Well, it's been rather a long time since I've updated this blog, which I feel a bit guilty about - there's no good reason for that guilt, other than my own desire to keep a regular blog, but anyway, here I am now.
This has always been a blog which I've wanted to be about my own personal (and work related) creative projects, but in all honesty, my central focus for the last few months has been LIFE, and again, I feel some guilt about that, because I want to focus more on creating, but somehow a lot of things have got in the way. Good things, for the most part.
I have plans and hopes for my creative future though. My day job is still fulfilling to a great extent, but doesn't really result in me producing the kind of work which I want to share here. There are plans in the pipeline (which I initially typed 'pieline'... yum) for a zine created with my two good friends
Rosie Rogers and
Hannah Brookes - however, all three of us have found LIFE somewhat getting in the way of that getting started, but hopefully soon we'll all be able to focus our energies onto it again.
In quite a different creative route to normal, I'm also hoping to learn to sew and make my own clothes, which is something that really excites me. So far I have succeeded in blowing up my sewing machine, and created precisely NOTHING, but it is very early days, and operation skirt begins this Tuesday evening, at the excellent
MIY workshop.
But back to illustration and graphic design, I still keep my eye out for nice freelance jobs, or favours for friends, and recently had the pleasure of creating two rather lovely wedding invites - this border for my friends, the aforementioned Hannah and her partner Tristan (which they filled with their own text for printing)
And this piece for Tom and Jo - Tom had basically already designed it, but I created the illustration.
And then, of course, there's the ongoing creative force in my life -
Alex's Unstruck project. And truth be told, that's the main reason I got round to writing this blog, as I'm sad to say that Alex has decided to bring Unstruck to a close.
He has reached 500 questions answered, and now seems like the time to stop.
Adam, one of the other illustrators, put it like this, and writes it better than I ever could…
"I found out tonight that Unstruck is ending this week, by Friday it's going to be at 500(ish) posts, and that's it. Personally, I think Unstruck has been crucial in my development as an illustrator. But I really think that its significance is huge, for me at least it has acted as a tangible network of creative people who've been brought together, really by the focus and dedication of one person, to create something that's incredible and beautiful and collaborative in the truest sense. It's been an amazing experiment, that I feel lucky to have been involved in, hopefully I'll manage to squeeze in a final illustration before the weeks over. Hats off to Alex. Looking forward to the next project"
And he's right, because there is another project coming, something which
lots of the illustrators will hopefully get involved with again, and I
can't wait to see how it turns out.
I haven't really mentioned it on here, as this is my 'creative' blog,
but me and Alex have been somewhat romantically entangled since January,
and in June I moved in with him. He is a wonderful, beautiful, creative
person and I'm very lucky to have him in my life. In some ways the
Unstruck project drew us together, and it will always have a very
special place in my heart.
Here is Alex, sitting in the window of an apartment in Cologne - we holidayed there recently, and I meant to blog about it at the time, but... LIFE, and that.
Anyway, here are a few of my recent and final contributions to Unstruck. As always, it's a hit and miss process, but it forces me to use my creative brain and that is always a positive thing.
