Gallery

Lino Prints

Lino printing is a type of relief printing evolved largely from the practice of Japanese woodblock printing. When artists first started experimenting with the cheaper and easier to carve lino in the late 1800’s, they were using the actual linoleum used for floor tiles! Now there is artist lino, made specifically for print making. The medium has gained popular for over 200 years and has been contributed to by art masters such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. I have loved woodblock and lino print for many years before picking up the tools and trying it myself only last year. It has quickly become one of my favourite mediums!

To make a print, a design is carved into the lino using woodcarving tools or lino carving tools. The areas that are carved away become the white/ blank areas of the print, and the uncarved areas become the black/ coloured areas. Relief ink is rolled out until tacky, then rolled onto the lino using a roller called a brayer. The paper is then laid on top of the block and pressure is applied to produce a print by using either a press, or by hand-burnishing using a tool called a baren- or even improvised objects such as the bottom of a glass, or a spoon!

I hand-burnish all of my prints, using a Japanese bamboo baren, and they are printed on Japanese Ho Sho paper, which is made with Mulberry bark and is specially designed for watercolour, ink, and printmaking.

Graphite Portraits

My main artistic experience until recently has been in portrait commissions- mostly in graphite on Bristol board and with a particular focus on memorial portraits of those who have passed away. I feel deeply engaged- and honoured- by the task of trying to encapsulate the spirit and unique qualities of these individuals for the people who knew and loved them and rely on stories and insights about their personalities and the context in which the photo references were taken to inform my work, building a sense of character and story in my mind.

Coloured Pencil

After working pretty exclusively in graphite for nearly a decade, I wanted to push myself and combat my fear of colour and different mediums, and progressing to coloured pencils was my first step. My favourites are usually Faber Castell Polychromos, Caran D'ache and Lyra Rembrandt, on Bristol Board. I now love coloured pencils- though I still find them a challenge! I look forward to producing more in this medium.

Ink and Marker Illustrations

As I started branching out from Portraits and exploring different mediums and styles, I moved on to fineliner pens, alcohol-based markers, and dip pen ink. I love the vivid colours alcohol-markers produce. They are often used for animation and comic book art. I picked my first set of markers up around 15 years ago, and only picked them up again and really started playing with them in the last couple of years.

My first subjects were our Romanian rescue dog Charlie, my sister's new rescue cat Caspar, and a triptych of our favourite (and frequently revisited!) holiday houses in Cornwall, which was a Mother's Day present a couple of years ago.

Drawn from Life Project

For my second unit of my Masters (Jan-May 2023), we were tasked with choosing a theme or subject to study over the course of 12 weeks. I chose Charlie dog. A key objective was to play; explore different mediums, styles, push ourselves in different directions and experiment with different visual language and storytelling. This has been a challenge- but as the weeks go on, I am beginning to loosen up and produce more varied outcomes. I look forward to seeing how this progresses between now and the end of April 23...

P.S. The guy in glasses designed this website. We like him a lot.

Socially-Driven Narrative Project- 'Where's That To?'

For our Third Unit of our Illustration MA (May-August 2023) we were tasked with choosing a social issue around which to build a narrative form of our choice. I chose to focus on the loss or reduction in public amenities in my local area of BS3 and BS13. I surveyed members of the public for their views and experiences, with the aim of creating a small Zine to highlight the issues. This was also my first experience in storyboarding/ creating a flatplan to map out a whole story in illustrations. The narrative is non-linear, a collection of thoughts and experiences that does not follow one particular character or progress to a particular conclusion.

Digital Art

This is a relatively new area of exploration for me, and one in which I hope to improve and progress over the next few years. Fortunately, I am also a hobby photographer and have more than a decade's photo-editing experience in Adobe Photoshop as a starting point. I hope to explore pattern design, logo and branding design, and digital drawing.

My early outputs are a bit eclectic; a custom Hen t-shirt design for my sister, some book mock-ups, and some digital composition of hand-inked and watercolour elements- some of the pieces produced for the first unit of my masters, some as personal projects.

Fantasy Illustration

For my fourth unit of my Masters in illustration, I chose to begin developing a fantasy illustration portfolio. Fantasy is where my heart truly lies creatively, and growing up with fantasy illustrator and author masters such as Allan Lee, Charles Vess, Colleen Doran, Brian Froud, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Garth Nix, and Neil Gaiman, and watching fantastic works by Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro, and Studio Ghibli, drive my passion to immerse myself in their worlds, as well as to build my own. What a surprise then that I have not drawn anything fantasy based since I was a teen!

You can visit my fantasy portfolio website in progress here: