British Museum Sketchbook

I'm just over half way through my ten week course run by The Prince's Drawing School 10am-5pm each Friday at The British Museum. I'm working in an A4 sketchbook and treating each double page spread as a final piece (although I don't manage to finish them all as you can see!) Although tutored, the class is very self directed and there are lots of post-grad students in the group studying for The Drawing Year. I've really missed a critical environment to make and share work since uni so this course has been wonderful. It has been a real challenge to take a full day out of the studio each week, and has led to lots of late nights and weekend working in order to complete my commissioned work - but it has definitely been worth it!

I'm currently working on a fantastic new project for Surrey Arts for their 800+ looked after young people (under 18's in children's homes or with foster parents). On Monday I was filmed in my studio drawing, painting and collaging (and generally making a mess). This footage is going to be magically transformed into three short films for the young people to watch, and then they can create artwork to enter a competition to win prizes, and take part in touring exhibition across the county throughout 2012. I will also be running four creative workshops in Surrey that can be accessed by these young people and their famillies. I'll share more about the films and the project once it has launched.

On Tuesday (yesterday) I was in Cambridge to give a lecture to BA Illustration students, they were a lovely engaged group and there was also cake so it was a fantastic day! I'm also manically working hard on two lovely new commissions, one all about foraging for BBC Wildlife Magazine and another all about Mary Portas new TV show for the Radio Times.

OK, back to work...if you live in/near London you MUST go and see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern. I found it SOOOO inspiring and spent Sunday night creating sticker collages in my other sketchbook (I'll show this soon).

Have a great week! x