a little bird told me...

l-o-v-e.

2010-02-17T14:02:00.000-08:00

i'm not gonna write you a love song... but i'll make you a print.

erithacus rubecula.

2009-12-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

robin pattern.

A2 two-colour screenprint (colour blend).

parus major.

2009-12-21T14:36:00.000-08:00

great tit pattern.

A2 two-colour screenprint (colour to colour blend).

cyanistes caeruleus.

2009-12-21T14:35:00.001-08:00

blue tit pattern.

A2 two-colour screenprint (colour blend).

passer domesticus.

2009-12-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

house sparrow pattern.

A2 two-colour screenprint (colour blend).

go rocking robin!

2009-12-21T09:33:00.001-08:00

love to print loves the winter time! and i got to have my rocking robin inspired designs across a range of formats: prints, cards and postcards (of which there is boxset!) and they are all lovingly hand screenprinted.

here is the A5 print with a nice combination of gold and raspberry. quite festive!

the print and card.

here is the wonderful postcard boxset, with cover design by gemma correll. the artists contributing are: sarah ray, helen entwisle, daisy whitehouse, karoline rerrie, gemma correll and claire lynch.

and don't forget robins aren't just for christmas! ;)

a hooting of owls.

2009-12-04T13:37:00.000-08:00

i've currently been working on a birdy project involving pattern and screenprinting. and so, one must do as much printing as possible.

i drew an owl fellow (long-eared) and he was composed of four layers which i was able to play around with when i printed. whether that was to change the order in which i printed the layers, duplicating layers or missing out a layer in the composition. i wanted to see how then how the image looked, was it is still characteristically owly without all the detail in, and then how the colours worked together when the order was changed up.

the colours i used were yellow, orange, red and brown (i did a few with gold as well) and being colours of a similar tone and warmth i knew that whatever i order i would print them they would all work well together. i could print yellow on yellow, or yellow on red and get different results every time, and see how the colours change when overlapped.

the first owl is printed in the order yellow > orange > red so you get nice hints of colour and texture peeking through the flat red layer. the block red owl and brown line is really bold image, and is a successful colour combo.

the first owl i used two colours on the one screen to create a colour fade.

the first owl face i like the subtlety of the gold outline, and i like how strongly the yellow printed out against the yellow, printing out the lighter colour over the darker. they look like owls in camouflage!

the print is A3 in size, which is a bit larger than i normally work, so the change of scale was good to experiment with as well. i think using the owl image in repeat on that size scale would have a real strong impact too, it would make a nice wall covering.

hoo.

cherry cherry boom boom.

2009-12-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

tweet tweet peeps!

i'm still alive! and still printing!

i've got some owly treats to show, a limited edition set of four A5 three colour prints from the obsession zine. and they were exhibited cherry cherry, along with all the ltp ladies prints.

check out cherry cherry here: http://www.ilovecherrycherry.blogspot.com/

this is an obsession.

2009-07-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

us love to print ladies are obsessing at the moment. our new zine 'obsession' is a feast of our drawing fascinations.

my double page spread features our feathered friends of the class aves, in the order strigiformes, from the family of strigidae and tytonidae. that's right. owls!

what a hoot.

wordnap.

2009-07-05T07:25:00.001-07:00

more vocabularyness. they should include that in their revised edition.

what a palaver!

you give love a bad name.

2009-06-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

just some word play i coloured in from a university project.

i love so many things i can only fit a few on here.

birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it...

2009-05-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

i paid a little visit to birmingham botanical gardens & glasshouses and proceeded to take lots of pictures of the peach-faced lovebirds! so lots more birds to draw now.

bombs away!

ode to the o.e.d.

2009-05-16T10:31:00.001-07:00

words are wonderful!

just some typographical work for my last project, which ended up not being typographical at all! but that's how it goes. a celebration of letter forms and lexicon. with the words taken from the oxford english dictionary's newest, revised and updated entries.

wordbird.

poscaface

2009-05-09T15:43:00.001-07:00

hallo.

we got some posca pens at university, and we got a brief. happiness. let drawing commence!

the umbrella of happiness (only half done here). and i went with a nice repeat pattern, obviously weather related, drawing on and umbrella and all (and it was raining that particular day)... happiness!

the spring and summer panels, and the joyful elements of the seasons...

autumn and winter and it's sights.

jellybeans make people happy (and i just wanted to draw on some pumps, these nice cheap and cheerful ones.)

ahh wasn't this fun.

can you?

2009-05-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

simon peplow came into our university, way back now, in march, and he talked and then we all drew together! we had a whole list of things to draw, in way of a challenge i suppose, to get out of our comfort zones.

so here be my sketchings (and they are rough mate)...

i can draw a bird on a unicycle.

a yeti, a mythical sea creature, two different animals stuck together, hello in an interesting typeface and disorganisation.

a mythical beast in a tree, and myself as a bird, and we're waving at each other.

yetis!

that was a fun day.

birdgirl.

shrinky dink rinky dink.

2009-03-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

plastic that shrinks when you heat it! pure magic!

it's the first time i've used it, the results are alright. the images looked squashed, and not proportionally, and some dip in the middle, but they have a nice matt finish, and small things are cute!

i just need to get the earring posts.

birdgirl.

2+1=3

2009-03-13T06:17:00.001-07:00

hullo.

just a little update of some work in progress, or work not in progress, a wee A6 screenprint, it's just not quite right yet. i need to change the owls, or the trees, and then maybe the colours, then it might work. but owls are definitely the way forward!

hoot.

the return of... bird girl!

2009-02-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

the birds are back!

working on new stuff as you can see, and i just printed these last week. i suppose they're not doing much at the moment, but i have plans for them, book plans. i'll probably use these illustrations, and introduce some typographic elements, and put them all together in a folded book.

i introduced some colour to the line drawing, just by simply cutting out the paper shapes to expose on the screen. i like the red with the brown, but i keep thinking they have baboon butt eyes! colour and paper have to be considered more, but i'm excited about just doing more printing.

i quite like the idea of doing some large scale prints with the owls too. using lots of brown, yellow and golden colours, so to keep the colours true to birds actual colouring. i think trying different mark making techniques to introduce some textures and patterns into the prints would work quite well for this as well, something more feather like, because i'm normally all for the clean lines. these are my thoughts and feelings at the moment, but i just have to get on with it!

hoo-hoo-oooo.

no! i love you more!

2009-02-16T06:53:00.000-08:00

hello there!

love to print has been zooming along, so it has. this below, is my A3 print, an edition of 12, which is hanging up in the warehouse cafe in birmingham. along with prints by claire lynch, karoline rerrie and sarah ray. so they're up there, and ready for you to purchase, framed, or unframed. i also produced a small run of the muffins on cards, which seemed to do alright too.

and now a little plug for the love to print blog, and it lives at this address:

www.lovetoprint.blogpsot.com

so go and check it out! yee has been posting away on it (and i should really too) but it is full of links and pictures and good stuff, so click away!

you remember how we met?

2009-01-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

more tart cards!

more colour.

more type.

more pattern.

1 or 2. 3 or 4.

who knows? it might be love.

birdgirl.

boys and girls.

2009-01-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

first post of the new year!

hello!

got some new work to post. (work that i've just handed in at uni, and i don't want to know the marks!) we had to design tart cards as part of our project, that tied in with +plus, and well, really, mine aren't tart cards, just cards with slogans... but they look pretty! and it was quite fun to do. i drew them out by hand first, and coloured them in on the ol' computer, as you do. when i draw in black all the time, you gotta burst out the colour at some point!

i was looking at lots of nice books for inspiration; 'hand job' and 'over & over' by mike perry, 'sweaty goolabs' by jon burgerman, and 'secret weapon' postcard book by linzie hunter. all my precious letraset, and some fontalicious book from the library i forget the name of, came in handy too.

sweet talk 101

2008-12-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

the end is in sight! all my postcards are done, logos and all. i really should be doing university work but you know! now that the postcards are done though, i was just thinking about changing them, like i could've used patterned paper, or coloured paper, or just added a pattern to the design, colourpatterncolourpattern and so on.

the colours are practically glowing in the picture above, but this one is closer to what it's actually like in real life.

au revoir 2008. bonjour 2009.

let's make love... muffins!

2008-12-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

it has been a very productive couple of days, as i have both my cards and A5 prints complete! and work has begun on the 200 postcards. and we, claire and i, finished claire's cards too! huzzah. but now children, i shall tell you the story of the love muffin...

there was once a lonely layer of light turquoise ghost muffin icing...

and they fell in love with some text...

and they got married and had love muffin babies!

and they lived happily after in a rack.

hooray for the worst story ever. but you can see how i separated the layers there, and when you put them all together, it makes a picture! and i need to sign and number all 100, and this equals fun!

and here is another love story. this is just a little teaser for now. nudge nudge wink wink.

birdgirl over and out. tsweeeeeee.

just a little nibble...

