Planetmithi Blog

Bluesbaby ...

2011-11-04T23:26:00.003Z

I'm still busy drawing hands ...but I'd totally forgotten that I'd also done these flyers for our dance club recently... thought I'd share them...

Signs of progress

2011-10-24T15:43:00.002+01:00

Work in progress ... have several hundred to do! Crikey ... better get on with it then ...

Link love

2011-10-10T14:34:00.003+01:00

A quick note to say thank you to Craig at Fishink for doing such a lovely feature on me last week ... (click banner image to go to article)

And to the lovely pattern fanatics at Paperbicycle who voted my Bristol Ships pattern as their winner for last month's pattern design contest... (click banner image to go to article)

Thank you!

More hands...

2011-10-05T15:04:00.004+01:00

... and some faces ... and lots of references (yes, thats multiple pictures I've taken of my hands on the webcam...)...

Hands

2011-09-27T13:31:00.004+01:00

Been drawing hands lately. Commission for a friend and want to do it well :)

What's the sign for "update"?

2011-08-31T11:01:00.005+01:00

Sorry its been so quiet around here - we have been mega busy since we bought our house! Have a look at all the new house DIY posts over at my other blog.

Also, have been asked if I want to do some illustrations for a baby sign course run by a lady I met when I was pregnant with Little Wind. I've always been interested in the concept having seen friends communicationg with their toddlers pre-speech with it. Hope to one day be able to do the same for any kids we may have.

Anyways, here's some samples I did for her - not the best - but had to try and fit it in in between all the DIY!

Phew!

2011-07-13T20:08:00.007+01:00

Oh my goodness ... my computer has been pretty dead for the last month or so. I've had internet access on the laptop - but its the desktop I use with Potatoshop etc so image handling has been non-existent.

ANYWAYS, in the mean time, the exciting news is WE ARE BUYING A HOUSE! .... infact, we are buying OUR house!!! Yes, after living here for 4 years we are going to transfer from being tenants - to being homeowners ... how exciting! To commemorate the occasion I am going to do a drawing of the house when we exchange/complete the purchase (should be in the next few weeks), but in the meantime, here is a drawing I did of it when we first moved here back in September 2007.

Cards

2011-05-24T13:38:00.003+01:00

Have really gotten into the hand-made-cards-for-friends groove recently...

Looking for creativity

2011-05-03T12:42:00.003+01:00

Well, its been 8 weeks since we lost Little Wind. How quickly time flies ... I could swear it was much slower when I was pregnant. Yesterday I spent the day making these two new-baby cards for the two new arrivals in our friends' circle. Felt good to be doing things with my hands again ... but also re-inforced the fact that we won't be getting any 'happy new baby' cards in July...

Also in April (since this is the blog where I was cataloging creative endevours), it was Sunshine's birthday and I made him some birthday bunting to go on his cake - which I also made (with the help of Sunshine's sister as I had never attempted making cake before); and we went for a vintage velo cycle ride here in Bristol on Bramble the tandem (see our photos here)... Bunny had to come with us too so I made him some vintage wear as well (tweed waistcoat and cravat!). I have a few more outfit ideas for Bunny - he's become a bit of a family mascot since we lost Little Wind - so more sewing is on the agenda for the summer. And hopefully a few more creative projects to blog about. And who knows, maybe even some illustration ...

He had such beautiful hands...

2011-03-22T18:15:00.002Z

This morning, Sunshine and I attended a funeral. It was just us, the chaplain, and the funeral director. We were saying goodbye to our Little Wind.

Two weeks ago Sunshine wrote this to tell our friends the news:

He had such beautiful hands.

On Monday morning there were some complications with the pregnancy, and we had to go to the hospital. At around 2:45pm on Monday 7/3/2011 Mithi went into labour. At 22 weeks there is no chance of a baby surviving, he did not open his eyes, nor took a breath. We spent some time with Little Wind, to say goodbye. He had such beautiful hands, with long elegant fingers.

There were no signs of problems before Monday morning, and there was nothing that we or the doctors could do. The doctors and midwives at St Michaels in Bristol were fantastic.

It was the worst day of our lives, in the worst week of our lives. There are a lot of tears here.

Thank you to our many friends and family who are supporting us.
For Adam and Corrina, Mark and Nic, and our other friends who are expecting at the moment, we wish you all the best, really we do.
Lots of Love
Drew and Mithi

After the last post, I really wish I had something positive to write here. Life had indeed got a bit better over February. My sickness had settled down; we had our scan at 19 weeks and Little Wind was looking wonderful and healthy; I'd even had my folks visit for a couple of weeks - and bump had really started showing in those two weeks too. I had grand plans of how I was going to re-start posting here.

As you can imagine, those plans are on hold now for a bit while Sunshine and I try and get to grips with what has just happened to us. Sunshine has been my rock - despite having to deal with own grief, he has constantly been here for me. And so have all our friends and family - thank you everyone. And thank you to all those people who come and read my blog and join me on Planetmithi.

Reflecting on 2010

2011-01-06T11:21:00.004Z

Gosh, has it really been 2 months since I posted last? I don't know how many of you are going to be reading this - you must all be bored of my absence by now and given up coming here. But I thought it would be good for me to explain my absence, and also do a bit of reflecting as we head into 2011...

I knew 2010 was going to be a tough year. It started off with us handing in all that we'd been up to in the first semester of my final year studying illustration. I'd worked really hard and was determined to concentrate wholly on my degree and nothing else this year. Unfortunately I wasn't really happy with the feedback I got from the tutors. I felt I hadn't quite achieved what I had wanted to and that made me quite sad. But I thought I still have another (my final) semester and I was going to pull myself up through it all.

I worked really hard that last semester - but it always felt a bit unsatisfactory. My coursemates were all jumping over personal hurdles, and I just felt stuck. I worked so hard I exhausted myself. Eventually, during Easter break, Sunshine took me away to Milan for a few days. We were one of the last planes out before all the airports were shut down due to the Icelandic volcano eruption. So although Milan was great, it took us three extra days to get back to the UK travelling over land and sea. Somehow I felt I never quite managed to catch up with work after that.

I wasn't particularly happy with my graduation grade; but I was too tired to care. We also had a really strong year so no matter how good you were, most people were ignored and the same handful of about 5 people kept getting all the interest from commisioners. Now don't get me worng - I'm not bitter ... those few people DID deserve to get all that interest. But having gone round lots of other shows I realised that most of our even mid-range students were more talented and creative than some of the best in the other colleges. Anyways, lots of other little things happened within college those last couple of months that left me quite disheartened by it all, and I didn't end my degree in a particularly happy place.

Summer I was determined to get my life back and reconnect with my Darling Sunshine who'd pretty much just seen the back of my head in front of a screen for the last year. It was a good summer. We didn't really go away anywhere, but bought a tandem and spent lots of time just cycling around and having quality time together. It was a wonderful few months.

As the new academic year 2010/2011 started in September/October; and Sunshine had to get back to his university lecturing job; I thought I'd take the time from then till the end of the year to re-do my portfolio and have a re-think about what actually I wanted to do with this illustration degree. I definitly wanted (and still do) want to become a freelance illustrator - but I needed to work out within what specialisms and whether I wanted to do stuff for myself (designer-maker) or commissions, or some combination of the two.

Then at the beginning of October we got the awful news about the death of our very good friend (and wedding photographer) Burning Dan. Within a day I also received some upsetting news about a family crisis too (which is still unresolved). I spend days crying as one thing would remind me of the other and it just spiralled. I tried to distract myself with illustrating - but was having real self-confidance issues and just couldn't bring myself to produce anything decent.

So there I am trying to keep it together, when we find out that I'm expecting! (bravo to you those that have read this far and managed to get the news!). We had been trying, but with all the rubbish news, it still took us a bit by surprise ... The hormonal imbalances meant that I lost all creativity and was just feeling tired all the time. Then at about 8 weeks the symptoms really hit and December was pretty much a washout with me having all-day sickness; Sunshine catching the flu; me catching it off him... etc etc. No cards or greetings for anyone.

We had the dating scan just before Christmas and got to see Little Wind for the first time. He/she seems to be doing well (despite momma being so ill). Started telling family over Christmas and friends just after that. Happy news all round.

Sunshine and I spend New Year's Eve at a dear friend's who looked after us very well and we vowed that 2011 was going to be a much better year than 2010. And with that thought we went to bed. On New Year's morning, just as we were getting up and having breakfast, I got a phone call from my Dad. "Happy New Year dad!".. "Mithi, are you alright?", "Yeeessss ....?", "You sure you're alright? I have some bad news ..." Oh dear! For a second there I thought it was to do with that unresolved family crisis from October ... but it turned out to be that one of my dear cousins, only 27, had died tragically in an accident the night before. I put the phone down and cried on Sunshine for a while. Is this how 2011 was going to start?

So, I have't been really 'here' physically or mentally. I've been meaning to blog since Christmas ... but its been one thing after another ... I haven't given up on PlanetMithi, but it will still be a bit quiet here for a while. I'm getting much better but the pregnancy symptoms seem to attack quite randomly at times so I'm not quite there yet. I'd love to start crafting for the baby and showing you all what I'm doing here - but I've been mostly just curled up in bed fighting fatigue and nausea and sadness. Writing this post has been my achievement for the day.

