Anyone for a Christmas sale?

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...

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!

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

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 ...

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 ...

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

Tea for two, two for tea ...

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

Life imitates art ...

Or is it the other way around?

The joy of cycling

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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: