I’ve set myself a challenge to restock my rubbish pictures supply and to create something cool at the same time. I hope. My middle daughter recently was asked to find an animal for every letter of the alphabet. I can’t remember what the homework was in relation to, but I found her loopy doodled  list in amongst the tower of paperwork on my desk (in amongst my ‘ahem…. ‘important’ pile, no less) and I thought I would make good use of it. It’s afterall, a lovely thing. So rather than incoporating her list into a zebra, as I was about to – This February, I’ve decided, I shall make better use of it. I shall create an animal for every letter of the alphabet out of rubbish. That’s what I’ll do. February might be more fun than expected afterall :-)

I know it’s only January 31st but hey – let’s kick off anyway. Head start and all that.

Today I mostly made an Armadillo.

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Pretty Polly was made out of Christmas wrapping paper, yo-yo dried fruit snack wrappings, a cereal box, 2 cinema tickets, a crisps wrapper, an orange juice carton and a page of the Yellow Pages.

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Today then is a bitter sweet day – the first preview copy of  ‘Jacks Radio Mission’, her first story covering radiotherapy, arrived in the post from the printers this morning. Apart from a little fine tuning, it’s looking rather wonderful, meaning that the project is reaching completion. It’s almost ready to be sent out into the big wide world!

The bitter part of the deal is that I’m writing this just a couple of weeks after Sarah lost her own battle and passed away.

So I declare today a big fat ‘yay’ day.  She did it! I really hope she knows it. I reckon she does, there’s a particularly oddly behaving sun beam outside my window…   ;-)

We were helped along the way by staff at the Royal Marsden Hospital whose advise was invaluable and we planned to get the book complete and into the hands of the children entering units such as those at The Marsden by the end of this year and then made available via other cancer aid organizations as well as directly available for purchase through Amazon and the like, as soon as possible thereafter. Any profits will be going straight to  leukaemia & lymphoma research.

I shall blog again when I have links to share :-)

In the meantime if you would like more information about how you can help The Royal Marsden, through donations, charitable events or even just giving your time and volunteering, click here.

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Today is NET cancer day – did you know? Hopefully if you didn’t, you will now and will help spread the word.

Dusted were briefed on the redevelopment of the Worldwide NET Cancer Day website following the successful redesign of the NET Patient Foundation website (which represents patients and carers in the UK). In its first year, more than 5,000 signatures were added to their online proclamation and this year the target is for site visitors to show their support via a global map featuring the zebra mascot and a virtual journey around the world. Sharing this message via Facebook, Twitter and email is naturally a key part of support strategy.

Continuing with the global community theme (and social media aspect), another map element of the site aims to join people together from across the world in a global video event brought ‘live’ on the day itself – November 10. As the day moves west, video clips (pulled from YouTube) will become available to watch – from Singapore to Sweden, from the UK to the USA – visitors will see how the World NET Community is working together to raise awareness of NET cancers around the globe.

The zebra mascot  stems from the fact, medical students in some countries are taught, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras” to encourage them to think about the most likely and common cause of symptoms.  However, this approach risks that rarer diseases like NET cancers (“zebras”) will be overlooked.

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Being a member of the lovely Doodlers Anonymous Community is a lovely thing. It keeps me on my artsy toes and satisfies my urges to doodle indiscriminately, so I was delighted this week to be informed that my doodle for December has won a place on the Doodlers Anonymous official 2012 Calendar. Hurrah!

Thanks very much to all the doodlers who voted and for the DA Editors who made the final decision :-)

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The project presents a unique collection of originally commissioned artworks, from some of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, writers and performers including – Ralph Steadman, Sir Peter Blake, Rob Ryan, Billy Childish, Desmond Morris, Pete Fowler, Charming Baker, Jamie Hewlett, Kai and Sunny, Rebecca Jewell, and many more – each one of them has adopted an extinct species and breathed life back into it through their creative talents.

All Tropical, has partnered with Ghosts of Gone Birds to challenge designers to create a Tshirt for the exhibition, to be sold at the exhibition being organised from 2-23 November at the:
Rochelle School; Arnold Circus, Shoreditch, London. E2 7ES

I like a good cause, and I like to doodle birds… so here’s my entry.

The Gallery of all entries is now open and online. There are some beautiful illustrations so do go and check it out over at All Tropical. (and hopefully feel the urge to give me a vote while you’re there?  ;-)

Tshirt design. ©Wallop Commercial Art & Design Ltd.

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So if you like Smart Cars and you like Art, why not pop along and feast your eyes :-)

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Wallop is working with Sarah Boland’s ‘Healing’ Campaign to create a book, hopefully one of a series, for children undertaking daunting Cancer treatments and therapies. The ‘cancer is rubbish’ idea behind the books came from a discussion with Sarah,  whom I first met whilst I was a designer and she was a producer and writer at the BBC. We discussed how my ‘Rubbish Pictures’ could be adapted to work alongside her stories, and this book is the result of those early conversations.

This book, about a boys journey through radiotherapy treatment, takes a sidestep from my usual ‘Rubbish characters style such as the more traditional ‘Fox’ and ‘Rooster’ It creates entire scenes more akin to ‘Rubbish Racing’ where the character and background are collaged out of appropriate material for the part of the story they are telling. I wanted to use content, or ‘rubbish’, familiar to the children reading the book and re use imagery from the hospital environment they are likely to be in. The character Jack, for example, whilst having already been through chemotherapy treatment and lost his hair, stays a very normal little boy throughout, full of beans and mischief. His clothes therefore are made up of recognizable beans food packaging and children’s paintings among other ‘rubbish’ textures.

We have been helped along the way by staff at the Royal Marsden Hospital whose advise has been invaluable and we are hoping to get this project complete over the next few weeks and into the hands of the children entering units such as those at The Marsden.

I’ll be blogging with the projects progress again soon :-)

In the meantime if you would like more information about how you can help The Royal Marsden, through donations, charitable events or even just giving your time and volunteering, click here.

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