Eleni Kalorkoti and Robert Hunter

I managed to damage it before I even got the chance to read it :(

These zines are so nice

I've been treating myself quite a bit lately :D I got Robert Hunter's The New Ghost and the only thing I have to say about it is that the book is BEAUTIFUL. However, I managed to splash water on the cover and those little stains bother the hell out of me (argh!). They upset me to the point that I've been thinking of re-buying the book... The graphics are so nice that I want to preserve them in the most pristine condition I can!. Also, I've been a bit obsessed with Nobrow Press, so maybe you'll see me writing more about them soon.


I also received in the mail two of this amazing zines by Eleni Kalorkoti. The third one I bought at the London Illustration Fair. I saw it and I just HAD to buy it. The zines are not only very nicely produced, but the content is lovely and touching. I also have to say that Eleni is a very nice person herself :)


I'm very very pleased with my purchases :D

it's cold outside

exciting!

I got something cool in the post today. My new business cards!. Moomin is very excited about them because he hasn't seen business cards, like, ever, because he is still little...

Business cards, featuring Fox Girl. She looks less fluorescent in real life

I am quite happy with them too :)

But Moomin is extra excited.

not saying much this time

hi :D

experimenting!

Years ago,  I was a little bit obssesed with "flat colours". I don't really know why, but back then,  I used to think that texture equaled "lack of technique", so I used to get really frustrated when using watercolours and hated (and I mean HATED) acrylics because since they dry so fast it was hard for me to get an even surface, and it was really frustrating trying to mix colours in order to get a new one because I used to find it nearly impossible to match the new shade again so there would be an inevitable difference between the two tones on the paper. That used to drive me crazy.

So, years went by and I kept my acrylics and gouaches in a bag. They used to terrify me. I decided to give them to a try today, and I am pretty happy to say that they were incredibly fun to use. Maybe because now I really want to work and experiment with textures and stuff like that, and also because I don't care about "ruining things" anymore.

Not saying that I have all figured but it was nice to try something new :)

highlight of last week

I finally have a copy of "Where the Wild things are" of my own, and only took me a million years. Crazy, right?. I always had to borrow the book from libraries/other people, but now I can read it anytime I want!

I can definitely relate to Sendak when he said  "I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, That's for children."

monday

what has happened so far...

I know, I know, I always say that I am very busy and blah blah, so now I'll relate in a more detailed manner why I've been absent .

A few weeks ago I mentioned in a post that I didn't have a desk up in my room. The studio is nice and all, but there's something nice about having everything right here, feels cozier and the light is better up here. Sooo, I moved a little desk up here and now I have a nice space to work in my room! :D

Alex & Jonsi's Cookbook! Sorry about all the smudges :(

I've been working on several projects at the moment (I'll tell you more about them in a new post ;)) and I feel I have no time to do much to be honest. It's been hard trying to balance personal projects with work!

well, here's a preview of a personal project! lol. Potential new banner for the website 

I've been a bit sad because October is coming to an end :( so I've been trying to take more pictures when doing errands and stuff like that!

I have plans to bake bread, so hopefully that will turn out all right so I can show you all! ;)

Have a nice wednesday!

october, please never leave

October is definitely my favorite month. Nice weather, humongous moons, orange, red and yellow everywhere and just that "it's october" feeling. I don't know, everything feels way cozier.

I wouldn't mind a perpetual october. 

sketching

have a nice monday :)

cold, cold days

I don't know what happened to the weather, but it has been a bit too cold for early fall!

This, plus a very stressful and busy week are making me feel a bit rough. I didn't want to leave the blog unattended, so I drew a scene of my current situation at home.

sorry about the used eraser bits

Have a happy (and hopefully dry) weekend :)

Autumn is here!

We had a lovely, lovely summer in England, and now it's Autumn's turn to shine!.

I happen to love this season so much that I can not even begin to describe all the nice things I adore about autumn (I even love that world!). Call me cheesy, but there's definitely some magic in the air this time of the year!.

I am a bit sad because I thought that I had taken quite a few photos of Boston in the fall, but can't find any, they must have perished in the Great Laptop Disfunction of 2011 :(

Anyway, I leave you with a photo from last year, and also with a mini playlist of autumnal (I think) tracks:

1.- Tancred - Lion hands 

2.- The Sea and Cake - Lyric 

3.- The National - Secret Meeting

Have a nice week!

I wish I had this beard

my room

I don't usually like to work in my room, mainly because I don't have a desk up there. But I do like it and enjoy spending time in there :)

found this in my bag. 

Prints and the gang

have a nice weekend!

after a long break...

Hey :) I know it has been quite a while, but I have an excuse this time!

I went on holiday for about 15 days, and now I have quite a few things to catch on, but that's ok. Going to such a lovely place gave me lots of interesting things to think about..

Here are a few photos I would like to share :)

Me, trying to sketch on a train. Me, feeling sick as hell.

I kinda want to carry this photo around so I can look at the colours of the sea everyday.

Eden Project

Local Tate's window

Have a lovely week!

