Cold, Bright Day

It's Wednesday 25th March and starting to behave like it's Spring here outside my studio. So much so that I picked up my watercolour box - the one that I bought some years ago in Greenwich Village New York - and haven't had the chance to go back to. It seems to have worked OK. I love watercolour, even though digital is around more and more, I prefer the little accidents that happen when colours fuse together and create little areas of the unexpected. With pixels it never happens that way for me.

Barack Obama.

Showing this illustration today of all days is totally appropriate.

Paul 

A page from my drawing book

My Moleskine sketchbook stays with me, usually in my camera bag. I carry the book so that I'm ready when anything takes my interest and when I have a spare moment. This drawing is from a visit we made to a friend's farm in West Dorset. Our friends Simon and Jenny run their new farm down there. They keep pigs, cattle, geese and chickens and there they make some fantastic food products which they sell at farmers' markets in the area. They're a nice couple too.

This colour sketch was created using an Edding 1800 fine tip black pen, then coloured up in watercolour, with some Tipp-Ex for the areas of white. It's what I call improvisation and I quite like working this way.

On Friday I spent most of the day making contact with some graphic designers and advertising agencies who I think might be interested in commissioning me to create some images for them. I guess I mailed out around 140 notes to people mainly in the UK. My plan is to approach the US market too, once I get myself organised. If you know of any art buyer or creative person involved in creating design for print, advertising, publishing or website, I would appreciate you passing on my name. I would also welcome your opinion on my work if you have a moment. Have a good week.  Paul

The occasional design project

Occasionally, I receive a call from a client asking me to create a design project. This time, installation artist Mary Rolfe contacted me to see if I would design a poster to promote her forthcoming art exhibition. Mary's striking artworks features meticulously twisted, detailed and shaped paper, sometimes on a small scale, often on a very large scale. To quote Mary: "My work explores the interplay between negative and positive space within the gallery, emphasising the boundary between order and anxiety." Her exhibition can be visited at the Peacock Gallery in February.

From a design perspective, I decided to add a third dimension to the poster by suggesting the edges be physically crumpled up and creased by Mary herself. Against a backdrop of conventionally printed flat posters, this poster should stand out and demand attention. It was fun to do and I'm looking forward to viewing the exhibition.

My New Website

My new James Nicholas illustration website is now up and running for anyone interested in seeing my illustration work in a brand new drawing book format. The pages turn by clicking on the page corners. Hope you enjoy looking. It's been a busy time for me assembling the images for the pages, but I think it's worked out OK. I would certainly welcome any comments people might have. Go to www.drawingbook.co.uk

More soon.

Running through some of the photographs I've taken over the years, I came a cross this image taken in New York back in the late eighties. I still use the same M6 film Leica that I bought back then and I still love the camera. It's a totally different picture making process to photographing in digital. By not recording and displaying instant images, the film camera makes the photographer think a little bit more about how the picture is being framed, lit and composed. I quite like this aspect to taking photographs. If you like this pic, or would like to comment, leave me a post. Thanks for looking.