Thank you for reading this far - may you all have a Fabulous and crisis-free 2011!

Love
Mithi

Reposted to Woo! Yay! Hooray!

Anyone for a Christmas sale?

2010-11-03T10:23:00.008Z

Top Left: "Small"; Top Right: "Dance"(SOLD)
Middle left: "Sofa"; Middle Right: "Fox"
Bottom Left: "Bear"; Bottom Right: "Circus"

Good morning folks! Having a bit of clearout here in PlanetMithi and going up for sale are some of the archival quality giclee prints from my degree show. These are the spreads I did for my children's book (details here). I really need to re-coup some of the costs of the show and what better way to do it than to actually sell some of my illustrations!

They are going for £35 each (plus postage - amount depends where you are). They have been printed with archival quality inks on archival quality acid-free paper. They are about 15.25 inches by about 8.5 inches each; with at least an inch extra round the sides for mounting. I'm selling them without the mount as it is easier to post. So start digging into those pockets and purses and get yourself (or a young loved one) an original PlanetMithi Christmas present!!!

To buy, e-mail me at mithi at planetmithi dot com , listing which one(s) you would like to purchase - and I'll send you postage cost plus a link to my paypal account. Cheers!

Painting science...

2010-11-02T17:36:00.003Z

And it is LIVE!

Thanks so much to Jen for inviting to contribute to this season's issue of Classic Play, all about science! Its been an honour and a pleasure ;)

Have a look round the issue for much sciency goodness (including instructions to my red cabbage juice pH-indicator painting experiment!).

Tricycle! Tricycle!

2010-10-27T23:26:00.004+01:00

Tricycle! Tricycle! I love you with all my mi-i-i-ight ..
Tricycle! Tricycle! I ride you morning noon and night ...

Inspired by this.

Boring post

2010-10-26T14:00:00.003+01:00

I've not given up on my illustration career ... its just taking a little time. Here is me trying to re-learn how to draw children. Having self confidence issues at the moment - "Ack! I can't illustrate to save my life!" - so just going back to first principles and practising drawing ... trying to re-jig the kids section of my portfolio ...

Classic science ...

2010-10-12T13:03:00.004+01:00

Firstly a big "HELLO!" to all those that have come here via Jen Cooper's facebook wall ... welcome to PlanetMithi. For the rest of you, here is a sneaky peek at something I've been doing for the lovely Jen who invited me to contribute to the new issue of Classic Play all about SCIENCE! Will update here when it goes live.

~UPDATE!~

To the regular readers ... sorry its been so quiet over here lately. Usually its because I've been busy ... unfortunately, this last absence has been more to do with the untimely loss of a very good friend. Coupled with some other bad news (that I got within 24 hours of finding out about my friend's death) I've not been in a very 'happy' place. Fortunately Sunshine has been a tremendous rock and I'm slowly trying to get back into illustrating as its the only way to keep my mind occupied.

You may also notice on the righthand sidebar that I've started another blog in which I hope to be putting up more about my life and vintage goodies collections and related stuff - so that I can concentrate on my illustration stuff here. Enjoy!

Flolloping with tiger ...

2010-09-27T21:54:00.006+01:00

Not dancing but "flolloping" as Sunshine describes it ...

Tea for two, two for tea ...

2010-09-17T15:24:00.003+01:00

Just finished off something I was working on from almost a year ago ... Actually painting and not digital for a change!

Life imitates art ...

2010-09-13T10:38:00.003+01:00

Or is it the other way around?

The joy of cycling

2010-09-11T10:22:00.004+01:00

This is it ... went up in Howies Bristol shop yesterday and will be there for two weeks, along with lots of other cycled themed goodness. The private view last night was really busy and prooved to us how many random people we knew in Bristol (and London) who all knew each other too ...

Those of you who follow the blog might recognise the figures ;)

We took some photos - but haven't really looked through them -and I want to go back to take some photos of other people's work. So that will be a future post.

Howies ...

2010-09-09T14:02:00.001+01:00

Come see lots of lovely Bike-y illustrations by lots of Bristol artists upstairs at Howies from tomorrow night for two weeks - including a special image by yours truly ;)

Tandem Love

2010-09-01T11:03:00.006+01:00

Ha! Another three weeks goes by without an update ... oh wo-es me ... To tell you the truth, I HAVE been up to lots (similar to the last post). Its just not been very 'art/illustration related' and I would like to keep this blog a bit more art focused. Edit: and oh yes, today is this blog's 4th Birthday!!!!!!!!!

I've been thinking about starting a separate blog for Littlemithi and Sunshine's other adventures (like TANDEMS!) but just haven't got round to it as we've been too busy enjoying the summer. But now as September creeps up on us and Sunshine has to be back at work fulltime (he's a university lecturer) soon, and I'm very officially freelance/unemployed/housewifey; maaaaaybe a separate blog is called for.

Anyways, I HAVE been trying to draw for the Bristol Cycle Festival group exhibition at Howies (see panel on the right) that I've signed up for. I would very much like to do something tandem based ... but I'm not feeling particularly inspired at the moment (want to be riding tandems, not drawing them...); and have also come down with a headcold which makes my brain a bit mushy. Oh well - hopefully something will come together in the end ... here's some sketches:

And in other news - we have already clocked the 100mile mark on "Bramble" (our tandem has a name now!). We both love it and have become real tandem geeks. We've been trying to update a google map with some of our longer rides as we get used to her. See our progress below (longest ride to date is the blue one - to Bradford-upon-Avon and back; a total of 54 miles in one day):

View Brambling in a larger map

Planetmithi News

2010-08-10T11:36:00.012+01:00

Whoa! Almost a month since I last posted ... nope, I haven't abandonned Planetmithi ... just been on a well deserved break - am still kind of on break, but trying to gear myself up for the rest of the year. Doesn't mean I haven't been busy though ...

... busy building sofa forts ...

(with my fort-building-partner-in-crime Sunshine)

... hanging out at music festivals ...

here at SGP with the smashing Mizz Rosalind and her clubs ...

... riding round on our new TANDEM! Whoopee!!

She still needs a name ... any ideas? Thank you mum for the photos :)

... getting back into dancing ...

here with the lovely Mr Tom Kerwin aka Jungle Kid; old mate, old dancing/teaching partner, smashing dancer and all round good egg - photo by the gorgeously lovely fellow dancer Miss Anika East.

... hanging out with my mum who has been visiting; and sanding our Ercol dining chairs (erm, don't ask) ...

Hello mum! wave wave!

Haven't done ANY art since the degree show, but am involved in an upcoming exhibition at Howie's Bristol shop in conjunction with friends Sophie (fellow dancer and illustrator) and the Peskimos (and a few more as yet unconfirmed artists) for the Bristol Cycle Festival. So watch this space for some tandem themed art work coming soon to a planetmithi near you ;)

Patterns

2010-07-19T09:45:00.006+01:00

One of the things I've always been interested in is patterns and surface design. Unfortunately we never covered this in our illustration course ... This was not going to stop me having a go myself though ...

Ships! Based on this...

Toys and dancing based on this...

Paper Anniversary

2010-07-18T00:01:00.002+01:00

I love you Mr Sunshine ... last year you made me the happiest woman alive ... and you keep doing so on a regular basis ... lets go build some sofa forts! ;)

Uncle Albert

2010-07-17T09:14:00.007+01:00

This was one of my favourite-est self directed projects. I wanted to do something science-based for the degree show ... and this was it. Done in the last few weeks of my degree, these were cover re-designs (and endpapers/title pages) for a set of children's books by Russell Stannard called the "Uncle Albert" series. They are fictional, but use storytelling to teach kids the principles of quantum physics. The books revolve around Uncle Albert (Einstein) teaching his niece Gedanken all about the wonders of the universe by magically being transported into his thought bubbles; and I loved them from my very first read.

I read them initially when I was doing my Post Graduate Diploma in Science Communication (yes, I have too many qualifications), where my dissertation was on "science writing for children"; and have always wanted to put my own slant on the covers. Here's each of the three covers with accompanying endpapers and title pages (they are animated gifs - so some of you might have browsers that don't allow it!)

Some sketchy images...

La Mer, Le Ciel (The Sea, the Sky)

2010-07-16T09:05:00.004+01:00

This was my entry for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards with the theme of "Travelers Tales". I went with the idea of 'the grass is always greener on the other side' - with a fish who wants to travel the skies, and a bird who wants to travel the seas ... Details and development sketches below:

Hmmm.... quite like the octopus .....

Launch

2010-07-15T09:05:00.008+01:00

This little boy ended up on my final postcards and some of my business cards. He was originally done as part of my proposed design for our London show invites - to "launch" all our new careers as illustrators. I really like these long composition versions and that's how they were printed up for the degree show (at about 200% of their original size). Here's them in context of the invite (front and back) and some closeups:

Last but not least some development sketches:

Royal Cycling

2010-07-14T09:05:00.000+01:00

This year's AOI/TFL competition was on the theme of "Cycling in London". I entered the two images above. This is what the multitude of Queens were about. Here's some more sketchbook work.

Although the image of the Queen and her corgi is my favourite, the horseguard on a tandem made the cut and is one of the 50 chosen to be exhibited at London Transport Museum till 22nd August 2010 :)

Trotting with Mr Fox ... revisited

2010-07-13T09:05:00.004+01:00

Remember this from last year? Well, it did get revisited again this Easter - improved and submitted for Macmillan. Above are the final 6 spreads I entered. And here's a selection of sketchbook develomental work.

Although it didn't get anywhere with Macmillan, I've had a lot of my friends - especially the dancers - be really interested for themsleves (and the young people in their lives...). The bulk of the storyline and drawings are done so hopefully I'll finish off the other 10 or so spreads (and cover) over summer and maybe self publish it. Watch this space for news!

Alice's Adventures on Planetmithi

2010-07-12T09:05:00.004+01:00

Finally ... its all over. Although "the end" was a few weeks ago, we've had a couple more shows in London, which meant that I have still been preoccupied with college life - till last Friday that is. At 5:50pm Friday I started taking down my work from the walls at the Coningsby Gallery; wrapped up books/portfolio/chair; Sunshine then proceeded to come pick me up and we stuffed everything in the car; I said my goodbyes; and we headed back to Bristol. Apart from the graduation ceremony in November - I will not need to have to do anything with the university ever again! Blimey! What a quick three years this has been ... Anyways, now I can finally sit down and spend the rest of the week updating the blog with all of this last few months worth of work.

This was my entry for the Puffin Cover Design competition to re-design Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

I did a sneak peak of some sketchbook work earlier, but here's some more:

Over the next week I'll be putting up more stuff that was in the degree show ...

BA (Hons) Illustration 2010, UWE

2010-06-22T22:03:00.008+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the graduating class of 2010 BA (Hons) Illustration, University of the West of England. Go forth and illustrate! And the rest of you go forth and check out their work ...

Frank Adam
Lucy Bayley
Greg Bott
Anne Marie Callaghan
Jack Cassidy-Seed
Ashley Clarke
Charlotte Cooke
Charlotte Dawson
Jonathan Dodds
Ella Dore
Sara Dunkerton
Owen Gatley
Jennie Gyllblad
Caroline Halliwell
Adam Hancher
Charlotte Hobbs
Jack Hudson
Alice Hyde
Luke Jinks
Christine Lau
Pearl Law
Liam McAuley
Aidan Meighan
Kate Nelms
Christian Norman
Richard Partridge
Małgorzata Piątkowska
Harry Powell
Emily Rawle
Ignjat Reljic Djuric
Olly Robertson
Lewis Rowley
Harry Sankey
Gaby Selby
Mithila Shafiq
Laurie Stansfield
Tengku Adam
Kirsty Thatcher
Megan Warre
Mark Wilding
Cei Willis
Regine Yong
Francesca Lloyd

The end.

2010-06-19T09:11:00.004+01:00

This is it folks ... 3 years (4 if you include the foundation) of blood sweat and tears ... and it all ends with some bits on a wall and some stuff on the floor ...

I am beyond tired and just need to take some time off - although we still have quite a full three weeks ahead of London shows, portfolio reviews and Junior Fellowships to apply for.

More pictures and updates once I get my life back in order ...

Here's to new beginnings!

ps, the show is still on till the 24th. All details, plus London show details on the right hand sidebar

... and it is LIVE!

2010-06-11T08:05:00.006+01:00

Click on the image to go to the NEW and IMPROVED website!

Thank you to Sunshine who helped tremendously with code-hacking.

And in other news ... my list of things to do seems to get longer the more things I tick off!

HIGHS: Mounts cut. Website up (~~still not convinced about banner image~~ Updated!). Silk mmm... . Moo stuff has arrived. Booked into portfolio review with someone from Walker Books. Got into the AOI/TFL Cyling in London competition!

LOWS: Prints still not ready yet; some other things I tried printing just didn't happen (yesterday was the first time I cried throughout this whole process ... it has been so stressful and EVERYTHING went wrong yesterday). I haven't generated nearly as much work as everyone else as I've had loads of colour/screen/print issues which means I've wasted alot of time just trying to get the colour/printing correct on the images I DO have. I have kicked myself for not getting confident cycling and driving over the last year as it would have been SO useful this past week (I must have walked MILES between the main campus - studios - printers -stationers - etc in the last two weeks). No weekend access to the studios (I'm not even going to go there - that is a story for AFTER we graduate). Have to get AOI/TFL image printed, framed and sent off to London by Degree show day (what bad timing!). AOI/TFL opening night is same as our London Degree show ... damns!

Off to whitewash the show space today and tomorrow. And then its putting up show next week! CHINKIES!

Drip feeding...

2010-05-26T22:13:00.006+01:00

Here I am lovely peeps ... drip feeding you content to keep you interested.

Planetmithi is in full blown get-ready-for-degree-show mode. Today, postcards and mountboards were ordered. I am still making images, still have to print them, and decide what's going up on the walls at the show and what's going in my portfolio; tweeking website and all manner of other bits and bobs.

Ah, and yes, the Degree Show info is up! Lookie (click on image to go to site):

PRIVATE VIEW (invitation only)

Friday 18 June 18.00-21.00

GENERAL OPENING
Saturday 19 June 10.00-18.00
Sunday 20 June 10.00-16.00
Monday 21-Thursday 24 June 10.00-20.00

We are also going to be in LONDON twice:

D&AD New Blood 2010
(With Graphic Design, and a limited show)
The Old Truman Brewery
15 Hanbury Street
London E1 6QL

Industry Private View on Thursday 24th June 2010
Continues until Monday 28th June 2010
10am to 6pm daily

And the Coningsby Gallery,
(Just illustration so more substantial show than D&AD - but smaller than UWE show)
30 Tottenham Street
London W1T 4RJ

Private View on Monday 5th July 2010 (6:30-9pm)
Continues until 9th July 2010
10am to 6pm daily

Please come and see us!!!

Ye Olde Stuffe

2010-05-14T16:39:00.004+01:00

Earlier this week, the lovely and very talented Miss Hattie Newman sent me this image ... its something I helped her with way back in August 2009. I'd almost forgotten about it ... its the New York skyline done with books - for a Royal Mail internal magazine. It was lovely working with Hattie ... Favourite bit had to be precariously hanging books to look like they were flying :)

Aaaaand here is a picture of the Queen ...

2010-05-12T12:44:00.002+01:00

Hello there those lovely people who still come back to see what's up on planetmithi - almost nothing by the looks of it ... but fear not! A LOT of work is happening behind the scenes and we are T-minus 37 days to the degree show!

I've been working days, evenings, weekends ... and it feels (mostly) good. My work is finally beginning to look a bit more consistent, and I'm much happier with where it is going. Its amazing how much its moved on from just 6 months ago. They've been cracking the whip at college and you can see the reasons why as everyone's work is really coming together. There is a real buzz in the studios and I think it is going to be one hell of a good show :)

I still have a lot of images to make and work to do - and I really need to rehash this blog and my portfolio site, and design some personal stationery/business cards on top of all that. Have a look at our timetable leading up to the three (one Bristol, and two London) shows ... its manic!

I promise I'll upload all the work I'm doing now (including process sketches etc) once the show is up and I have a bit more time on my hands ... but in the meantime, here are some drawings of the Queen to keep you entertained ...

So much LOTS OF THINGS to do...

2010-04-28T09:10:00.011+01:00

... couldn't be further from the truth ... (photo taken a the Milan Design Festival two weeks ago).

So yes, I am back - infact have been back for about a week - but its been one of the most frantic weeks on record here at planetmithi. I can't even begin to describe it ... but here is a (not-so) quick summary:

Thursday April 15th : Up at 4am, on very early flight to Milan ... Hooray! Arrive safe only to find out British airspace has been completely shut down ! Try not to worry and start enjoying the Milan International Design fair. See some things - not very impressed ... see some other things VERY impressed.

Friday April 16th : We are staying with the students in a 'hostel' (a few rooms above a restaurant) which is about 45 mins out of town. Means leaving very early every morning, and coming back on the last train every evening. Do Zona Tortona (where the photo was taken). Find our (Sunshine and mine) favourite exhibition: the MGX Materialise show ... we must have gone back there 3 times over the rest of the weekend. Still checking up on volcano stuation... trying not to panic the students.

Saturday April 17th : Visit the Milan Design Museum whilst our Italian member of staff ("The Fixer") goes off to the train station to see what's going on. Comes back to tell us there are long queues (of several hours!) at the station ... but he has a plan...

Sunday April 18th : Our Sunday evening flights definitely cancelled. Drag the kids out early o-clock in the morning to be at the train station.The Fixer takes us round to the back of the station where there are agents also selling the same train tickets - but with a fraction of the queues. Nothing to the UK for a week - but we can get to Paris the next day via the long route along the French Riviera. Try and organise 16 people buying tickets .... we get applause from the other punters when we finish and all leave the queue in one go.

Sunshine and I get to an internet cafe (bloody difficult find one of them in Milan open on a Sunday) and send off emails to family and friends wondering what's going on. I send two panicked e-mails to Macmillan and Penguin saying that I can't make it back in time - can I have an extension. Macmillan is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Trying not to feel too upset about missing it.

Wet day in Milan - everyone very tired - but relieved to at least have tickets to get out of there (just to give you a sense of perspective : the design festival attracts 300,000 people ... who were all then trying to leave en-masse).

Monday April 19th : Another early morning to train station to get on our train south to the coast; change to a French train that goes along the coast to Nice. Lunch stop. Board TGV in Nice a couple of hours later to go more along the coast, then inland near Marseille to get into Paris for about 10:30 that night. By the time we get the students to their hostel, us (me, Sunshine, and the two other staff members - The Fixer and The Boss) to our hotel, and find somewhere to have dinner - its way past midnight. I have had the worst throat ache all day - and can hardly swallow dinner my glands are so swollen.

Tuesday April 20th : The Fixer and The Boss go off to an early morning trek to the train station to find out what our next posibilities are. Sunshine and I in charge of keeping the troops entertained. We walk around Paris and end up at the Center Pompidou (only to find out it is shut on a Tuesday). Fixer and Boss meet us there having organised tickets to Calais very early the next morning. We are too tired to do much else - but manage to contact a couple of French friends who come and sit with us in a cafe. Early to bed with slightly better sore throat.

Wednesday April 21st : Don't know what day it is anymore. Up at 5am (4am UK time), on train to somewhere - then change to train for Calais. Get to Calais - apparently there is a 'special bus' that will take us to the ferry terminal and there is a huge group of people waiting for this bus. The Boss looks at his iphone... the terminal is a 15 minute walk away ... so we join the trickle of other people who have also started to walk (great coz we later found out that there were people waiting for two hours for this bus, which then also charged them 2 Euros). Get to ferry terminal just to get into ANOTHER long queue. Fixer and Boss rush on ahead to try and secure 16 tickets while Sunshine and I try and keep the slow and tired ones at the back moving. Queue is resonable size as we have got there before the bus load arrives 20 minutes later. Have tickets - and immediately onto ferry. Phew! We are all here and we are all on the way home!

Dover - group splits into two - some taking busses back to respective homes/cars-in-airport-carparks/etc. The rest of us on trains to London, then connecting on to Bristol.

Home about 6 pm... so tired... but e-mails from Macmillan and Penguin with extensions till Monday - HOOORAY! But everything is shut on the weekend ... where am I going to get everything printed??? Some e-mails later and very good friend who runs giclee printers Hello Blue across the road from our house agrees to come in on the Sunday night to colour print my final images. I need to see a tutor about a tutorial - but oh no, our studios (which are in the same building as the Arnolfini Gallery) are shut tomorrow for the Leaders Election Debate .... Noooooooo!

Thursday April 22nd : Call up tutor, slightly concerned ... she will be in main campus (not Arnolfini building) for meeting in the afternoon, so can see me there before then ... thank goodness! Rest of the day is tutorial/work/organising portfolio/organising printing/rearranging train ticket to London etc.

Friday April 23rd : Work like mad.

Saturday April 24th : We had early moring tickets to Edinburgh for some really good friends' wedding this weekend. I've had to bail - poo! Sunshine too tired to get flight. Instead mutual friend who is also going to the wedding comes and picks him up for a road trip up north. Me - work like mad till late.

Sunday April 25th : Up at 6. Very tired. Am missing the wedding. Shaking from exhaustion. No Susnhine to keep me going either. Almost in tears. Fortunately lots of facebook messages from friends (who all handed their Macmillan things in for Friday) egging me on. Work work work. Takeaway lunch/dinner. Meet Phil (whom I owe big time!) at 10:30 pm at Hello Blue studios to giclee print my images. Home at 11:30. Up till 2 cutting/mounting/making dummy book.

Monday April 26th : Up at 6 again to do last few bits-and-bobs for submissions. Walk the half hour to the train station early to pick up tickets. On 9am train to London. First stop - Kings Cross for Macmillan. Second stop - The Strand for Penguin/Puffin. Its all done. Walk to Somerset House for Pick Me Up.

Smashing! See Rob Ryan who has moved his whole studio to Somerset House for the exhibition; and also met the lovely Jez Burrows of Evening Tweed (who remembered me from Lizzy's exhibition in Bristol). Caught early train home. Sunshine got back from his roadtrip to Edinburgh. We both looked dead.

Tuesday April 27th : Sunshine's Birthday ... I haven't managed to get him anything or organise anything special. I am the worst wifey :( We both have early starts. First day back in college only to be given long list of things that need doing before the degree show in 7 weeks! So ... this manic-ness is going to continue ... Blimey!

So there you go ... blow-by-blow ... And yes, we are that close to the final show so the blog updates will be sporadic to say the least. I'm trying to keep the images I'm producing now under wraps at least until the degree show. Might give you some peeks ... but mostly it will be quite quiet here for the next couple of months ...

Wish me luck! And heeeeeeere we gooooo ..................

So much work... so little time ... AND MILAN!

2010-04-14T22:03:00.009+01:00

So, the blog has been quiet; and it will unfortunately remain so for the forseable future. Its not like I'm not working, I'm working LOTS ... but I'd like to keep things a bit more under wraps until they are submitted for whatever competitions/submissiosn they're being prepared for. So instead, you get a wee sneaky peak at whats happening on planetmithi, above ...

I've been working so hard I don't know what day of the week it is anymore ... but for a respite, Sunshine is taking me away tomorrow (we leave at 4am!) to Milan for four days ... Yippee!!! Ok, so, we'll be staying in a hostel and chaperoning his students at the Milan Design Fair ... but hey, who cares ... its a HOLIDAY ... and I so desperately need one right now. I've got a book cover at about 95% done, and 5 spreads of a children's book each about 80-90% done. But its always the last few percent that are the hardest. Hopefully Milan will let me clear my head of work and come back refreshed for a few days of intense work before it all needs to be submitted ... then, more work as its less than two months to the degree show - yikes! I'm going to be an illustration graduate!

Milano, here I come-o!

Bearly Fezzy

2010-04-07T17:28:00.003+01:00

Idea sketching

2010-04-06T10:42:00.006+01:00

Much going on at PlanetMithi headquarters at the moment ... working the bulk of Easter - I don't even know what day of the week it is anymore! Thought I'd show you some of the inner workings of my illustrations when they are still in the planning/sketching/ideation stage. The top is some character developement for a children's book; and the bottom a composition plan (its changed a bit since this drawing) of a book cover ...

Fyi - the book cover is coming together nicely - but the children's book I'm struggling with ... and there's not enough hours in they day! Yikes! Back to the drawing board (or Potatoshop as the current case may be) ...

52

2010-04-03T22:00:00.002+01:00

Sunshine and I trekked up to Room 212 in the rain to finally see the 52 show this afternoon, on its last day.

Bloody marvelous to see my work (there, in the middle, the two long horizontal giclee prints of my Polish children's book spreads) in amongst some of my heros/heroines/favs Peskimo, Lizzy Stewart, Debbie Hill, Jill Bliss, Lisa Solomon, Patrick Gildersleeves, and many more ... :D

Thank you muchly to the gorgeous Claire (left) and Camilla (right) for the opportunity ... may there be many more exciting CalmAirAllIce adventures in the future!

Exhibitions! Exhibitions! Exhibitions!

2010-03-26T20:54:00.006Z

It's spring and it's exhibition time!

First off, from the 31st of March (next Wednesday) till the 3rd of April, I am part of a rather large group exhibition called "52" - 52 artists' work in one small space (Room 212 on Gloucester Road, Bristol). Curated by CalmAirAllIce, aka the lovely Milla and Claire. Have a look at the list of people they have - its looks like its going to be AMAZING! Also in the show are my gorgeous neighbours and good friends, Peskimo:

Peskimo, together with Chris Dickason are currently exhibiting at the new Start Gallery Space (part of Start The Bus on Baldwin Street, Bristol). The show is called "Tease Made" ... and its all about Tea! And Cakes! Yum!!! We were at the opening and there's some spiffing stuff there ... on till the 11th of April so do go visit ...

And speaking of the Start Gallery Space, once Tease Made is out, it will be filled by some of the 2nd year students from our course ... "We Are Fauna" is on from the 16th to the 27th of April. Nice to see the young'uns getting their act together and putting an exhibition on - we were never quite so switched on ...

But then again, some of us are a bit more together ... four of my 3rd year coursemates are exhibiting currently at the Here Gallery in Stoke's Croft, Bristol with a show called "Across The Way". Owen, Adam, Luke and Jack produce some of the loveliest work coming out of our year. Their show is on till the 3rd of April so please go and visit if you get the chance ...

Speaking of shows ... early warning: Our degree show will be Private Show-ing on the 18th of June in Bristol and 5th of July at the Conningsby in London ... keep your diaries clear! It looks like its going to be a show to remember ...

Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology vol 3 Cover

2010-03-24T21:25:00.000Z

(click on image to see bigger)

This is what has preoccupied me the last couple of weeks ... Ok so it shouldn't take that long to design a book cover; but I've also had several bouts of helping with the interview process for the next batch of students coming in September; the last of my dance teaching sessions (including a intensive whole weekend workshop, and a private Charleston lesson) till July; lectures and personal tutorials with both Sarah Warburton and Gina Cross; AND it was my birthday last week :)

With all of that and also doing the illustration + design work on this - (which is a bit more involved than doing only the illustration) - the blog has been a bit quiet. But anyways, this is done and handed in. Almost the whole year have done entries for this - and they'll pick the best one to be used on the published anthology later in the summer. I'd quite like to win this, but I'm also just glad to have a good book cover in my portfolio.

