Smythson drawings

I'm very excited to share the windows I created for Smythson of Bond Street to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. They are in four London Locations and another in New York (which I'll share with you next week). It was a wonderful commission inspired by Victorian theatre sets, the photographs of Cecil Beaton and using a soft 50's palette of sepia and pinks. The design includes drawings of the Admiralty Arches, english roses, Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria Memorial, which were such fun to draw. Giant thanks to the lovely team at Smythson, particulary Marco and Grace who were such a pleasure to collaborate with, the printing and laser cutting was undertaking by Simon at the Eyedeas Company (highly recommend). 

Each of Smythson's windows are different dimensions, and so they needed to be individually designed to fit the space. As I was creating layered theatre sets, the depth of the space was also an important factor in the design, the trickiest were the curved windows at the flagship New Bond Street store but I'm absolutely chuffed to bits with the result of all the hard work (and tricky maths!). The Sloane Square branch had lots of lovely extras, including hand drawn flower boxes, a diamond, crown, sceptre and orb and the beautiful real flowers were created byAmanda Wilgrave of Flirty Flowers. These wonderful extras were to celebrate the Chelsea Flower Show, and the Sloane in Bloom event. 


It was a VERY quick deadline - a two week turnaround but I really feel that all the midnight snacks and cups of coffee were worth it, if you are in London go and visit them for me x

Sloane Square - 135 Sloane Street, London, SW1X 9AX

Bond Street - 40 New Bond Street, London, W1S 2DE

Westbourne Grove - 214 Westbourne Grove, London, W11 2RH

Royal Exchange - 7 Royal Exchange, London, EC3V 3LL

All photographs were taken by the very talented Emma Brown http://www.emmabrownphotography.com/

Please click on the links below to see some of the Press coverage from the Sloane in Bloom window:

Smythson Facebook page

The White List

Grazia Magazine

Five Fabulous

10 Magazine

Retail Store Windows

The VM Space

Sara Brajovic

Trendstop

Telegraph

Studio peek...

Last week I was visited by the very lovely Clare Kelly, there was much chatting, tea drinking and shortbread eating whilst she shot a range of photos, and I thought you might like to see a sneaky peak of my studio.

This week I'm working on a very exciting new project for Dermalogica, and I'm bursting to show you images from the Smythson project... next week definitely!

Have a lovely week and send some sunshine my way x

All photos © Clare Kelly: www.cargocollective.com/clarecatherinekelly

Sony Japan

Here's the album artwork created for Sony Japan last year, a really lovely commission (I love drawing flowers!) many thanks to Naoko at Sony for such a fun brief!

I finished the Soho map for Harper's Bazaar last Friday and I CAN'T WAIT! to share it with you! I'm really chuffed with it and definitely want to do more maps.

Still really busy this week so only time for a super quick post then back to work... x

Holland and Barrett MAY

I wanted to share some new drawings for Holland and Barrett's Healthy Magazine, they feature in the May edition which is in stores now. I'm really enjoying drawing these each month, and I've nearly finished the new ones for June; valerian and chromium.

I am SO EXCITED to see the Smythson work printed up and installed. It's been a huge amount of work with a very short deadline (and very little sleep!) but the team at Smythson were terrific and made it such a pleasure to work on. I was commissioned to create five window schemes to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee and they will be up from the 14th May at the following stores:

New Bond Street,

Sloane Square,

Westbourne Grove, 

Royal Exchange and

New York.

I'm really proud of this project, and as soon as I take some photos I'll post them up here.

Today I've been working on a new commission for Harper's Bazaar, it's a map of all the best new bars and restaurants in Soho and it will be in the June edition of the magazine. I've wanted to work with Harper's Bazaar for ages (the typography in their magazine is so beautiful!) and so it's great to have such a nice new commission with them, perfect as I've wanted to try a map for a little while now.

Lots of exciting new projects in the pipeline, more large scale work, packaging and an exhibition in Japan next year but for now.... sleep! zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Sketchbook peek...

Here's a look at some of my recent sketchbook work, the snake and the ship were drawn at The British Museum (both unfinished but you can see where I'm going with it). The snake is a really beautiful turquoise mosaic from Mexico 15th-16th century AD, and I loved drawing all the individual turquoise shards. The ship (galleon) is from Germany 1585, this gilt-copper and steel automaton was designed to trundle along a grand table to announce a banquet. It's in the clocks gallery, and I think all the ticking drove me slightly bonkers as I ended up drawing the ship on waves of clocks under a clock sun!

I'm currently exploring plant studies, combined with gold and copper leaf and watercolour. The oak leaf ring was drawn at The British Museum, it is a gold wreath that was designed to be worn on the head from about 350-300 BC. Next up I want to create further studies using enamel paints and exploring a punched gesso base.

No time for that at the moment tho, as I'm currently working on a really exciting new commission for Smythson. I'm creating a window display to celebrate the Queens Jubilee and it will be in 5 locations:

New Bond Street,

Sloane Square,

Westbourne Grove, 

Royal Exchange and

New York.

It's such a great brief and I'm really enjoying working on it. 

There is a HUGE amount of work to get done between now and when the work in installed on the 9th May, but I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you very soon. I'll be back next week (if I find the time!!) to share some new work for Holland and Barrett. x

BBC Wildlife Magazine

Here's a lovely new commission from Richard Eccleston at BBC Wildlife, it's in the May edition (available now) and illustrates an article written by Richard Mabey to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of  book “Food for Free” exploring how foraging has changed over the years. I really enjoyed drawing all the plants, especially the beech nut and the periwinkle shell!

Today I gave another lecture at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA Farnham Campus). It was a really fun day with a range of speakers talking about their experience working in the creative industries. It was great to meet the other speakers and to find out more about the routes they took to a creative career, the students were great and the lunch was AWESOME!

At the moment I'm really busy working on a VERY exciting new window scheme for The Queen's Jubilee (YIPEEE!) so I'll be back next week with more news about that.

Have a great week x