(and talk to you all soon :))

that full bellied moon

keeps shining on me.

boxes and foxes: part II

Well, this isn't actually a part II, I just thought that re-writing this post was a good idea :D

A few months ago, I drew Fox Girl and then thought that I could create a storyboard and have some fun. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to do it and had to work on some other projects, so basically fox girl had to wait patiently

Søciety 6 cushion feat. Fox Girl

Now there's this new project for FG, but it has come in form of a zine, and not exactly as a book or an animation as I originally imagined. I still have a few months to plan the whole thing, but I am quite excited and want to start already. I've never designed/drew a zine before, so I've been practicing a little by drawing a few comic strips of daily life things (I might upload a few soon :))

comic strip about a box 

And that's a very small update :D have a nice midweek!

illustration friday

I apologize to the people from IF, I wasn't trying to spam the site or anything! xD I had difficulties uploading the image and I have no idea why I ended up uploading the banner from the blog, so anyway, here is the IF illustration for power.

happy tuesday :)

busy times

I really want to keep this blog up to date, but I've been having loads of work recently. I will still try to do my best! 

Have a nice week you all!

far away

about having pets...

We all need pets. Even Frida had Granizo (among others). 

when underwear calls your name

I don't usually go to Topshop (not a big fan) but last week I came across with the greatest of findings. Moomin undies. YEAH, MOOMIN undies. They were basically whispering to me, stuff like "take us home with you". What was I supposed to do? 

So I did what anyone in my position would do, I gave them a home. Here's an actual photo, I'm aware that the ones depicted above are rather ugly xD

have a nice weekend :)

First review ever

I don't think that I've written a book review before, but hey, they say there's always a first time for everything in life. I'll try to not spoil it in case you want to read it (and I would definitely recommend you to do it so) so I'll try to be more practical (sort of) in this review. I'll cut the crap, so here it is:

I tried to be discrete when I took this photo.  

I bought this little book ages ago, but I was busy finishing other books that I had to neglect this one. Written by Austin Kleon, this simple and fun to read New York Times bestseller reminds you all of those easy to do things that we forget along the way. And I say this because when I was reading it, lots of things that were supporting Mr. Kleon opinions came to my mind: advice from friends, stuff you get taught in art school and things I used to do without even fully understanding why I was doing them.

Let me explain a bit further:

STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST is divided in 10 short chapters, but it would be incredibly boring to review each one of them so I will just comment on the ones I find more relevant...

The first one is homonymous to the book's name and its contents reminded me so much of the 13 year old me. Basically, back then I used to be an otaku so I spent hours and hours reading manga and watching anime. It didn't stop there, I also loved all kinds of cartoons, specially Nickelodeon's (Kablam, Rocko's Modern Life, Hey Arnold!, anyone?, I'm sure I'm not alone in this) And I found them extremely funny and witty so I always had a notepad next to me when watching TV. Why? because I used to write down compulsively (and I mean, compulsively) all kinds of things I thought were worth "stealing": a funny joke, certain character's clothing style or personality, anything that I could later incorporate into my own manga I was creating, because, mind you, I wanted to become a mangaka and move to Japan and live the dream. Well, back then I wasn't aware that I was "collecting" (this is how the book lovely describes this activity) things/thoughts/ideas as part of a creative process, but that was what I was doing and the book invites you to do the same (although, I am pretty sure must of people do it in their own unique way).

But it is not enough stealing ideas, you must refine them, make them YOURS.

In my case, I remember being worried about not changing the ideas I stole well enough and that I would end up being prosecuted by the copyright police once I've had become the greatest mangaka of all times (yes, I was deluded back then) once all my thefts have been revealed.

Anyway, talking about exposing our crimes, the book talks precisely about sharing all the things you've been stealing. I've first received this advice from my friend Alex (who you should totally check out, here). We are lucky to live in this Internet era, so if you want your stuff to be seen, then you must put it out there and it will be seen. To me this is kind of a challenge you see, because I am a very self contained person (this is why my previous post are so short, sparse and I didn't really share much in them, bam!) but I am trying my best to not be that gal (gal... I appreciate how dorky I sounded there).

As I was saying, the book also invites you to just put stuff out there. Doesn't have to be finished, perfect   or some other adjective you might been thinking of.

As a conclusion, I would say that the book is good but its main point is anything new. Why am I saying this? well, without sounding pretentious at first, when I was 13, no one thought me that I needed to be a compulsive little thief, I just assumed that I could borrow some of the wittiness I so used to love and use it later. And I'm pretty sure we ALL do this at some points in our lives without being told to, in our own special kind of way. The reason? This is how we learn. For example, babies imitate speech patterns than later internalize and make them theirs, same with habits, etc... we steal by imitating and incorporating those little things into our daily routines, and not because someone thought us we needed to do this, but because it is an innate characteristic in human behavior. Although, it's a bit different in the case of creative process because we forget to do those very simple things (at least I forget) since it is not exactly a primordial activity. 