Easter break is almost upon us - really looking forward to it ... but not too looking forward to the fact that I have two more book covers and two children's books to get done in three weeks ... meep!

All aboard ...

2010-03-14T22:47:00.004Z

This last week has been more doing lots of different things, rather than concentrating on one project. Lots of work-in-progress ... here's a sneaky peek at some Bristol favourites :) ...

Polishhhhhhhh...

2010-03-05T16:28:00.010Z

So this is what I've been working on for the last week or so. My friend and lovely Polish studio-mate, Malgosia (Malgorzata), found a Polish children's book illustration competition. You could do your own story, or go for one of the texts they provided. Considering I only started on this about 2 weeks ago, I went for one of their texts, kindly translated by Malgosia. The title is "12 Months" and each double page spread is a month with an accompanying little poem. Each one is also about a job/vocation ... We had to do the cover and two double page spreads. I chose to do January (the forester) and September (the fisherman). (click on images for larger version)

The colours are more muted from what I usually do, but I'm quite pleased with how they came out. It feels like things are finally falling into place and coming together.

I actualy started doing a dimensional version of 'January' but realised it would take too long to do all three pieces that way and have them done and posted off by the deadline. I'm still quite keen to do January and September like that ... but will take my time over it. So watch this space!

Vroom!

2010-02-27T09:54:00.001Z

Also, hit a wall with work yesterday, so instead spent time making a card for our good friend J who just passed her driving test ... woo! You go girl!

Oh-deer ...

2010-02-27T09:44:00.006Z

Sneaky-peek at work-in-progress:

Juggling the work in progress ...

2010-02-22T19:37:00.004Z

I know its been a bit quiet here on planetmithi - but it isn't for the lack of work! I'm juggling someting like four competition briefs; some personal work for my final project (and also for this group exhibiton); with atleast another three competition briefs coming up that I've put on the back burner for the time being as their deadlines are a bit more far away ... Illustration life is full - and full steam ahead towards the end of my degree! Scary!

To keep you entertained (and to show you what I've actually been doing the last few weeks ...), here's some pages from ye olde sketchy booke:

Some boats and ships and nautical things ...

Some stuff involving deer (they're mighty difficult to draw at the angle I've chosen to do them at!).

And some ideas that then went on to become this.

I am bored of sketching and developing ideas now - desperately want some of these things to come together as finished images!

The Big Team Scribble

2010-02-15T22:23:00.005Z

I've given myself a break from school by doing a couple of fun competitions lately. Last week we had the Nobrow one, and this week its the "Big Team Scribble".

Intially I did three carriages that would link (as above) ... they're all in black-and-white and line-drawing as they're for a colouring-in zine.

But then I realised that she might not put the carriages back to back, but instead have them linked to each other with something (like in this picture from the blog). So I made another separate one on a completely different theme ...

yes, I do like the word "EXPRESS" ... And for those of you who are interested, here's a bit from my sketchbook showing a bunch of my concept sketches ... I quite like them - don't usually like my concept sketches ...

People I've Never met; Conversations I've Never had.

2010-02-11T16:57:00.002Z

My submissions for the Nobrow illustration open invitation flickr competition:

Eu de Parfum

2010-02-09T20:54:00.002Z

Today I have mostly been drawing ...

Meet the studio

2010-02-05T21:47:00.001Z

For those of you bored of looking at my work - here's a little sneak-peak at the four other aspiring illustrators that I share our third-year studio space with:

Swedish graphic novelist to-be extraordinaire, Miss Jennie Gyllblad.

Far-too-skilled-for-his-own-good concept artist, Mr Richard Partridge.

More-imagination-than-you-can-shake-a-krusczyki-at Polish children's book illustrator, Miss Malgorzata Piatkowska.

And last but not least, all round good-egg, Miss Emily Rawle.

What a smashing bunch they are ... I'm so in denial about how much I'm going to miss this lot next year...

Fisherman ...

2010-02-04T14:23:00.003Z

Having watched lots of fishermen going in and out of the little harbours in all the seaside villages we have visited in Cornwall, I've for a long time wanted to do a project based on some kind of fisherman-with-a-big-beard narrative. I still don't know what to make of it, but I thought I'd start by geting the fisherman image out of my head. Post assessment, I was given feedback that I worked best with shapes, and needed to break away from the use of lines to explain things. As an excercise, I thought I'd re-do my fisherman image as cut shapes. All experiments and work-in-progress ...

If any of you have or have access to a short, sweet, fisherman story that I could illustrate - would really appreciate hearing about it ...

The Musicians of Brahman ...

2010-02-03T12:27:00.003Z

My ... its been a long time since I was here, hasn't it? Life has been quite full with family emergencies, assessments and dissertations - but its all done now ... Finally, we're on the home stretch towards graduation ... YIKES!

The last module was called "Preparation for self directed study" - genius title, don't you think? Gave us the freedom to do and explore whatever we wanted. And the assessmnet didn't mean we had to have anything finished, per se, but that we were making good progress towards finding our own 'visual language'. So, as you can imagine, I have a LOT of 'work-in-progress' rather than finished work. Part of the reason I haven't been posting lately - but I think I'm just going to start showing you process; and hopefully some of these things will come together for the final show in June. Enjoy!

Right, remember Mr tabla-playing monkey? Well, he was based on my original Asian musicians ... I then found out that each note within the Asian scale is represented by an animal ... I started running with that.

Here are some developement sketches:

And the finished painted animals:

The plan is to then make little hand-shaped (again, influenced by figures from Indian classical dance) shadow boxes with lots of layering. It hasn't quite come together, but you can see my test, and mock-ups. Am really enjoying this and hope it comes together well.

"Self-directed study", here I come!

Lizzy Stewart in Bristol ...

2010-01-22T09:20:00.004Z

I met the awesome Lizzy Stewart in the last week... She's as nice (if not nicer) in real life as she comes across on her blog! She is down in Bristol for a joint show with Christopher Bettig that just started at the Here Gallery last night. Oh my, her stuff is even lusher in real life! ... I'm eyeing up the winter bird image ... maybe some wedding present money can go into purchasing some original artwork for the home ;)

If you're about, do visit the show - both Lizzy's and Chris's work is sooooooo much better in life ... goes on till the end of February ... :)

King of the tabla ...

2010-01-20T18:10:00.004Z

Every monkey'd like to be
In my place instead of me
Cause I'm the king of bongo, baby
I'm the king of bongo ... tabla?

Gaan

2010-01-11T21:01:00.002Z

Ongoing ... hoping to expand into a bigger project.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow ...

2010-01-08T14:53:00.004Z

A bit of silly fun...

Hello 2010

2010-01-03T15:47:00.002Z

So here we are again at the start of a brand new year; a brand new decade ... Sunshine and I have had quite the busy year in 2009 - mostly, we got married; which seemed to take up most of the year. Over Christmas we got married again ... well, not really again, but had a another celebration for it in my home country of Bangladesh (see photo above). We came back just before New Years, and have spent the last few days just trying to get back into the swing of things, here in sunny but very cold Bristol. Sunshine's family also grew a bit more - he became an uncle :) Welcome to the world our newest little friend ...

This next year will also be quite full-on - mostly because I finish and graduate in June/July (eeep!) and can officially call myself a trained illustrator... will be scary, but am looking forward to it. Also have lots of other plans ... but we'll talk about those as we come to them...

Happy 2010! Wishing you a year full of peace, happiness, success and joy!!!

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-25T00:01:00.001Z

Asian musicians ...

2009-12-17T17:28:00.004Z

Getting myself in the mood for our impending trip to Bangladesh-land. I thought I'm unlikely to get any time to do much drawing while we're out there ... so I'd do some while we're still here! Not sure what the groom-chap is doing ... conducting the music (don't generally have conductors in Asian music), or directing traffic ...

Wedding Wednesday - part 9

2009-12-16T15:56:00.003Z

Thank you everyone who came and made it such a lovely day ... 5 months in (yes, a bit late ... ), but we got there!

Making process here.

Thank you Adana

2009-12-15T19:46:00.000Z

Phew! What a steep learning curve this has been ... Regular readers will remember that we procured an Adana 8x5 not too long ago; but then promtly stopped blogging about it. Well, we have actually been using it, but its been a lot of trial and error over several days. And with college and life, those days have been non-concurrent.

But I am pleased to say now that I think we have it (mostly) down, and have done our first two print runs (they are of the same thing - our wedding thank you cards - we just ran out of cards and had to go and buy a second box of supplies). Anyways, here's a kind of 'photo story' of the process. It's made up of photos from a couple of goes - so there isn't necessarily continuity in what's going on. Here goes... :

We start with my original design - then traced into the two separate colours (at the end I ended up re-drawing the whole thing as one piece and scanned it into Photoshop, and did the separating into two layers that way - and printed the two layers out separately).

Next, printed the layers out on acetate - in negative (for making photopolymer flexoplates).

I'm lucky that in my college they have the fascilities for making photopolymer flexoplates - it's a bit like making a silkscreen screen. There is a thin steel plate with some photoemulsion on it. You place the negative acetate the wrong way round on the emulsion and then expose it to UV light. The exposed bits harden (what you're going to print with), and you wash away the unhardened bits. Here are my two plates for the two colour separations.

Imagine then I've mounted the plates on wood to get them 'type height' and used some quoins and furniture to clamp them in place in the chase. I got some of this fab Caligo Safe Wash ink - and here is me inking the ink disk.

Even before we could print we noticed that the plate was inking up too much. This was not going to do ...

Not only was it over-inking, it was not sticking properly to the wood base. We fiddled with this for LONG time... We tweeked the impression screws; we tried to lift the rollers by putting layers of tape on the edge of the roller bearer (the thing the chase sits in); and all sorts ...

To cut a long story short, Sunshine eventually took the whole thing apart, cut the plates down so the edges were closer to the printing bits, and remounted them on wood that he had put through a special machine that would sand it down to the exact height. We made sure the plates were stuck down well, and we even had to hammer down some of the corners that kept getting inked.

Eventually though we finally managed to get it all working ... first print run we did this plate (with the rings) first - then the one with the figures. The second print run the following week we did the other way round as can be seen here:

I'm not entirely sure why I'm speaking like a child o_O ... also, when changing between the two plates, I did the old screenprint registration trick of taping down some acetate to print on, and then putting a card with the first colour on, underneath the printed acetate to align it properly. The Adana has an adjustable 'lay gauge' that holds the bottom of the card where you want it, and we used a piece of thick acetate to mark off one of the edges. You can see me pushing the card up against it in the video.

Final card to be unveiled on Wedding Wednesday tomorrow ;)

For Lu & Soph & Arran + Sharm & Snowball & Yngve

2009-12-14T22:21:00.004Z

Boy in the Bubble - Paul Simon (although I had to get the the lyrics wrong, didn't I? Its "miracle" not "miracleS" ... oh well

For all the new families ;)

Rosalind Franklin

2009-12-10T23:10:00.004Z

Working on some favourite lady scientists ... Move over Crick and Watson; here you have Rosalind Franklin - the structure of DNA would not have been elucidated without Franklin's data and initial analysis .

... and as an added extra, here is some retro DNA ...

Sketchdump

2009-12-05T11:31:00.008Z

Sorry there hasn't been much update on the blog recently - as life's been quite full with college; lots of dance classes and workshop teaching with DZ; getting ready for our Christmas trip away for the second leg of the wedding; and all sorts of other stuff (including the dreaded dissertation...). There are three big illustration-y projects I want to blog about too - but they are all for people so I'd rather wait till they receive them.

I've also been struggling a bit with my own self-directed stuff, but here's a sketch dump of some stuff I've been doing just to keep drawing...

I wanted to do something about scientists - and here's my attempts at Darwin (why does he always look like Santa?) and Einstein...

... back to those jazz musicians (and other characters ...)

... also been thinking about our trip to Bangladesh in two weeks ...

Handmade Graphics ...

2009-11-29T21:47:00.003Z

Last summer I was contacted by RotoVision as they'd seen my embroidery hoops all over the place, and wanted to include them in an upcoming book about handmade graphics. They wanted to use my hoops as a worked through example. So I ended up pretending to make a new hoop and photographed myself going through it all step-by-step ...

It was published earlier this month - and my copy came in the post this week :) Am quite happy with how it came out ... no pay, but good exposure ... And to be published in the same book with the likes of some of my heroes - Luke Best, Matt Sewell, Mike Perry ... and many more... nice!

Get your copy here.

Also, the original hoops are currently on sale in my shop. Christmas pressies anyone???

Wedding Wednesday - part 8

2009-11-25T10:51:00.007Z

Wedding Wednesday comes back with a special announcement - the official (as official as we can get) set of photos are up! We had to sift through several thousand shots from our awesome 'official' photograper, and also all the lovely CDs we received from friends and family - and here you have the best of the best (click on the image to take you to the flickr collection).

Also, our wedding has been featured (and very nicely put together too!) at Aussie wedding magazine/blog Style Collective (click on banner to go straight to the site). Thank you Amanda!

Last but not least - progress has been made on our handprinted thank you cards - yes, we are very VERY late ... but that's because I wanted to make something by hand. Flexoplates and Adanas came into the equation ;) ... If it all gets sorted, that will be a big Wedding Wednesday post next week ...

Erm, I won?

2009-11-22T22:19:00.002Z

Remember this? Well, my piece was one of the ones chosen to be displayed at the Arnolfini Gallery. And not only that, I found out yesterday that mine has been chosen as the overall winner by judges Amelia Gregory of Amelia's Magazine, Fiona Hamilton of Soma Gallery, and the people from Platform who are running the current 100 days (to the Climate Change Conference) season at the Arnolfini. I won a copy of Gaia Warriors and a (being printed as we speak) copy of Amelia's Anthology of Illustration- "featuring renewable technologies to prevent catastrophic climate change".

I was quite surprised to win, to tell you the truth - but am very glad I did ... and it comes at the perfect time as my dissertation that I'm working on at the moment (and why there has been almost no activity on the blog recently), is all about how illustrators can engage with social/ethical/environmental/sustainability issues.

If all goes to plan, Platform will be using my imagery as part of the literature surrounding this.

*The 10 posters will be on display at the Arnolfini (upstairs) till the end of the week if you want a peek :)

Advice

2009-11-18T17:56:00.002Z

All quiet on the blogging - as I'm mostly busy trying to get through my dissertation - it looms above me ... but as they say, even this shall pass ... and I'll be back to drawing soon.

Also, we've been having a play with the Adana - have made flexoplates at college! - but there are still teething problems with printing. Am trying to take lots of photos as we go along, and will put a photo story up once we get the chance ;)

Kaplan Altior

2009-11-09T15:46:00.003Z

Brief for a legal-training firm to produce calendar images based on cities in which they have offices.

From the the top, Liverpool; Birmingham (canal locks); and London (Inns of Court).

The Royal Bank of Sustainability

2009-11-06T17:34:00.003Z

Re-envisioning the Royal Bank of Scotland ...

For an Amelia's Magazine brief...

Buildings

2009-11-05T22:40:00.005Z

Oh! Been very quiet here, hasn't it? Sorry - much busy with many projects/deadlines and getting over over a nasty cold. Here are some drawings of buildings to keep you (temporarily) entertained :)

A cookie to anyone who guesses what ties these buildings together ... ;) All will be revealed next week (when I hand in the final images).

The Happy Mag ...

2009-10-31T09:51:00.004Z

So what were all those kids and bicycles about?

My submission for the Anorak Mag cover design competition...

Its OK, but I feel quietly dissatisfied with the outcome ...

Things I've learnt:
1. I LOVE making - and the 2D-3D crossover
2. BUT it takes a LONG TIME ...
3. And can be a whole lot of frustrating (lucky for me to have the best husband in the world and his collection of camera and lighting equipment)
4. Will go back to plain 'ol 2D and bring the scissors and glue out only for special occasions ...

Set up - oh yes, those laboratory clamps come in handy ...

A boy and his bike ...

2009-10-29T09:05:00.003Z

Thanks for all the comments on the last post - the most important thing I learnt was: forget translucent vs opaque; the real issue was that the bike wasn't 'simple' enough. Needed less detail ... now our young man can have a bicycle much more suited to him; that he can cycle to the park and lie in the grass and enjoy the sunshine with ...

Translucent? Or opaque?

2009-10-24T10:23:00.003+01:00

That is the current question ...

Babes and bikes ...

2009-10-22T18:33:00.003+01:00

Today, I have been mostly drawing children lying in fields...

and bicycles ...

Illustration can be a very slow process sometimes ... sigh ...

Picnic time...?

2009-10-17T18:46:00.006+01:00

It's nice to go for a picnic .... but you gotta watch out for those soda bottles with lives of their own!!!

This is actually work-in-progress for another project; but I quite like where it is right now ... so I thought I'd make a version that stops here :)

Bagheera Kiplingi

2009-10-13T18:32:00.005+01:00

Inspired by our newly discoverd herbivorous arachnid friend :) Trying to do it in autumnal inspired colours ...

Liverpoodlian?

2009-10-12T21:05:00.003+01:00

Working on some briefs based on some UK cities ... this is my attempt at Liverpool (I thought I'd do a city I've actually been to ...). Here are a couple of 'work-in-progress' versions ...

Something about it is still not quite right.... maybe I should just let it be and move on to some other stuff for a bit to clear my head of it ...

Enameling ...

2009-10-11T10:41:00.005+01:00

My its been quiet here ... hasn't it?

This last week has just been rather hectic and I've only just found some time to sit down and tell you about wat I've been up to - most importantly - an enamelling workshop!

On the bottom left you can see my test piece of copper (yes, I had laid the liquid enamel on a little too thick!), and then the other two pieces was me playing with some microorganism inspired images ... It was great fun and the tutor was fab - and I'm very inspired to use enameling this year ... just have to work out in what context to use it, and for what projects. It is actually quite a difficult process to learn to control - but when you can, the results are stunning. I'd actually wanted to learn enameling on glass so I could do some work on old labware ... maybe can still do that at some point.

Apart from that, I've also been to London to see Origin part 1; and potter round the Tate Modern (well, mostly its bookshop ... mmmm.. yummy); a couple of other galleries; and spend lots of money at some specialist art shops on some expensive specialist art materials!

Man do I feel poor ... um, and oh yes, a couple of things bought off Amazon have also arrived ... yay! AND we had our first "Ain't Misbehaving", AND we had friends in town visiting, AND I've also been busy with lots of briefs ... AND we've been patiently waiting for Sunshine's sister's baby to arrive ... What a busy week!

Women Scientists ...

2009-10-07T13:13:00.003+01:00

Hooray for women scientists! ... Dr Elizabeth Blackburn, 2009 Nobel Prize for Medicine for work on telomeres.

I was actually also doing a drawing of her fellow Nobel Prize winner Dr Carol Greider (yay! more women scientists!) too, but it just wasn't a 'flattering' image ...

For Clara Bow ...

2009-10-04T17:35:00.006+01:00

Some work-in-progress ...

Still playing with the colours; and its still quite flat and so I'm experimenting with some textures etc .... hmmmm ....

Wedding Wednesday - hiatus

2009-09-30T08:21:00.001+01:00

"The Wedding Posse"

There is not much left of the wedding posts - just a couple of little things to tie up that I'd like to talk about. But for the meantime, Wedding Wednesday is going to be on hiatus as Term has started - and as this is the beginning of the end, (final year! EeEEEEeeepppPPp!), I'm going to be prioritisisng my illustration degree.

Sunshine is busy trying to get the 'official' photos edited and cleaned up, so will post here when those are up on flickr ... but while I have the chance, would just like to say a HUGE thank you to the bridal party + other halves + one hanger on; otherwise known as the "Wedding Posse"; for all their help and support on and around the day ... we love you!

Hoops for sale ...

2009-09-27T18:05:00.004+01:00

Having a bit of a clearout here at planetmithi headquarters, and have put the original Meta- embroidery hoops on sale at etsy... grab the originals while you can!!!

Family Day

2009-09-26T00:01:00.004+01:00

It is family day here at planetmithi ... Sunshine and I would like to say:

First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY lil sis Tiara ... who turns 24 today ... lookie at what a cutie she was! (with me aged about 12 I think) ... Woo .... loveses you!!!

Then, HAPPY 40th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY to my folks ... look at them being all cool in the 70s ... oh yeah ... my parents ... looking fiiiiiiine ...... ;)

And also, HAPPY 40th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY to Sunshine's folks on Monday ... can you believe it? The two sets of parents got married within two days of each other on two different ends of the world 40 years ago!

Woo! Have a great day all!
Much love, from Us

Wedding Wednesday - part 7

2009-09-23T08:03:00.004+01:00

Today's topic ... entertainment! (other wedding related posts here)

Sunshine and I lead fairly active lives - infact we met swing dancing, via a mutual swing dancing/juggling friend who Sunshine had met through juggling. And as such, we had to do very little in the way of organising "entertaiment" for our guests - as they were all so entertaining themselves!

Our friends performed for us (clockwise from top left: Pich did his stick routine, Ed did a hillarious pizza twirling routine to "That's Amore", and Cookie sang for us.

There was a lot of juggling/manipulation gear about - and a lot of hoolahoops! As seen here enjoyed by both young and old ;) (please do click on the images to see them larger - especially little Manon who was just a gem of a guest!)

As we had met dancing - we had our first dance to a swing version of "Sunny" by Ernestine Anderson. (Sunshine - Sunny ... you get it, yes?)

DJ-ed by some of the best swing DJs in the country (who also happen to be our friends ... how lucky are we??!!??) ... thank you Daniel, Tom, David, Mel and Mark ...

Much dancing ensued till late under the marquee ...

Whilst in the garden, much multicoloured spinning could be seen.

The dancers were all trying to hoop and juggle, and the jugglers all wanted to dance. The non-dancer/jugglers also all joined in the festivities ... it was GRAND! So many of the parents generation kept coming to us an commenting what talented friends we have ... and indeed we do ;)

In other news, the wedding has been blogged about again - I have updated my Thank You post with the link ;)

Adana update

2009-09-22T20:28:00.004+01:00

So, there's far more to hand-presses than you would think. I have been doing a lot of reading and yesterday even managed to see one of the print tutors and borrow a quoin key so that I could unlock the type and clean out the chase that came with my Adana. Last week I also managed to drop by the Impact 2009 product fair (I wasn't a delegate - just gate crashed!); and speak to the people who make these Safe Wash inks - and they gave me a couple of free samples :)

So today when my rollers finally arrivd in the post, Sunshine and I had a go at printing ...

We haven't really got the correct 'tympan' on the platen yet - I've ordered some in; but in the meantime was just using some paper and board of random thickness ... We tried the Christmassy type that came with the print... But didn't manage to get a very good impression ... (even after fiddling with the impression screws).

Then we tried some spice jar labels (something I had picked up at a charity shop a long time ago ...). OK but not great. I think we also don't quite have the right sort of paper - tried several varieties and the results are quite variable.

Then we tried a wood block that I'd got the same time I'd got those spice jar labels.

This was probably the nicest - but still with issues.

By this point we were both very hungry for dinner, so cleaned everything up (these Safe Wash inks are a joy to work with - oil based but cleans up with washing up liquid!); and we shall leave more experimenting (other papers? flexoplates? other inks? wooden type?) for another day ...

Website! Shop! 300th post! AND giveaway!

2009-09-20T20:35:00.009+01:00

Whattalotta things going on! I'd like to introduce you to what I've been working on the last few weeks - my new portfolio site! Those of you who have been coming here will have noticed the two changes of banner images recently - one was a trial, and the other (on now) was to make it more in-line with the website, which is at : http://cargocollective.com/planetmithi

It's still in the process of being refined - lets call it a beta-release ... - and I'm hoping as I produce more work over the year; I can take off some of the old stuff, and put on more new stuff - but at least I've got something up now... Also, planetmithi.com is still redirecting to this blog - but in the future, when I'm happier with the state of the portfolio, planetmithi.com will direct straight through to the portfolio site ...

The other thing I've been up to is I've also finally set up a SHOP! After two years of having an account there, I give you http://planetmithi.etsy.com

Not much on there at the moment - but you can purchase mini prints of my little Charleston Bees Knees girls and also Mr Fox ;)

This is also, my 300th post! And in conjunction, I've got a little giveaway for my lovely readers... Remember our wedding invite and how much fun our guests had with them? Well, I have about 8 tweeters still available to the first 10 people who leave me a comment here (please make sure you put in your e-mail address so that I can get hold of you to ask for your address ...). Come on folks! Stop, lurking and say hello!

The first term on my final (yikes!) year as an illustration student officially starts tomorrow - although not a lot happens in the first couple of weeks ... Stay tuned for some exciting new adventures in the next year :)

Giveaway edit: Yay ... all gone!
1. Kerstin
2. SaraPham
3. Lucy H
4. Andrea
5. TheFrase
6. FabricNation
7. Claire
8. Emma

Will be in touch ASAP!

Thank you ...

2009-09-18T14:13:00.006+01:00

The wedding posts have been really well received over the blogosphere - and I thought I'd say a little Thank You to all the lovely posters - and Welcome to everyone who is new to planetmithi! ... Click on the banner images to go straight to the article :)

Flaptastic!

2009-09-17T16:02:00.005+01:00

I met up with the lovely Vicky of Clara Bows last night - first came across her at a craft fair selling the most gorgeous 20s style cloche hats I had ever seen! I'm doing a little fun project for her (see pics above) - and in return I am getting one of those stunning hats! Yay flaptastic me!

ps: have a look at Vicky's fab 20s style recent wedding, photographed by Bristol's own Rosie Parsons here and here.

Wedding Wednesday - part 6

2009-09-16T08:13:00.013+01:00

Today ... my favourite wedding project: The corsages ... (other wedding related posts here)

Ours, and wearing them during our first dance :)

Rather than make boutonnieres, which just didn't appeal to me, I handmade little photo corsage/ribbon/brooch/award things for all the wedding party and immediate family. Unfortunately in the rush to finish them, I didn't document me making them, or the final brooches before I gave them out. The photos here are from after the wedding - and I've tried my best to include pictures of their wearers too - also found this difficult and am missing a few ... oooooh wellllll ...

The parents...

My sister...

Sunshine's sister and brother-in-law

The bestman ...

The man-of-honour...

My grandma (left) and the bridesman (right)

The missing photos are Nic, the bestlady, who had one similar to my sister's in shades of orange; and my aunt (mum's sister) whose birthday it was that day and who got one similar to the mums' but in shades of green.

The photo frames are little dollhouse frames that I spray-painted white. The whole thing is stuck/sewn to a backing piece of felt onto which I attached a safety pin. Fairly straight forward you would think - but it took a long time: sourcing the right colours and combinations of ribbons; doing all the sewing - especially sewing all the names on; sourcing all the photographs; and just in general putting it all together. The family photos are of us when we were young with the respective family member; and the ones with the "best posse" were again one of us with the respective wearer. I am SO happy with these. I am going to frame up Sunshine and mine's with the peg-doll cake-toppers that Sunshine's sister made for us, with a few other wedding bits and bobs into a shadow box. My mum wants to frame our family ones too ... really glad I took the time do this ... and so enjoyed it too :)

Holy Adana!?!

2009-09-13T22:41:00.005+01:00

Years of keeping eyes peeled (well actually Sunshine spotted it...) at charity shops/reclaimers/ebay etc have finally lead to a dream find... let me introduce you to the latest addition to the family: "Adony" (that's what Sunshine keeps calling it!) - a vintage Adana 8x5 in fully working order. We've de-gunk-ified and got all the parts oiled and moving. Need to invest in some rollers, ink, and type/image plates ... and we shall be in letterpress heaven! Wow-wee!!!

Note: It's tabletop sized - looks a bit big because of the angle the photo's been taken in ... See pic below of Sunshine reassembling it:

Hawker Hart

2009-09-10T12:44:00.006+01:00

Family project number one. Switch off the internets (we haven't got a telly) and make something instead...

Model bought kit while we were on honeymoon. Last night - Mithi on lower wings; Sunshine on fuselage ... still a way to go ... but so much nicer than staring at a screen ;)

Wedding Wednesday - part 5

2009-09-09T08:32:00.008+01:00

Guestbook and Hellos ...(other wedding related posts here)

So these were the two projects that didn't quite go to plan - but turned out great anyways ... firstly, the wedding photo-guestbook.

*Above: Our friends who got married 6 weeks after us :)

Hugely inspired by all the photo-guestbooks on pretty much every wedding related website/blog that's out there. We set out to make our own. Sunshine, his dad, and the man-of-honour got together and via some trial and error fashioned a frame from bamboo poles taped together and stuck into two concrete pots that usually hold garden umbrellas. The large piece of floral fabric was originally bought as possible bunting fabric. I also made up a little chalkboard speech bubble using some thin plywood cut to shape; then painted with chalkboard paint on both sides. Add to that some chunky chalk; and a picnic basket full of random hats, leis, feather boas and other props; and there you have a great photo-guestbook set up. We got the bestman's digital camera set up on a tripod, and set it to auto ... and left the whole set-up in the garden ...

All our hopes of people spending time in the garden were unfortunately thwarted as it was quite a gray day, and most people spent most of their time in the marquee - this meant that not a lot of people discovered the photobooth (although we did try to get the word out), and so we only have about 30 pictures ... BUT they are some of the fabbest pictures of the wedding yet! See the full set of photos here.

The other thing I did was make up lots of "Hello, my name is..." tags for everyone. Sunshine and I know lots of lovely people, but they don't all necessarily know each other. I had hoped to make these up; written guests' names on myself; and maybe added a bit of "... ask me about ___" as a conversation starter; and added their table assignment on the back. But due to the last minute-ness of lots of things ... that never happened. Still, I didn't want them to be wasted - so I left a basket full of them with a sharpie by the entrance to the marquee. And not surprisingly, people found them and wrote their names on! Some did a more than just write their names though ;)

I didn't like the standard stickers you could buy, so made them up smaller and in a font that I liked and printed out sheets of them. I also bought packs of rectangular badges which I stuck to the back of my printouts with some spray adhesive. Then it was quite easy to cut individual badges out.

By the way, Burning Dan was our official photographer - he's not a wedding photographer, but he's a friend who's very good at getting reactions out of people, and we have some stunning shots of the wedding guests from him (that we are still working through ...) - that will be another future post ...

Next week - my favourite craft project of the wedding!

For Zorka

2009-09-07T15:23:00.006+01:00

Very belated wedding present for the knitmeister...

Wedding Wednesday - part 4

2009-09-02T16:30:00.010+01:00

Cakes! ... (other wedding related posts here)

Neither Sunshine nor I are big fans of wedding cake - especially the traditional fruit cake and marzipan sort. Most weddings I've been to I've found the cake was the 'least eaten' thing ... So instead, we did what Sunshine's sister had done at her wedding - asked our friends to bring us a cake in lieu of a wedding present! And MAN did we have cake!

As you can see, we had at least 15 different cakes, including gluten-free ones and even a vegan one. I had been collecting vintage cake stands for the last year or so, so lay them out on a long table, simply decorated in the front with some coloured paper doilies on string. I also made each cake a little label-on-a-stick. Very easy, just printed the names out on some coloured card, then cut round in a vaguely oval shape with my scallop-edged craft scissors. The sticks are those little stirrers you get in coffee shops.

At the end we picked one of the lovely cakes (made by Lynn and Jon, which had incidentally been assembled that morning at a camp site!) and stuck in a couple of peg doll cake toppers that my new sister-in-law Lucy had made especially (she even made them to look like us - aren't they just lovely!?!).

We also laid out some boiled sweets and my mum/sis/aunt made a stack of little cupcakes (haven't got good photos of those) and also you can just about see on some of the cake photos, Sunshine's parents brought us some lovely nutty petit-four kind of things from Dubai. And I have to say, it all went down a treat.... The table of cakes lay untouched - till after we had had dinner, and after we had cut our cake - and then it was like a swarm attacking the table! There was hardly anything left at the end of the night :) ...

So there you have it, our wedding sweeties ... more stuff to come next week ...

This is home ...

2009-09-01T14:11:00.003+01:00

My entry for the "This is home ..." project

Wedding Wednesday - part 3

2009-08-26T15:27:00.011+01:00

More wedding details ... table settings! ... (parts 1 & 2, and other wedding related posts)

So this is what the table settings looked like. A centerpiece of a vintage jug filled with flowers; a milk bottle table number; and a jam jar filled with some battery operated fairy-lights. Also, at each place setting, a hand made place card.

The flowers: As we were having the wedding in a gorgeous country garden, we didn't want professional expensive flower arrangements - we wanted it to feel like you'd picked some flowers for your kitchen table (also, helped with cost!). Sourcing the flowers (as I was doing this myself rather than through a florist) became quite a chore ... won't go into the details but suffice to say, best man Dom was a life-saver ... I spent the Thursday night before the wedding, (after having had a large family dinner), in the best man's garden with one of those caving head lights strapped to my forehead; equipped with a pair of garden shears, and some buckets; cutting hydrangeas and crocosmias till almost midnight. Earlier that day I had bought out all of the Broadmead Marks and Spencer's stock of gerberas and larkspurs in the wedding colours.

We transported the lot to the venue on Friday in buckets and set my lovely mum on the job of flower arranging. Remember the vintage jugs I had been collecting over the last 6 months? Well my mum then sat down with all the flowers and jugs (and lovely helper Nic) and made up some smashing centerpieces ... Thank you Ammu! For some strange reason though, mum seems to have disappeared in the photo - that's my Aunt in the pink fleece ...

I also bought a stack of florists' cellophane flower bags and printed out some translucent sticky labels to stick on them. Towards the end of the wedding evening I sent my sister and some willing helpers off to take the centerpieces and pack them up in the the cello bags as wedding favours for whoever wanted them!

Table numbers: I had in my mind that I wanted to use some old milk bottles for something - but not sure what; or where I was going to find them. Then one day earlier in the year, I saw my neighbour disposing of a whole box of them. I ran over and asked if I could have them and he said "Sure!" ... wondering why on earth I was so excited about some dirty milk bottles ;)

I then found a font I liked (it's the same font as on the "Wedding" sign that I painted); opened it in Adobe Illustrator; got it to the right size; and vectorised it. Then sent that file off with Sunshine as they have a vinyl cutter at his work. I had both some red and some white sticky-backed vinyl cut as the combination worked much better than each colour individually. Then it was matter of cleaning and drying the bottles and carefully sticking down my vinyl so it was all aligned nicely. (Edit: someone asked me where I got my vinyl from - the answer? Scrapstore!)

I still had lots of wedding invites left so got my helpers to make up a few more Tweeters which then got stuck on some barbecue sticks and plopped into each bottle. Ah! A photo of my mum ... from the top left, anti-clockwise, my sis, my grandma, and mum! (there was a lot more birdie helpers - this is only the ones whose photos I have).

Place Cards: This again was an idea that evolved over time ... I had initially found the vintage Garden Plants book in a charity shop for 20p(!). With the wedding being in a flower garden, I knew I wanted to use it for the wedding - but not sure how ... Eventually they ended up as place cards! You can pretty much see how I sliced the pages and folded them up to make little stand up flowers (I didn't have enough to cover all the guests so had to make a few colour photocopies too).

I then used a craft punch to cut out the red circles on which I wrote the guest's name with a white pen. I also did a few cards with yellow butterflies (another craft punch) to make sure the caterers knew who had special gluten-free diets (and a purple butterfly for our one and only garlic-free guest).

Last but not least Fairy lights: We didn't manage to get any photos of me making them, but let me describe it (you can see them on the top photo). I sourced some battery operated LED fairy-lights that would fit inside jam jars that I had been collecting for years (I always have a stash for all sorts of use). Then cut out some fabric circles to fit over the lids and glued them down with some PVA to look like homemade jam jars. As it was getting dark, we went round the wedding marque to each table; popped the lids open; switched the fairy-lights on and popped the lids back on ... for some twinkles into the evening :)

There you go ... next week - cake!