The Big Team Scribble

The Scribble project thinks that Doodling should be a team sport and a lot of doodlers seem to think so too!
The Big Team Scribble is a collaborative project where illustrators submit their doodles to create a large scale black and white scene, ready for colouring. I sent off my train carriages this morning, I was cutting it a bit fine as the last date for submissions is today.... ( A few hours left if anyone reading this is still keen to have a go!) but it's such a lovely idea, I couldn't not submit a quick doodle.
Last project over 100 people contributed to a giant totem pole and this time around its a long string of train carriages which will be produced as a zine. Keep an eye on the Big Team Scribble blog for first views of all the amazing entries flooding in...












My favourites so far include these glorious works of art by Uberkraft and Muxxi. Simply wonderful.

Annotate the Weekend

As 'WallopArt', I follow a lot of very creative and slightly bonkers arty type people on Twitter. One of whom is 'Mokuroku' aka Joe List, the creator of The Annotated Weekender : an awesome blog that does just what it says. It presents Annotations & doodles on The Gaurdian's Weekender magazine with some spectacular results. Check it out and I defy you not to have the urge for a quick doodle yourself. It's fun! (and cheaper than therapy).

Seeing as in our house, all copies of The Gaurdian end up as either 'Rubbish Pictures' or at the bottom of the Guinea pig cage, I think it's nothing less than a good thing to create one more stage in between the recycling process.

These pics are my day late doodles over this morning's coffee, but for a look at some quality annotations, go visit the blog, The Annotated Weekender. Great stuff.

Liberty Open Call. 'Best of British'

Yesterday saw the latest Open Call for Designers at Liberty's in London.
Entitled the 'Best of British' the day was an opportunity for artists & designers in all fields to showcase their ideas and designs to an expert panel of designers and buyers from the Liberty store and gain an insight into how to progress and market their wares. There was obviously also the very real opportunity to impress the buyers and for some the glimmer of hope that maybe one of their products might get noticed and snapped up.

Liberty, unfortunately isn't the most ideal market place for my own particular line of work, so I was not expecting too much. A rare opportunity for constructive advice from such experts for redirecting my Wallop Design work was just too good to miss though so I gathered up a selection of my Rubbish Pictures and a portfolio of my children's book mock ups using those same pictures and with a little trepidation set off to Regent Street.

The doors did not open until 10.00am but the grapevine whispered that queues would be long. It was right. As I arrived at 7.30am, at least 20 people were stood in the freezing cold already and the queue just grew and grew from that point on. The Starbucks opposite must have made a roaring trade from people clutching lattes just to keep their hands warm.

Queue time wasn't wasted time though. I was fortunate enough to be stood chatting with a fantastically talented pair of textile designers from Glasgow, PringleMurray who I have a feeling, will most definitely be featuring strongly on the Liberty shelves in the future, plus a couple of jewelry designers with a very beautiful and I'd say unique product for ladies, named 'shy' which I can definitely say had a certain buzz about it ;-)

We finally moved inside to the lovely union jack bunting bedecked upper gallery area of the store itself, where row upon row of gold chairs awaited, for a further (seated at least - phew) queue before we met our designated panel of experts.

After the somewhat nerve wracking wait, the actual designated presentation time went in a flash. The feedback I was given however, was very positive, the advice of which direction to head in next for optimum market appeal, just what I needed to hear and all in all - I left feeling very positive and encouraged.

Had I not been concentrating hard on lugging a ruddy great peacock against the tide on Oxford Street on a Saturday lunchtime, I may even have had a small skip in my step....

I believe Liberty hold Open Calls annually, for more information on the next one keep an eye on their blog http://blog.liberty.co.uk/

The day will also be featured on 'The buying Game' by Maverick TV, due to air on BBC2 this Autumn following the rise of the various designers who Liberty took on. I'll be watching, fascinated, to see how everybody gets on.

An Expedition...to an exhibition. 'Is this us, or WHAT?'

To add to the whirlwind of stuff that's been going on this last few weeks, I have been privileged enough to have spent a chunk of time each week running some art workshops for the 32 very talented young artists who make up Year 6 at my local primary school.

This series of lessons were all based loosely around the subject of 'Me' and included self portraits in realist, surrealist, cubist and pop art style. We have created life sized angels with 3d feathered wings and encapsulated an emotion in a Lichtenstein-esque bubble. It's been fun. The end of term has sprung up, oh so soon, and so we celebrated a culmination of our efforts with an exhibition, or expedition, as some of our artists have been calling it, entitled 'Is this us, or what?'

I'm currently enjoying that warm fuzzy feeling of a real achievement (and slight exhaustion) and looking forward to more workshops with Year 5 next term. Ancient Greece I do believe, bring it on..... :-)

A Rubbish Popcorn Dog

In the midst of the crazy pre Christmas season, This week there has been a little beam of sunshine in the form of a project commissioned for the aptly named 'Sonny'.
This latest Rubbish Picture has been created to commemorate the naming ceremony of the very gorgeous young man whose face can be seen peeking through the camouflage of blue hues in the background.
Rubbish Dog is made out of popcorn wrappings, (just the right shade of brown) a Fat Face Christmas gift catalog and appropriately, a bag of Wagg Dog food. The background consists of packaging; from tea bags, Marks & Spencers Salt and Vinegar crisps, Rich Tea biscuits and some random NHS Swine Flu leaflets which the paper boy obviously got bored with delivering and just shoved in their entirety through my door instead.

Rubbish Zebra

Yesterday, someone shoved a Christmas Marks & Spencer's meat catalogue through my door. Being a vegetarian I made it into a nice Zebra instead.

I've been a bit rubbish at keeping on top of the Rubbish Pictures of late, busy with some standard issue graphic design as well as teaching some lovely art workshops to primary school kids (more on that later) so the Wallop shop over at Folksy is emptier than usual, yet still has some bargains on sale should you be interested in a nice christmas gift?!

This weeks rubbish picture then, is the lovely zebra, whose body is made up of aforementioned meats catalogue, and is stood upon a mound of pea and soya bean packet grasses. The beautiful blue sky consists of all those annoying bits that fell out of last Sundays paper supplements, as well as a few ingredients panels from various reconstituted frozen potato products boxes....well, its a busy time of year, and junk food always keeps the kids happy!

Doodle Addict T shirt Project

My Doodle Addict Tshirt results have been added to the Gallery over at Doodlers Anonymous, it's such a great project and already the responses have been hugely varied and inspirational. Go over to Doodlers anonymous here and check it out. :-)

Invited to enter the Man Photography prize 2009

It's very cool being a part of the Royal College of Art Alumni. Even though I spent the entire 2 years I was there doing my Masters Degree, feeling overwhelmed and in awe and never quite got over the feeling of not being worthy, now I get to sit back knowing that I've done it, I've been there, I've marched through the Royal Albert Hall wearing the fake ermine and the silly hat and now I get to relax and be sent all the interesting stuff via email. :-) I feel very fortunate.
The latest of the interesting stuff, was an invitation to enter the Man Photography Prize - a competition open to all current and past, RCA students. The title this year is 'Word On The Streets', and it seemed like a fun thing to do at a weekend, 'Why not' I thought to myself. My girls were very willing models and we were walking around London anyway, so my answer to the brief was based upon using the first line of one of their nursery rhymes split across the 5 required images, and hidden in the very ordinary, street scenes. (click on the images to see bigger versions)

My models enjoyed the end results so it was time well spent, whether it gets anywhere in the competition or not. I am, however, really looking forward to seeing all the shortlisted entries to the competition in an exhibition at the college gallery from 17th to 19th November. I'm intrigued to see what everyone else came up with, no doubt it will be an awesome collection and well worth a visit.

Doodle anonymously. (But put your name on it!)

Hello. My name is Katie and I am a doodle addict. It's been 10 minutes or so now since my last doodle. I do like a distraction, as I'm sure most people who work alone do.... it's always nice to have something more fun to do that the actual something that you're meant to be doing. And so it was this week when I received my pristine t shirt through the post from Doodlers anonymous with the invite to scribble all over it and post the results to their gallery.

I gave myself an hour. There had to be a time limit or I'd have been there all day - but it was such a fun hour! Once you've got over the initial 'hmmm, what to draw, don't want to ruin it' thoughts - and just doodle, doodle, doodle.... it's fun. Therapy, I think.

Here's the results - odd that my doodles turned into a kind of bonkers town, complete with resident mermaid and one lone cow. Must say something about my inner self.... ;-)

For all those in need of some doodle therapy, (and I would recommend it to many of my friends!) get yourself a tshirt from here and start doodling!

A day of Mariscal inspired character design

There are days when it's particularly useful to have children of a certain age, as you get to go to certain events that you'd look pretty sad going to by yourself. One of those such days was the family workshop that we went along to yesterday at The Design Museum. To run alongside the fantastic Mariscal - drawing Life exhibition currently showing on the second floor, families are invited to join in a character building workshop in the Design Museum 'Space', using Mariscal as inspiration to concoct, design and draw new characters and then transform them into 3D.

My two apprentices had a fun afternoon and came up with some fantastic creations, 'Time Dog' and 'Mr Pink' the scary spider, to name just two. Plus they got to use a squillion felt tip pens that all actually worked and had their first glue gun experiences. An art education happening without anyone actually realizing - lovely stuff.

The exhibition continues until November and I would thoroughly recommend a visit.

A seaside summer remembered in paint

My most enthusiastic apprentice and I today finished off a project that has taken several days to complete and an awful lot of patience for someone who is seven and three quarters. It happens to coincide with her starting Brownies and wanting to get her 'Artist' badge and me wanting something interesting to go on an otherwise bare bathroom wall.
With the chosen subject being the sea, experimenting with acrylics for the first time to achieve that lovely textured look and immortalize our summer holidays in paint form, seemed to be the way to go.
It's taken a while! (enthusiastically delivered-half-an-inch-deep acrylic paint takes some considerable time to dry) But turned out really quite nice. First we stuck our collection of seashells onto the canvas. Then we painted the entire surface in several layers and shades of blue. Next there was the fun hand printing for extra 'whooshy' sea texture, and finally - just to add a teeny element of a 'rubbish picture' I dropped 3 small boats, snipped out of an old Boden catalogue, onto the horizon.Memories of a seaside summer successfully immortalized and more memories of a fun few days with paints and glue and mess, created in the process.
Got to be worth that Brownie badge, surely?!

A book to make you say 'Ooooh' out loud

I've been a bit rubbish at trying to keep up with the weekly blogs regarding awesome children's books I'm pining after, but this one, THIS one is a no-brainer. I saw it today and knew immediately it was blog worthy.
ABC in 3D by Marion Bataille is a kids pop up book that is pretty much definitely not really for kids. It's so simple it's beautiful, and is aimed I'd say fairly and squarely at the grown ups. In fact, even more fairly and squarley at the grown ups who also happen to be Graphic Designers.

Almost every letter has a three-dimensional aspect, with simple yet hugely effective paper engineering techniques used throughout. I may well give in to my urges and have to buy a copy for my kids... purely for the educational content you understand. But I'll keep it on my desk. So it's safe...

Wallop. Fresh new start with a crash, a bang and a badger or two.

Well, the summer is officially over, schools are back. All 3 of my apprentices have been despatched to their various '9 till 3 places' which means Wallop can get back to business, routine and normality. Yay for September!
The first job in hand is a fun one. Scuba diving badgers no less, a series of character designs for The Archaeological Divers Association - a non-profit organisation that specialises in the unique sub-discipline of Underwater Archaeology, and includes archaeologists trained in the use of SCUBA equipment for the purposes of survey and recording of archaeological sites.

Scubadger, in his various forms will be emerging from the deep very soon... In the meantime, for more information on underwater archaeology - find out more from the ADA here.

A truly wise owl is made only from rubbish

Todays rubbish picture is a wise owl perching on a 'Raw Cola' cardboard packaging branch. The Owl consists of various articles from an old Living etc magazine, a lawn seed box and a fertilizer bag. The sky is a plethora of food packaging - embarrassingly mostly microwave popcorn and fish fingers - the staple diet of school holidays ;-)

In awe of alphabet books

Today's post is a combination of 'the children's book that I'd really really like, for me and not the children' thread that I've been attempting to update weekly of late AND the result of some online research into Alphabet books.
An Alphabet book is something I'd really like to do. To complete an entire 26 letters in rubbish would be a pretty cool achievement but ridiculously time consuming at a period of my life where time seems to be sucked out of the air in some kind of black hole every time I turn on the computer. Still. It's on the Wallop 'To Do list' and so I've enjoyed seeing whats already out there and how they compare.
Every child needs an alphabet book, so they're an ever present feature on the book shop shelves and rightly so. The good ones are just.... beautiful and inspiring and wonderful objects that will be kept and treasured and passed on down the generations. The bad ones are shockingly so and pumped out to feed the ever growing heap of cheap and nasty looking books that sit next to the sprouts in supermarkets these days. Having said that, even the 'bad' alphabet books are still to be admired on many levels. They've achieved publication for starters! They must be marketable objects, and it's simply because children can't fail to find something in those 26 letters, to relate to and love and seek out time after time. Even if's just 'their own' letter.
Alphabet books therefore, absolutely, my latest inspiration.
My very favourite at the moment, (I keep finding more) is Christopher Wormells beautiful Alphabet of Animals. It was his first book for children, apparently An Alphabet of Animals, started as a series of simple and colourful illustrations for his son, and eventually grew into a book that took the prestigious Graphics Prize at the Bologna International Children's Book Fair in 1991.

Moon Rabbit

New for August: Another rubbish rabbit, this time a whimsical nightime bunny.
Todays rubbish picture is created entirely out of household recycled rubbish.
The background consists of fish finger boxes, a swimming pool timetable, and a couple of magazine pages. The moon is almost entirely created from a Poppy day information leaflet from last November and the rabbit consists of an article all about wooden floors, with a couple of wallpaper samples and a habitat kitchen brochure chucked in for good measure.

Rubbish Robins

My apprentice is leaving Robins class tomorrow. It's a sad day, but she's looking forward to spreading her wings and becoming a kestrel in September ;-)
What better teachers gift could she think of, than a pile of old rubbish?! So Mrs Campbell and Mrs Doran will be the recipients of a couple of rubbish robins as soon as they're dried, which hopefully will be before the morning or there's going to be one heck of a sticky mess in the book bag!



Todays rubbish pictures are made entirely out of discarded household junk. They consist of a Silver Spoon sugar bag, Pepsi Raw cardboard packaging, old copies of Living etc magazine and a couple of Fruitella wrappers for the red tummy.

A Rubbish Mermaid

I've had a rubbish mermaid propped up behind my desk for far too long while I've been getting around to adding her to the shop over at Folksy. I've added her today, where she sits in all her glory next to a rubbish giraffe and a rubbish nice cup of tea :-)
Mermaids have proved popular characters for my rubbish pictures, one has even swam as far afield as New Zealand. There have only been a few made to date though because of the amount of time involved in cutting out all the individual scales on the tail: A detail which I think makes a big difference in the final outcome of the picture, but which also makes me cross eyed, sticks my fingers together with pva and basically sends me to the brink of insanity...

A cat called Fat Pig.

I've been a bit up to my eyes in other things of late, so the Rubbish Pictures have taken a back seat. But I was recently commissioned to make a new one and with a subject like a cat called fatpig, how could I resist?
FatPig is created mostly out of magazine articles and pet food wrappings. He's a grey cat and it's amazing how little recycled stuff is actually coloured grey. You don't notice until you're looking for it! The background is blue and was much easier to find material for. It consists of newspapers, a washing powder box, yoghurt tops, sweet wrappers and coloured photocopies of the cats owners camouflaged amongst the debris...

As for other news: the Great to be Green shop in Holt are planning a change of direction with their latest stock update so any remaining Rubbish Pictures will soon be added to the Wallop shop on Folksy, instead. Watch out for some exciting new additions coming soon!

A particularly animated experience

Last week I was privileged to have been involved in Arts week at my local primary school. While I was preparing, I thought back over my own arts education and recalled that probably the most fun was had back at University where we produced, as a class, a short animated movie based on a field trip to Berlin. I don't actually recall many individual projects set at Uni, (most of it passed in a blur of fun and Snakebite n' blacks in the union bar), but that one I certainly do. It was hard work, that's for sure. Hours of drawing and aching fingers. Frame after frame of 2 o' clock in the morning tedium. BUT, the result was awesome. A huge diverse range of animations joined together that represented our trip exactly. The fact that I remember it so well, suggested to me that of all the projects I could set my Year 4 group of children during Arts week, learning traditional animation would be a particularly enjoyable and rewarding one.


We went over the basics, the theory and the 'perception of vision', we created storyboards, we designed characters and we studied how many movements would need to be made to make one second of animation for each child. And boy, we had fun. What a fantastic experience to spend 2 days with such an enthusiastic, upbeat, creative group of little people. They were unexpectedly prolific and by the end of the project we had between us created a huge stack of cells to be scanned in and sequenced together. The results though, speak for themselves. 24 children, who had never animated anything before managed to produce a beautiful sequence including characters, movement and morphs.

I am incredibly proud of their achievements and would love to do more of this kind of thing. I can so see why teachers are teachers. To feel so proud of a bunch of children, who do not actually belong to you, is just inspirational.

Loitering in bookshops. Not necessarily but most likely Waterstones. Part 2

It's been a busy week this week. I've actually not had half as much loitering time as I would have liked. But having said that... This week, the book that I think is most gorgeous and would really, really, really like, (for myself, not my kids, obviously) IS... actually a set of books.
The 'This is...' set of books by Miroslav Sasek are just gorgeousness in paper form. Bold, funky graphics, muted retro feeling colours. I want them all. They are simply lovely.

The Aesthetica Annual Creative Works Competition

Aesthetica Magazine "engages with contemporary art, contextualising it within the larger cultural framework. Founded in 2002, Aesthetica Magazine is one of Britain's leading art publications. Exploring the varied nature of the arts and recognising the dynamics of contemporary culture, Aesthetica pushes the boundaries and evokes debate around today's most important topics. Bringing a fresh perspective to the national forum, Aesthetica is at the forefront of contemporary arts by critically engaging with visual arts, music, film, literature and theatre." and at the moment they're taking submissions for their annual Creative Works competition. So, I've gone for it and entered some Rubbish Pictures. I'm not very good at entering competitions. In fact, I'm rubbish at pretty much all promotion. It makes me a cringe a little. But it needs to be done! Who knows, it can't do any harm and it might get me a little exposure... Fingers crossed...

I spend far too much time loitering in Waterstones...

I have a list. It's as long as my arm. If I were an exceptionally long armed orangutan, that is. I love children's books. They're why I wanted to become an illustrator and why I still DO want to be an illustrator! So my thoughts are that each week here on the teatime blog I'll chose my current favourite and share. It's going to be difficult. Theres one at elbow position I'd love to discuss at some point and a whole host around the nobbly wrist bone area.... but we'll get there. A whole long arms worth, week by week. That is so long as they stop publishing more....

This week, the book that I think is most gorgeous and would really, really, really like, (for myself, not my kids, obviously) IS... 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental and Joelle Jolivet.

It's a very lovely object full of funky flat graphics and a bonkers storyline of being overrun by penguins.

This then wins the first ever 'Wallop Gorgeous book o' the week' prize. Hurrah for penguins. And amazing french artist types.

Family time at the Design Museum

A note for this years family day at the Design Museum has just popped into my inbox and I was very pleased to see it. We've taken part in various other family events run at the Design Museum and they're generally a good day out. Last year, we made 3 dimensional models out of.... anything and everything, ( a 3d rubbish picture no less?!) and then filled up one of the design gallery spaces with our newly created 3d cityscape. It was inspirational. Kids have no limit to their imaginations and are willing to get stuck in straight away with none of the reserve that us adults carry around with us so much. It was a delight to see and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with on this next family design day.

We walked for LIFE! :-)

I know, I know... this is an arty blog. I should be sticking to arty things and discussing rubbish pictures...But just as an aside, just this once, I've got to mention yesterdays Walk For Life in aid of Crusaid. What a fun day we had, walking the 10k route around London, from Tower Bridge to St Pauls Cathedral, round via Holburn to Waterloo bridge and back along the South Bank passing Tate Modern to return to Potters Field and a very welcome beer tent. This is an annual event, ideal for families and lots of fun, AND we managed to raise over £500 for Crusaid - a very worthwhile cause. So if you feel inspired, do join in same time next year!