But anyway, the book itself confirms that "there is nothing new under the sun" and it is a good book, worth having for future reference ;)

Hello, hi...

First and foremost, I'm very happy to announce that I opened my shop on Søciety6! So if you have a couple of minutes to spare, please stop by and have a look :) (also, if you buy a print before the 14th of July, you'll get free shipping!)

In other news, I read Murakami's After Dark about a month ago. I quite liked the story, but I think what I enjoyed the most were the descriptions of places and people. This got me inspired to draw some scenes of it

So basically that's Mari. I wouldn't like to say much about the book/story for those who haven't read it yet, but well, that's somehow Murakami's world in After Dark looks to me

that's the semi-finished scene.

Okay, thank you and see you soon :)

for my mom

I haven't really been in the mood to update this blog, but just wanted to wish my mom a happy birthday. It was a few days ago, but is intention what counts, right?

just wanted to say...

I know it was last week, but I wanted to say thank you to all the lovely persons who came to the exhibition, and a bigger thank you to all the buyers! I'm pretty sure my prints have a new, wonderful home :)

yaay!

trouble will find me

sudden realization

Last night I was quite excited to have a quiet, calm monday. Then I realized that I have an exhibition coming up soon (next week, to be precise) and I have no idea what I would like to exhibit, need to print, fix, etc... But my curtains need to be trimmed... and my head is filled with pointless decoration ideas... and my "Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children" book is still awaiting to be read... and I want to draw a comic strip... and I need to go for a jog and then I need to buy cakes... as you do (I'm being sarcastic here. Kind of). And, again, this week will be a bit chaotic because I have lots of stuff to do. Organization skills, come to me!

I might print this one, I think it would look quite nice as a tiny print. 

And, I think that things will get done only if I close this tab and start doing stuff, so must go. But listen to this, I quite like it. Happy monday!

you know what would be awesome?

to have a big platter of nachos. Right here, right now. That would be awesome. And lemonade. Wow. Ok, back to work. Those foxes aren't going to draw themselves.

creation deception

A very lame post tittle but whatever. Do you get those moments in which you feel very inspired by almost everything and start taking photos, or sketching, or cooking or whatever you love doing and after that then comes... nothing? You don't feel like taking any photos, or cooking or (name what you like to do the most) etc etc... nothing comes to your mind.

I've been checking my sketchbooks, my phone and my laptop and I've found basically nothing. I really have no idea why. So the image above is an attempt to do something new. That's just an old picture from my instagram and an old sketch that I found (can't even remember where). Anyway, I also wanted to say that I'm working on changing the image of this blog. I don't really like the template, or uhmmm basically anything design wise, so I hope to have that done soon :)

Ok, I've said probably too much so I must go and start working :)

well, hello there!

I was checking the stats for this blog last night and I am quite happy to say that it has been having quite  a good response so I just want to thank you all for your time!  I fell that now I need to commit a bit more to this blog and give it more structure. I really don't know why I started to post things, I guess my ultimate purpose was/is to share things, and I don't really think I'm sharing much! anyway, I promise I'll try to put my shit together and make this blog a cozier/better place :D


Talking about sharing, this is what I am currently listening to. Quite a nice track to start working with!

Any comments are much appreciated, okay then, have a nice one!

Must say goodbye to this

That's pretty much it.

This is a silly post

While I wait for my work to start looking more "adult" please"enjoy" (not trying to be pretentious here) this doodle I very much enjoyed doodling.

P.S. Please click on the image for better resolution, I'm trying to resize it D:

Old sketches

I went through my old sketchbooks and found some interesting things, like this little sketch I drew for last year's character design project I was working on. The reason why I find this interesting is because it looks nothing like the final "product" (that word make me feel a bit uncomfortable). I might upload the final photos for that project to compare. In the meantime, I'll just wait here for spring to come.

flu, snow and laziness

The weather has been miserable this week, and today I just didn't feel like going out: too cold, too wet... at least it's been sunny...

Anyway, I need to think of an "action plan" because apparently I have no self discipline whatsoever and if I stay at home, I just don't work. I needed to design some characters and even though that sounds like a fun thing to do, I just can't do it here. At least I did a bit of drawing (see girl above for reference). I think she lost a bit of texture in the process but that can be fixed, so that's okay.

So that's my post for today. Now I need to push myself to go out and face the winter in order to get soya milk as a reward.

Fox Girl

I'm aware that I've been printing and posting this image quite a lot recently and probably I will get a bit tired of her soonish, but for now, I'm just loving her because she was really fun to draw. I think I will name her Luna... any other suggestions are appreciated!.

In other irrelevant news, I had this amazing coffee when I was in Spain and I've been trying to make it myself at home. I haven't succeeded (yet) so right after I click that orange "publish" button I will get a mug, condensed milk and instant coffee and I'll give it another go. I'm also aware that instant coffee is usually quite crappy, but that's all I've got :(

I plan to drink my coffee while I sketch some interesting storyboard for Luna.

gezzzz this post was boring.

Barcelona

At last.