Affordable Art Fair, Battersea October 2013

I have paintings showing at the Affordable Art Fair which is on currently, running from 24-27th October 2013 www.affordableartfair.com

The Fair is international and is held in countries through Europe, Americas and Asia. It specialises in selling a wide range of contemporary art  priced between £40-£4,000. It's a bi-annual event in London, alternating between Battersea and Hampstead. The gallery who organise it are Will's Art Warehouse, 180 Lower Richmond Road, Putney Common, London SW15 1LY
http://www.wills-art.com

The curator is Pixie Andrew. Pixie's taken six of my paintings, five of which were sold on the first full day, I'm waiting for news on the sixth. Paintings exhibited are shown below:

Still Life with White Flowers

Still Life with Silver Pitcher II

Still Life with Two Tumblers

Still Life with White Vase II

Still Life with White Vase I

Still Life with Brown Jug I

The next London based Affordable Art Fair will be held in Hampstead in June 2014, when I will be exhibiting with Catharine Miller of the Hollywood Road Gallery, 12 Hollywood Road, Chelsea, London SW10 9HY www.catharinemiller.com

Decorative Arts Fair, Battersea, October 2013

I've just had my first appearance at the Decorative Fair, also known as The Decorative Antiques and Textiles Fair. There are three every year, held in Battersea Park in London. This was the Autumn Fair and was held between 1st to 6th October 2013.

My paintings were taken there by Catharine Miller, of the Hollywood Road Gallery, 12 Hollywood Road, Chelsea, London SW10 9HY www.catharinemiller.com

Catharine sold the two paintings below:

Still Life with Silver Pitcher I

Still Life with White Vase III

I'm working towards producing more paintings for the Winter Fair, 21-26th January 2014 http://www.decorativefair.com/

Ahmad Teas of London

I've been working on a photo-realistic brief; a re-branding of Ahmad Teas Fruit Black Tea range.

Ahmad Tea of London is established as a premium tea company, it’s product range selling in more than seventy countries, spanning across 5 continents.

My brief is to help with the re-branding by producing pack illustrations for their range of ten fruit black teas to bring them in line with their main classic black tea range - by the way, their existing range, below, was illustrated by Petula Stone, with whom I share an agent, Illustration: http://www.illustrationweb.com/illustrators/home_large.asp?artist_id=3352

Existing Range by Petula Stone

The client is looking for a photo-realistic but fresh image of the fruit flavour ingredient on each pack, with an as yet nondescript but atmospheric background.  I worked with Ahmad last year producing a series of illustrations for their fruit and herbal teas, and this is the feel that they want to carry forward into the fruit black teas.

My Illustrations for Ahmad Fruit and Herbal Teas

I normally begin sketching some compositional ideas for the client and when an option is agreed I set up a shoot to photograph the ingredients, bringing them into photoshop and painter to work on. Photography is often the starting point for this kind of brief, though there is always a lot of re-drawing and manipulation on system to produce the end product. Here are some initial traces..

Traces for Ahmad Packaging

More to follow when the project ends

Ltd edition prints.. and other things

A while ago I did some work through a fine art printing company, http://www.bucksfineart.comBuckingham Fine Art Publishers are an on-line company selling both original paintings and limited edition prints. I liked the idea of working with thempartly because of the quality of their prints, which use the giclee process (see http://painting.about.com/cs/printing/a/gicleeprints_2.htm for more info) and partly because of the quality of artists they cover: Fletcher Sibthorp, Christine Comyn, Mark Spain...I first worked with them a few years back, producing a set of oil pastel drawings of a friend, Janet. The people at BFA, for reasons best known to themselves, wanted her to be called Jeanette and prints on-line are under that name.. for clarity, she's Janet..

"Janet" Oil Pastels

After this I was asked to produce another set of figures, this time on system, using painter software. I wanted these images to be evocative but partially abstract and was pleased to be able to experiment with them digitally. They were again distributed through BFA, but seem to appear on different websites now; I keep seeing them in on-line galleries I've never heard of..

'Figures" Painter Software

I liked the feel of these system based images and the process of working digitally on them, but wanted to carry on and produce oil paintings of them which I then did, here's one below:

'Deep Gold' Oil Painting

In commercial fields I spend much more time these days working on system as opposed to 'traditionally'. . it can be a very expressive process and has many advantages over traditional media: speed is one, the ability to make amends easily - infinitely forgiving of mistakes - and it's also much quicker to deliver to clients on tight deadlines.Producing pixels doesn't have quite the thrill of working with paint though.. painting is a physical process, as much as anything I love the 'feel' of paint. For the above, the digital files served really well as visuals from which to produce paintings.... it's lovely to be able to experiment in colourand composition in this way, making 'painless' mistakes. The software is wonderful; Photoshop, Illustrator and especially the more organic Painter... but it's ultimately no substitute for the physicality of pushing paint around canvas..

Work Ongoing

Here's a look at two paintings I'm working on at the moment. 

NCG Big and Bold Soups

Recently published and in store this winter are a set of graphic illustrations I produced for Daniels Foods, who own New Covent Garden Food Company  http://www.newcoventgardenfood.com , founded in 1988 to make homemade quality soup using entirely natural ingredients, ‘and despite many imitators over the past eighteen years New Covent Garden are still the bestsellers in the fresh soup market’.

NCG Books of Soup

Detail

I’ve worked for a long time with NCG, one of the loveliest clients I’ve had. In the past I’ve been asked to re-vamp their range of soups with pastel illustrations of the ingredients; also producing four books of soups for them:

The latest brief was to produce illustrations for a new range, Big and Bold Soups, launched in single-serve pots rather than the traditional cartons. The designers on this branding were Ziggurat, http://www.zigguratbrands.com/ , a company I've worked with for a long time now. Moving away from their pastel branding NCG were looking for strong (bold) graphic illustrations here. After producing a range of visuals for them, the graphics below were preferred, along with some woodcut-style illustrations around the pots.

Series of Illustrations for NCG Big and Bold Soups

These were worked on further, giving them texture to create a more rustic, organic look before going to print. See below the range; also how they were used in a London Underground Poster Campaign: 

Range of Big and Bold Soups

Detail: Single Pack

NCG Big and Bold Soups in London Underground Poster Campaign

Have tried them all now, lovely on cold winter days. I'm working on some illustrations for NCG's range of smoothies very soon, which means a fridge full of them for the next couple of weeks! Back to pastel drawings for the smoothies product; to be posted at a later date..