weekend painting

I never manage to find the time to do any painting, so I'm making an effort to set aside a few hours each weekend to get my gouache out. painting is a nice weekend activity.

new project

mitsy - aka. ArtMind - and I are working on a new, mini project. still in very early days, and that involves me drawing lots of household items. I've discovered that drawing an egg that looks like an egg is a lot more difficult than it should be in theory.

etsy feature

 there's a little feature on me on the Etsy blog today, as part of their Quit Your Day Job series. this one, they really wanted to focus on artistic collaboration, and as you all know, I have a serial collaborative partner in Mitsy from ArtMind. it was really nice to get a change to talk about our work together, and how it comes about. 
I also talked a bit about my experience selling on Etsy, and ideas I have for people just starting out. I really don't see myself as any great expert, but I have been doing this for awhile now, and experience does count for something I suppose! You can read the article here, thanks to Julie at the Etsy team for doing such a great job putting it together.

firstly, happy new year, we're only 16 days in, I'm not too late. starting off some new projects for the new year, kind of easing myself in with a new set of colour in collaboration pages, now available for download in my Etsy shop, this is set number 7. I am also updating some of the older sets, and so far set number one is all fresh and shiny looking, and I'll slowly get to the others. so I hope you'll enjoy that one, and the new set, this one includes bones (I hope I got them all!) tulips, sea monsters, narwhals and greek pots. happy colouring!

new extinct birds

I am growing my family of extinct birds. there is unfortunately plenty more than this. all some sad stories, but I hope a reminder to be good to the birds with have left (and their homes and their friends.)
here we have the guadalupe storm petrel, liverpool pigeon, new zealand quail, slender billed grackle, bonin thrush, chatham island fernbird, laughing owl, greak auk, robust white eye.
I'll slowly be adding them to my Etsy shop if there's one you would like but can't find, feel free to send me an email and I'll make one up especially for you.

 christmas is coming. all my usual festive pieces are available now in my etsy shop, including my 2013 christmas card, the merry pear shaped partridge. as usual, I recommend getting any christmas orders in as early as possible, especially for those of you outside the EU, because the mail can slow down over december. the safest bet is to order in november to be sure your item will arrive in plenty of time for christmas.

Illustrated Book Festival

From the 4th till 9th of November my Extinct Birds colour in / zine is going to be part of the 7th International Illustrated Book Festival in Barcelona. There will be an exhibition, talks and workshops, and all the books are available for perusal and purchase. Check the program above for all the details.
For those of us who like to look at the pictures.