Recently I've definitely been posting more about crafty etsy folk and less about actual working illustrators, so I decided to do a post about a couple of illustrators I really like. First is Mike Lowery, who is an American illustrator whose clientèle includes Disney and Hallmark and has created a number of children's books, but what I like most is his use of hand-drawn type. He has several pieces (below) that feature his lovely hand-rendered type and I think they really lend a lot to his illustrative style. I also love the tattoo style of his work which still looks organic and sweet.

























































































Another illustrator that I absolutely love at the moment is Kris Atomic, who currently lives in Brighton. She mostly does fashion based illustrations which is what she’s known for, but after a little digging on her website I’ve found that she also has some excellent cross-stitched samplers and even a series of painted ceramics! It’s fun to find out that artists with a really distinct style have also worked with different materials. I adore the faces on her illustrations, they’re so cute and I love that she keeps them consistent rather than changing them for various clients and briefs.























































































































The point to this post is that I still gather inspiration from illustrators, despite my work leaning towards a craftier/textile feel... Speaking of, I’m going to the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair tomorrow at Spinningfields. I’m really excited to see Julie Haslam's work in the flesh and many others! I’ll probably post more about this later, but I’m a bit gutted that my portfolio isn’t ready because I could have potentially spoken to some people about my work. The next thing I want to make for my shop is some more screen-printed items, I’ve drawn up some patterns that I’m going to screen print onto fabric which I will then make into zippered multi-functional pouches etc, so I’m busy thinking up things for that along with the two new briefs we have, but I’m feeling positive!

I've just found a brilliant article (albeit slightly old; 2008) on LA weekly about Sarah Jo Marks, who runs DKE toys, along with her husband Dov Kelemer. However this article is not about her own work, it looks into Sarah's collection of plush food!































Her collection began with a dozen plush doughnuts:

' "Honey, what did you do?", Marks asked.

“I just bought you a crapload of fake doughnuts, that’s what,” said her husband, Dov. The doughnuts, stitched out of felt and decorated with sequin sprinkles, were a Valentine’s Day present. From then on, she became a lover of food rendered as stuffed toys. A collector of worm-ridden parsnips, a worshiper of felt toast, of carrots with teeth, of bananas that cry.
Today, two years later, Marks piles her collection of plush food onto the table. Pink cotton candy, pirate peas, an apple with a detachable worm, a portabella mushroom, shrimp sashimi, links of sausage and bratwurst, a melted ice cream cone, ribs, tofu, gyoza, pork loin. Gingerbread men with their parts bitten off. She hurls a stack of pancakes into the melee. Where is its pat of butter? Hiding under the angry asparagus, of course. A T-bone steak, nutritional analysis: 40 percent wool felt, 50 percent polyester fiberfill, 0 percent actual meat. “Love us,” implores its tag, “don’t eat us.”

I find it really interesting that plush food has been such a large part of someone's life, and although it adds a bit to my worry that it might be overdone as a theme, it goes to show that it has had a continued popularity for years and it has so many directions such as surreal, cute, realistic, etc.

Marks then went on to curate a plush food show called Stuffed in 2007, contributed to by artists such as the likes of my much-loved Heidi Kenney, Kenta Shibusawa (who I can't find anywhere, boo hoo!) and Snaggs!. I wish I could have gone to this show but it is obviously long gone.

'The show will be comprised of 3 main sections. The first is “The Feast”. The Feast will center around a plush turkey designed by Shane Geil of Purple Flavor and will be rounded out with lobster, sushi, pizza and many more mouthwatering food favorites. The second section is the “Dessert Cart” which will be spilling over with sweets, cakes and pies made of delicious looking felt and fabric. The third section is the “Grocery Store” which will have bountiful baskets of all different kinds of colorful plush foods that can be purchased and taken home starting on opening night! The Grocery Store will house fortune cookies, apples, doughnuts and more fun treats.'
It sounds amazing!

I've just been flicking through posts tagged with embroidery on weheartit, and I've found some brilliant things! I'm just blown away by some of these and the amount of time they must have taken, especially the final image by Daniel Kornrumpf, it must have taken months to do! I've realised that the best pieces are definitely the most detailed ones, so I'm going to try and be more patient and take more time with everything I do. I particularly like the embroidered type in a lot of these, Jo suggested I try it for 8x8 but I was a bit pressed for time. Enjoy!

I found Bombo through twitter, on Flickr and then followed onto his website where I found some wonderful illustrations.. I love his paper cut work and all his characters are lovely, he tends to put faces on inanimate objects and as you probably know that is one of my favourites! I also really like his use of colour, it's all lovely and vibrant, plus his composition is really nice. I need to work on composition. Right now I'm making my Wellspring work black and white and it makes me really sad losing the colours! Ho hum. Here are the pieces I liked the most from his website, http://www.bomboland.com/ enjoy!

I've found a great blog, http://guerrillanerd.blogspot.com/
there isn't much information about the illustrators involved, the description just says 'we are five creative minds from Barcelona' and not much comes up when I search them individually.
They post tons of illustrations, photography, and best of all, recipes! yum.









































Cristina Olano





















Nuria Fernandez









































Virginia Alvarez

I like how the illustrations are quite similar looking and they flow together really nicely on the blog. I love how they are all quite fashion oriented but with a fantasy feel, and the textures and patterns used really make the characters pop. Lovely!