps of its tail

Lino print

Among the Wonderful- A single night buoyed by some charged current.

Lino print

For more images of the other fab works at the show check out our album!

Five years and I still miss you.

On Friday it was five years since my mum died after a long battle with Pancreatic cancer.

My mum was an amazing woman and this post is dedicated to her.

My portrait of mum and dad on their wedding day.

My beautiful mum in her younger days.

Me and mum.

Looking through all the old family photos its very clear that so much of who I am comes from mum.

She loved baking and would stay up all night so me or my brother would have an amazing cake for our birthdays. Here is a selection...

 And my love of costumes is definitely a result of the many fab things she made. 

Book worm.

Cave girl

Swans

Present box

and so many more!

All in all I think you can see where I got my perfectionist eye and need to go above and beyond!

I miss you mum and I hope you'd be as proud of me as I am of you.

Costumes in the jungle.

My plan now I'm back is to attempt to keep up a weekly update of this blog... we'll see how it goes!
While I was away it was one of the girl's in my group's birthday, the lovely Juliet! We decided to throw here a surprise 'jungle themed' fancy dress party. We all made costumes and arranged food (I made a chocolate birthday cake... with a microwave! But that's another story...). I set out to make Juliet her costume as well, without her knowing.

I paper cut some butterfly wings and then filled the gaps with sweet wrappers to give the wing effect.

And this was the result!

Here they are before the wrappers were added...

And once the wrappers were added!

Here a very dark pic of everyone in their costumes!

My costume was a bit of a disappointment. Not up to my usual standard at all... I just didn't leave enough time to make it after Juliet's (although I suppose it was ok for being made in the middle of the jungle!). I was a crocodile, and here is a picture of my mini-group, Miriam the leech and Nat the firefly!