Creativity and Community: the response to the #londonriots

When the purse strings of government are tight and budgets are scrutinised, invariably one of the first things to vanish is the arts funding. This is wrong and the importance of the arts should be noted.

If there is one thing that people need during hard times its a sense of community. Art and creativity bring people together; raising morale, showing that there are other ways of seeing and encouraging people to step up and create things.

The recent #londonriots have shown that our captial is in dire need of refreshing its community spirit. Residents need to have pride in the area that they live in, an atmosphere they help to create.

I love this photograph taken by David Levene in Peckham. It shows a message board set up by local theatre company Peckham Shed outside a Poundland store that was damaged during the rioting.


Spontaneity, a splash of colour and bucket loads of community spirit. More please.

Fire!

Freelance is great; today I spent some time artworking this fire engulfed phoenix for one client and then worked on a new venture brand identity and web design for another. Exciting times!

Creative Christmas times!

Now I have returned from a lovely 16 day trip around Costa Rica, refreshed and ready to do THINGS!!

The Task: to create a limited edition set of christmas cards to entertain the eyes of my friends and family.

I chose to use a mapping nib fountain pen with permanent black ink to outline a sprig of holly.

Next I used watercolours with hardly any pigment to fill in the ink drawing with a splash of colour.

To finish I signed the card backs and used pre-cut 'Happy Christmas' foil stickers to customise the inside.

Just have to write them now :)

Paper Sculpture

It's the simple things that please me most. Organic forms created with sympathy to the medium. Reading a book about naive art today, I came across the work of Jen Stark. Her work is not only simply beautiful but shows an expert understanding of colour.

Check out more of her work on her website