Riot Clean Up illustration auction. Prints and Press.

Hi!


How are you? Haven't spoken to you in ages.


Yeah I'm okay too, I only just dragged myself out of bed though so I'm a little bit of a sleepyhead.


Yeah, classic Monday feeling.


Oh really? That's great.


I've got some cool news too.


Yeah!




Well...


In short.
I illustrated a poster responding to the riot clean up efforts, it got jaw-droppingly successful on Twitter, I contacted RiotCleanUpManc and suggested we get the illustration printed up and auctioned for charities.  


This happened.
Now 75 beautiful A2 screen-prints of the illustration have been printed by Savwo (50 auctioned, 25 donated to people that have helped out with the riot clean up)  the money for the screenprints donated by Pop, Bubble, Rock, Jez Myers from RiotCleanUpManchester has done lots of press and organising, and 100% of the money raised from the auction ( on now! ) will be going to Reclaim and Leap Confronting Conflict young people's charities.


Hurray!

Copyright Emmeline Pidgen 2011

In long:

Like many I was shocked to see the scenes of violence and rioting on the streets that dominated our media. But in the midst of the destruction what stood out to me were images of local communities of all ages and backgrounds working together to restore their neighbourhoods. It showed real strength of purpose and hope for a better future.

I felt inspired by the positive attitude of the riot clean ups and tried to capture these feelings as a personal expression through illustration. I posted the artwork on Twitter to share it with my followers and friends, receiving an overwhelming response of over 19,000 views in two days.

As a result of the interest, I got in touch with Riot Clean Up Manchester. I suggested the idea that the illustration could be made into prints to be auctioned in support of the community and charities. They were extremely encouraging and so far we've had fantastic support with a number of local businesses donating their time, money and goods to get things going with the printing.

I felt it was important the money raised from the sale of the posters should go to young people's charities.

Leap Confronting Conflict are a fantastic charity working with young people nationwide to aid understanding of the causes and consequences of youth conflict; whilst sharing skills in handling and transforming it, preventing escalation into violence.

I hope the poster can help spread that feeling of positivity, encouragement, hope and community spirit that can be applicable not only to the riot clean up, but globally.

Photo by Christopher Bethell

So far there's been a lot of press about the auction/illustration (some of them here) 

Manchester Confidential - http://tinyurl.com/3sb3fo9
The Mirror- http://tinyurl.com/3ez5vrr
Manchester City Council- http://tinyurl.com/3gkyo4p

I've even appeared on the radio (Allfm) on Saturday to talk about it (bit the bullet and buried my shyness for that one!).

I really hope people dig deep to support this and we raise a lot of money for the charities.

You can bid here! 

http://tinyurl.com/rcuprintauction

Spread the word!

BIG NEWS!

Freshly served up for your eye palletes today - the first look at the fully printed children's book I've illustrated! 'The Flyaway Blanket' is officially published on 15th November 2011, by Magination Press - part of the American Psychological Association.

It was quite a long, bumpy road for a first picture book commission - but I think it looks great.

There's always that feeling of 'ohh it doesn't look as good as the real thing!' but I'll have to put those perfectionistic feelings away in a drawer somewhere and accept that printed illustrations never look exactly the same....still looks great though!

You can pre-order it now from the Magination Press website http://tinyurl.com/3jqs522 or Amazon http://tinyurl.com/3k9wlkc (softcover or hardcover)


Hurray!


In other news!


I hurt my wrist from going a bit over the top with work - hours and hours of using a wacom tablet/ drawing/ painting is not good for little wrists.  I took a few days off and enjoyed the sunshine, forests and cities - saw the new Ghibli film Arrietty at the cinema - it was so beautiful, it's a shame the english dub was a bit annoying!  I usually opt for the subtitled version but there was no choice in the matter this time.


Since my wrist's been feeling better I've been working hard on character designs.  Partly for fun, partly to show off the different expressions and poses of characters I can draw, and partly for a brand new children's book I'm writing and illustrating!

I've also been working on some drawings of a feisty warrior lady - but they're not quite ready to show you yet!

I hope you're all having a great start to the week.

Don't be shy, let me know what you think of my work :-)

Kids having fun and being grumpy

This is the first of many character design sheets I'm working on.  Lots of dynamic, emotion-full children.

Let me know who you (or your kids!) like the best and who you'd like to see in a story!

In other news, I'm working on a new book! It's about a cat called Jasper and what a giant beast he is.

Let's make some little boxes!

Howdy partners! This blog post is a little different from my other recent ones, I'm going to show you how to make some lovely little paper boxes out of old greetings cards! 

Come closer dear student and I'll show you the way.

These are the sort of things you'll need (look below) - A square greetings card (OR one cut to square shape!), some scissors - and, if you want to be a lot more precise than I've been a ruler and pencil can come in handy. Coloured scarf surface optional.

Step 1! 

Snip snip snip the cards in half, put the back pieces to one side for now, they can have a little snooze in the sun while we pay attention to the front pieces. 

Step 2!

Fold each of the front pieces in half diagonally.  Looks like a tasty card sandwich now.

Step 3! 

Open the pieces back out and repeat step two the other way so that you end up with a cross shaped fold in the middle of each piece.

Step 4!

Now, look at that supercool folded line that's now down the middle of the card - well, the parallel corners really like hanging out with that line - so fold them inwards to touch it.

Step 5!

Fold the sides of the card inwards so that the outer parallel edges touches the middle fold line too.

Unfold! Unfold! Unfold!

Step 6!

Turn the card around and repeat the previous steps with the unfolded sides going in to touch the other middle line.

Step 7!

Remember this? Yeah of course you do, you're great. Fold the outer edges in to snuggle next to the middle fold line.

Unfold! Unfold! Unfold!

You should have a grid-like pattern of creases now - yeah? Cool.

Okay time for a cup of tea or some other delicious beverage. 

Step 8!

Right, have a look at that grid pattern - can you make out the smallest square shape?

Well grab yo' scissors and cut vertically along folded lines to each corner of that square - four cuts.  (if it's easier use your pencil and ruler to draw out the lines and square shape :-) )

Step 9!

Fold along the outer crease on both of the triangle sections and meet the corners at the middle fold line (similar to a step before, but now you have the cut parts)

Step 10! 

Fold up the two sides to make 'walls' (the soon to be sides of your box top!)

Step 11!

Bend in the side tabs that have been created (don't worry if they don't stay in place very well!)

Step 12!

Grab the wings of the box and fold them up and over the tabs - pushing the triangle parts in to form the bottom and inside wall of the box.

Waheey! You have one damn fine lookin' box lid right there. Give yourself some pats on the backs.

Step 13!

Grab your snoozing card backs and repeat all the steps up until now.  It helps to make the folds a little bit tighter than the lid to make sure it fits together well.

HEY EVERYONE! LOOK! LOOK WHAT AMAZING BOXES THIS GUY'S JUST MADE!

That's what they're all shouting! They love you! You truly are the king of paper boxes - well done, well done indeed.  You have learnt well young grasshopper, go now and make paper boxes - for it is your destiny.

Tip: Obviously the bigger the card you use, the bigger the box.  If you have some huge sheets of card around you can try using that to make a hat box, cake box, or mouse house.  Using average sized greetings cards make a box around 5cm square - a good size to hold your trinkets or a nice bed for your tiny porcelain cat.

Emmeline Pidgen - Over and out.

Shoreditch Festival t-shirt competition

Hey guys, I entered a competition on AllTropical.com yesterday to design a tshirt for the Shoreditch Festival '11 - combining the themes of Shoreditch, heritage, the waterways, Regent's Canal, music etc (using only two colours!)

Here's my designio - 

If you have the time and really like me, have yourself a little voting session and vote/comment/RT/reblog/like/whatever me and my design and then come round for a cup of tea - okay?

http://www.alltropical.co.uk/live_html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=785:rate-qshoreditch-festivalq&catid=6:latest-designs-for-vote&Itemid=34

In other news, I've collected rain water in an old ice cream tub to feed my little Bonsai tree Nagano.

