Beijing Children's Day 2023

A short video below documenting my time in Beijing in June 2023 to witness illustrated adverts and graphics I created working with Baron & Baron for SKP Children’s Day campaign. It was amazing to see the original artwork brought to life through large scale advertisements scattered throughout the city, along with a parade of fully costumed characters and various pieces of merchandise including plushies, balloons and stickerbooks. It was great to witness children (and adults) interacting with the characters, and having fun together collecting stickers to gain their free toys and plushies. I’m extremely grateful to have the experience of visiting Beijing and immensely proud of how successful the campaign was!

Pictoplasma 2022

After missing the last Pictoplasma festival due to covid it was great to return to Berlin, and even better to be speaking at the conference this year and to be able to share my journey so far. A fantastic experience and one I’m very grateful for, despite sweating with nerves right up to the moment I was handed a microphone and got onstage! Great to see old friends and make new ones whilst visiting Germany :)

Mello - Behind the Zine

After acquiring a studio space to operate Monno in I decided I wanted to challenge myself by making a risograph zine. I’d only ever created individual prints and didn’t really know what challenges to expect however with lots of painful hours, phonecalls with engineers, messages with artists and beers with friends whilst printing, Mello was born! The reception and launch was great and all 90 copies of it were gone within the first week which was a total surprise to me however after putting months of effort into it it felt extremely rewarding. It had its imperfections and elements which I’ll be changing for Issue 2, but overall the artwork was great and I couldn’t have asked for anything better from each artists interpretation of the theme and the project was an excellent learning curve personally. There’s a few friends in here who I wouldn’t have been able to create this without and due to it taking a while to make there are quite a collection of photographs here so enjoy!

Making Mr Fox

After deciding to produce this piece out of cut paper and glue, I decided to capture the construction over a 3 day period. This was fun despite ruining my back. and fingers There’s a picture at the start of the album for anyone who feels weird about using reference…it’s a Wes Anderson film so kind of had to be meticulous. My No. 1 fans are also featured in this album with their very own Mr Fox poster :)

Hamburg Indie Publishers Fair

Towards the end of summer I was invited over to Germany to attend the Indiecon Independent Publishers Fair which took place in Hamburg. It hosted many exhibitors who published a range of books, magazines and prints. I’d never visited Hamburg before so it was great to see another part of Germany as I’d only previously been to Berlin, I also got to share new risograph prints that I’d made for an upcoming animation I’d worked on. The festival highlighted strengths and qualities of university students from Non- Uk institutions and my favourite aspect was seeing publications exported from so many different parts of Europe, with loads of interesting content and alternative tones to things often put out in the UK. Overall I liked the city and food, made some cool new friends, and especially enjoyed zooming round on electric scooters at night time which i feel i got slightly addicted to!

First Risograph Tests

After sending lots of single colour prints through to get used to how to use the risograph machine lays down ink and works on a network, I decided to make some prints for the guys at The Sad Ghost Club using the ghost I’d drawn for them in a previous project.

The risograph prints come out WAY better than you can imagine from a digital file. Absolutely love being able to mix colours and make gradients at the same time though with this medium.

Jumper Time!

I’m not the biggest fan of christmas jumpers so I decided to make my own, with little decorations for the christmas tree too :)

Skateboard Making

I decided to try making some skateboards for Halloween, absolute bane of my weekend but was happy with how they eventually came out! Learnt not to be too hasty with painting especially with nasty fluro paint as I had to resand one of the boards down completely and start over.

Embroidery Tests

I got to have some fun on a half working embroidery machine today, so satisfying to watch!

Chuchos Printing

Screenprinted 1000 of these boxes for Chuchos with my design on, killed me!

Two Colour Testing

Tested out doing two colour tee’s today as I had a screen already made up.

Pictoplasma 2018

Visited Berlin for a few days with some dudes for Pictoplasma, sipped some pints, rode some donkeys.

Shoot w/Theo

Went out for a skate and a chill in Heaton park today, caught up with Theo and gave him his overdue birthday present.

Aardman Studio

I was lucky enough to have my work pay for me to travel to Bristol to visit the Aardman Studios, it was cool to be able to visit as a guest and see behind the scenes of how they produce animations on high and low budgets within the different divisions of the company. Really enjoyed seeing all the models and the TV studios.

Halloween Printing

I tried doing my first two colour screenprints using the Gocco Pro. Happy with how some of them came out but so many errors made! Super late night but fun using glow in the dark ink also, just a real pain to get decent registration of colours.

Gocco Printing

I purchased a Gocco Pro in Edinburgh and was shown how to screenprint for the first time! Absolutely loved it, making t shirts very soon.