Horses Delivering Beer

Horse and cart outside a pub

I found this great image the other day, whilst leafing through an old copy of National Geographic Magazine. Taken in 1972, it shows a horse-drawn delivery of beer to the George Inn, Borough High Street. It suppose it may have been a special occasion, but I suspect that even if it was an everyday occurrence, the days of deliveries by horse and cart must have been numbered.

London Architecture Inspires Musical Illustrations

I mentioned a while ago that I had done some work for Sinfinimusic.com. I thought I'd share the illustrations that I created that have a London connection. These all form generic category images for the website's new online music store. Working with the commercial director, I used familiar pieces of London architecture to sum up the music within, without overtly illustrating any one instrument or composer.

Illustration of part of St. Paul's Cathedral for Sinfinimusic.com's Greatest Classical Period Music category. © Universal Music.

Illustration of Crystal Palace

Illustration of The Lloyd's Building for Sinfinimusic.com's Greatest 20th Century Classical Music category. © Universal Music.

I did lots more images for the Sinfini Store, and you can see those using these links to the gallery and the projects area of my portfolio website, or to their main category page called The Sinfini 1000.

Linocut Printmaking in London, SE1

I'd always fancied trying my hand at linocut printmaking, so having dabbled with screenprinting earlier in the year, I thought I'd give it a go. The bold marks you can get seem to fit well with my current style of work (all those tasty black outlines!). I enrolled on a 3-day course across a weekend (so pretty intense having the time all in one go). The course took place at The Art Academy, off Borough High Street, London SE1, and the small group of us was tutored by Nick Morley (inspiring and with a nice dry sense of humour).

Southwark 1 (linocut)

The Search for the Missing Dragon (linocut)

Borough Market Illustrations - 1

Here's the first of the Borough Market illustrations: Borough Market Veg 1 that I was researching the other day (see post). Using reference photos taken with my phone, I constructed a composition in Photoshop then worked from that. It saves having to stick a scary camera lens into people's faces whilst they work/sell/eat in London SE1. After that, a lot of colourful monoprinting ensued (using dry paper), followed by an addition of all the contrasty detail, afterwards, in ink with a pen. There are four more of these to come (Bread, Veg 2, Juice and Fish) but I'll share those when they are all complete.

Borough Market Ideas Give Away

I popped along to Borough Market, SE1 last week to see if I could get some ideas for some new art work. I'm very keen to develop my monoprinting further. I think the marks you can make with ink are really interesting. The trip was fruitful - I'm currently producing five pieces based on what I saw down in The Borough: coloured monoprints with black ink details drawn over the top. Hopefully they will evoke something of the hustle and smells you can get down there - seemingly every day of the week, but I know that's not 100% true. Borough Market is closed sometimes. Here are some photos that I took along the way, but the work itself will be much more produce/stall focussed. Coming soon.