Books and songs and dads and trapezes.

Hello!

HOOORRAAAYYY!
After many days of twelve hour painting shifts, and months of drawing and planning - the children's book The Flyaway Blanket is done!
'Where are the pictures?' I hear you wail, well, hold your horses, sheep and other farm animals...I can't show you the artwork just yet (it's not released until November...) but I thought I'd share the good news with you anyway.

You can already pre-order it on Amazon!

Magination Press publishers have been lovely to work with, and I'm proud that this book is such an important one to them and to the author.

In other great news, one of my illustrations 'Tales of Adventure' (below) has become the album cover for Takahiro Kido's new album 'Fairytale' which is released on July 20th.

A couple of my other illustrations will be on the inside of the cd too.

Takahiro Kido is a truly brilliant musician from Japan and it's an honour for my work to be the visual representation of what is sure to be a beautiful collection of music.  You can hear samples of the album at the Ricco Label website here - http://www.fleursy.com/riccolabel/discography/ric-012/index.html

Over the past few days I've been asked by my not-so-secret agents Advocate to design a few fathers day/male themed greetings cards, which will hopefully be licensed to a greetings card company in the near future.

I've been trying to draw a bit more dynamically recently (practice makes perfect!) and so hopefully it's showing through a bit in my latest work! 

I spent a whole evening quick-sketching trapeze artists and contortionists, trying to improve the sense of weight and tension in my drawings.

Here's a couple of them, I'll keep practising!

Well, I'm going on holiday to Wales for a week tomorrow - to stay in a holiday house with a TOWER! By the sea too.  So that'll be a good opportunity for me to get away from technology and stress for a while and climb some mountains and read some books.

Speaking of books....'Mockingbird' by Walter Tevis is one of the best books I've ever read - I finished it today and phewioewie...it was brilliant.  Hunt it down, devour it's words.

Night night! Come and say hello to me soon okay? x

Winning and news and drawings and letterboxes and dinosaurs

Good Morning my internet friends! 
I hope you're having a good day so far.


Yesterday I got very excited because finally my silliness paid off with something (-air punch-)
Creative Review were doing a little competition on Twitter for people to write a '#blameitonsomeoneelse' excuse as to why they hadn't entered the CR illustration Annual.
I, other than admitting that I actually couldn't afford the entry fee, said this:


'Well..here's how it is. I was about to enter..when a large white cat, Jeff Goldblum and a tiny wooden horse barged in and demanded I play hide and seek with them. Jeff was really bad at finding us, so I was hiding at the back of the mouldy cupboard for 3 and a bit days and totally missed the entering.'


and I won! Hurray! 
This meant that I got free entry into the competition to be in the illustration annual.
I entered my snowy illustration with the boy and the girl hugging (one of the ones I'm most proud of) so here's hoping I'll get in! :-)


I also hit the 1000 follower mark on Twitter, which was a very nice (and weird) feeling! I gave away some cool prizes.


I've done a couple of quick, pretty illustrations recently.  I've been having fun with my new brush pen and working with Photoshop on them :-)
They're both available on Society6 as prints, iphone covers blah blah blah.

Hmmmrfph, I just caught the postman trying to jam something really important through the letterbox - luckily it's all okay.  Phew. 

I'm still working on the children's book, I've had a bit of confusion with extreme changes I've been asked to make and such, but it's all more or less back on track now.  

Anyway, come and say hello to me somewhere on the internet.  OR come round for a cup of tea. 

 It's lonely here with just my pencil, laptop and some wooden dinosaurs for company.

Byebye 

Dollhouse

Right, so, hello!
How are you today?
Ah, that's good I suppose.
Me? Yeah, I'm okay.
Have you heard of an ace TV show called Dollhouse?
Ah, it's amazing, it's written by Joss Whedon and the characters are so great.
What's it about? It's bassiccaaallllyyy about new, underground technology that can completely replace a person's personality so they become a made-to-order-anyone-you-want 'doll'. Oh and loads of other shenanagans. 
I'll lend you the episodes.




Here's an illustration I've drawn as a homagé so to speak.  It's sort of in the soon to be series of illustrations I'm doing of the characters of all my favourite TV shows (Twin Peaks, Freaks and Geeks, Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad etc etc etc on the way!)

Mother's Day

If you don't already have a lovely Mother's day present for your Mum - my print might make a nice gift.

I have it on sale for the weekend :-)

http://www.society6.com/studio/emmelinedraws/Simple

Spooky and Sunny

Just a quick little update (I'll do a more interesting one about my adventures soon I promise!)


You can now buy one of my new prints 'Spooky!' at http://www.tinyurl.com/spookyprint

I've got it on offer at the moment at $15 rather than $20 (So maybe I'll finally sell more than one print!)
I'll only have it at that price for a couple of days so if you like it, snap it up! Yes yes yes.


The issue of Anorak Magazine with my work in is now available to buy too! I got so excited when I first flicked through it in the Here&Now gallery in Falmouth!

http://tinyurl.com/anorakvid     http://tinyurl.com/buyanorak

I'm currently back in Cornwall (in the sunshine mmm) 
I had a visit to Falmouth to stay with some friends and now I'm back in Downderry with my family.  I would say it's been a relaxing break, but I have been a little stressed making changes to the children's book cover for the publisher.  It's all sent off again now so I can relax for today at least :-)
I'll let you know how it goes!


I hope you're all well and having a lovely weekend!


Emmeline x

London, Norwegian Wood, Parties, Pictures, Fun.

So! On Saturday I came back from a fantastic, surreal, party-time four days in London!


My design for the Norwegian Wood poster competition was chosen by Soda Pictures as one of ten to be printed as postcards to advertise the film as well as being in the top ten from the public vote.
I was invited by Soda Pictures to the Norwegian Wood premiere after-party at the Haunch of Venison gallery in London (although I thought I might be seeing the film too - but oh well!).  The party was ace, really glamorous and swanky-arty-Londony. 


I felt quite underdressed but got nicely tipsy on the free wine and enjoyed lots of sushi.  We ended up dancing our little feet off right next to the cast and director of the film!
We realised too that the guy in the amazing hat we were standing near and smiling at was Tony Leung, one of the most famous Asian actors in the world - amazing! I really wanted to tell him what a great hat he was wearing.

We met some lovely people and it was fantastic to see my poster design as a huge stack of post cards!

(I'm doing a give-away of some of these post cards on my Tumblr page at the moment!)

My design is currently being exhibited at the awesome Curzon soho cinema bar too! I felt a bit silly gawping and taking pictures of my poster whilst everyone around me were suavely drinking coffee and reading newspapers.

But hey, I was proud of myself!

On the Friday night we went to the Ballad Of... party!

I designed the poster for the party a while ago but didn't think I was going to be able to make it down, but luckily I did - and I had a great time!

I met some great people I'd spoken to on Twitter, had some free cocktails, did some dancing and managed to sneak in on the live art T-shirt drawing! 

We ended up not getting back home until 6am that night, we went to a friend's house and played on Muscle March on the Wii...and then managed to get up in the morning to go to Portabello market!

Oh! On Friday we also managed to see the amazing Professor Brian Cox in Watersones/Fopp! We didn't actually meet him, there were more people in the queue than books in the shop - I got this rubbish picture though.  I think the tough security guard guy is cool.

Well anyway...this has been a very photo-heavy blog this time! I don't usually have so much to say do I?

It's back to working on my children's book now, although I've ended up with a head-meltingly-rubbish cold and just want to snuggle on a sofa and watch loads of Breaking Bad instead.

p.s. You can read an interview with me on Cre8ive Spark here and there's free shipping on mini and small prints on my Society6 studio here !

Come and say hello soon xxx