2008-12-23T12:16:00.002-08:00

hello!

went to print again yesterday and got my 100 cards printed! took a couple of hours. they're yellow and turquoise as illustrated below, the colours are a bit brighter than the computer versions, but that still works dandy. and there were no major bleed issues as with the books. let's hope it all goes as swimmingly!

here be the card! i only took the pictures on my phone, so not great quality, and the colours haven't come out as true, but you get the idea :)

a sea of cards took over the printmakers! we had them laid out everywhere.

merry christmas and a happy new year to all! xx

this is how we do.

2008-12-21T16:39:00.001-08:00

claire and i started printing for the 'love to print' project. we got the ball rolling really, getting the acetates, exposing the screen, and then did a few tests. things went swimmingly really, and one hopes it carries on in this fashion!

here are my designs on acetates.

and here be claire's.

this is the screenprinting bed, where the magic doth happen!

here is the screen, and there you can see our tiny designs. see how the light comes through, this is good!

the choice of colour for the tests today. (well it was already mixed!)

here the screen is locked in place. the ink is ready and waiting to go!

see how claire works the squeegee (what a brilliant word!) with precision.

here is the print on the registration sheet, so we can line up them prints nice and smart.

my test print, and it came out rather pleasingly. one of the f's was a bit patchy, but i shall live with that.

and claire's prints came out splendidly so too!

and here is where they live; the rack.

the end.

claire's blog lives here at: www.shouldertocrayon.blogspot.com (i shall tell her to get some work up there pronto!)

i love to print.

2008-12-16T10:10:00.001-08:00

my love to print final designs (well there may be some minor tweaking). a little bit of 'eat you up' recycled and redesigned, oh it's a little cheeky ;) the muffins for the prints. the biscuits for the cards. and obviously not digital, but screenprinted. hard work ahoy!

squeak the chair once.

2008-12-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

inspired by the weakerthans.

today wasn't so bad though.

buns and shakes.

2008-12-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

more stuff! ha har. i got these two heroes of burgertown figures for my birthday. and that's right, they're by jon burgerman of course. the pink fellow is piccalilicus, and he's a dancer, not a human. and the yellow guy is collie, he's quiz champion and the brains! they're lovely, and smooth! :) (sorry for the flash on the picture, but it does show off their colours nicely).

owl : my first foray into flash.

2008-12-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

t.h.s. = time (to) have (a) sketch?

2008-11-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

i was actually paying attention. see romantic montage, this is an obvious reference to the film. a rather ham-handed romantic montage at that.

and hello old bean, if you read this.

gosh, i love owls.

2008-11-27T17:49:00.001-08:00

gosh, my very own birthday owl, thanks to the creative talent, hannah k.g.(osh)

gosh, it was too special not to share!

(i'll get back to posting my own work soon, not just stuff i buy, and everyone else's work! :P)

eat you up!

2008-11-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

image heavy blog ahoy!

i finally got around to photographing my book, 'eat you up!', so now i get to share it with you!

i made a limited edition silkscreen book, based upon the theme of food related pet names. all were hand printed, six were printed on ellie poo paper, in purple and yellow ink, and six on canford amethyst paper, in yellow and silver ink. i've sold three of them thus far (cheers, chiu and john, and your selling skills), and that is call for good times i'd say.

i have caught the book making bug!

rub me.

2008-11-20T16:22:00.000-08:00

i bought some letraset! i can barely contain my joy! i thought i wouldn't be able to get it locally anymore, but there it was down the road, in a chest of dreams! i'm going back to buy some more tomorrow. yes, i seriously love it that much.

cake sooooo good!

2008-11-18T17:14:00.000-08:00

we, being gosh,, had the most awesome bake sale gosta green has ever seen! bowling over the competition let it be known! and here is our cakealicious poster which noone could resist! my scanner wouldn't capture it in all its dayglo glory, so here is an artist's mock-up...

making the poster was most enjoyable, 'cause i got to draw cakey fonts. and i love the tweedy font on the banners, you'd almost think it was hand drawn! we're going with that form of gosh, for our logo, and that is hand drawn. i hope, however, that i will not be stuck in a cake drawing trap! i need to draw more.

greetings & salutations!

2008-11-09T11:50:00.000-08:00

hello.

i'm bird girl, or the more commonly known, sarah.

my blog is a bit bare at the moment, but i'll post some work soon.

for now, i'll leave you with something a little bird told me...