Featured in Rockport Publishers' 1,000 Dog Portraits book!

6 months in and so far 2014 has been an amazing, whirlwind, non-stop, jam-packed, exhilarating adventure - so jam-packed that time to blog has been absolutely non-existent! But for the next 6 months and onwards, I intend to get better at blogging and let you in on this exciting adventure!

So to kick off, I'd like to share some fantastic news I received earlier this year - an illustration of mine was selected to appear in Rockport Publishers' new book, 1,000 Dog Portraits by Robynne Raye!

With 1000 illustrations of hounds, herding dogs, mutts, terriers, beagles, pugs and every dog you can think of, in 1000 different interpretations and styles (quirky, realistic, collage, paintings, drawings etc) this book is sure to be a great collection for all you canine lovers!

It is such an honour to be featured alongside the likes of Debbie Millman , Marian Bantjes , Robynne Raye (Modern Dog Design Co.) , Jessie Hartland , Joey Ellis , and a plethora of incredibly talented illustrators and designers!

It is also with a lot of mixed emotion that I share this news - at the end of that very same week after hearing such great news of being featured in the book, we lost the very family pet I had illustrated, to tick bite fever - how much life can change in the space of a week.

Sometimes life unfurls in the most mysterious, ironic ways. 

~ For Lily AKA "Lilybug" "Woolly" "Woolligan" ~ 

~ 22 November 2011 - 15 April 2014 ~

Lily & Her Favourite Crocodile Squeaky Toy

This is an illustration of our always happy-go-lucky, sweet and sometimes naughty dog, Lily. We adopted her from DARG early last year (1 May 2012 - she was born 22 November 2011, so she was just 6 months old when we got her!) and she has quickly become very much a part of the family and a great late night buddy whilst I'm working. She is very besotted with her new favourite toy, a green squeaky crocodile, so we can always hear when she's coming!

Coming Together at Christmas!

Whipped up this repeating pattern for the Tigerprint Design Competition : Coming Together at Christmas - what do you think?

Tigerprint run a monthly on-line design competition, ranging from photography to illustration and character design to puzzles and are the sole supplier of over 5000 greetings products to Marks & Spencer.

It's A Shape Christmas - A Sneak Peek

Recently, I was very honoured to have been chosen to submit for this year's It's A Shape Christmas!

It's A Shape Christmas is an interactive advent calender, in which 25 creatives (illustrators, typographers, designers and photographers) are each given a particular shape to work with and give a Christmas slant to it. Each day a different creative's piece of work is revealed. There's a very cool video with more info on the It's A Shape Christmas project, created by Made By Shape and produced by Beata Sawka here.

There are some ridiculously AMAZING people featured this year: Lydia Nichols (Philadelphia, USA), Barney Ibbotson (Manchester,UK), Alan Heighton (Doncaster, UK), Chris Madden (Manchester,UK), Dave Raxworthy (London, UK), Emil Paun (Manchester,UK), Oliver Sin (Cheltenham, UK), Katie Daugherty (Kent, Ohio, USA) , David Ryan Robinson (London, UK), Timothy Joe Reynolds (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Tom Nicklin (Chesire, UK), Mathew Lucas (Macclesfield, UK), Isabel Foo (Toronto, Canada), Dean Zappy (Manchester, UK), May Ninth (Manchester, UK), Laurie Pink (Manchester, UK), Cintia González (Málaga, Andalusia, Spain), Michael Thorp (Manchester, UK), Kat Loveday (Manchester, UK), Brandon James Scott (Toronto, Canada), Rui Almedia (Lisbon, Portugal), Daren Newman (Manchester, UK), Luke Drozd (London, UK), James O' Connell (Manchester, UK) and yours truly (Cape Town, South Africa represent!).

SO very honoured to be featured alongside such talented people!! They've all set the bar very high!

The Made By Shape team have also done such a sterling job on the design of the website - so functional and beautifully designed! Go check out their site for yourself!

Here's a sneak peek of a piece of my submission - I had so much fun creating it!

Can you guess what shape I was given and what I illustrated for it? ;)

I'll keep the full image a surprise until I have been featured on the website - they've actually kept our reveal date a surprise for all of us involved, so I'll wait in suspense with you! So very excited to reveal the final piece!! :)