Update: the challenge is over and we now have over 3,200 posts to the #adventcalendarart hashtag. So much fantastic work and loads of incredible energy. We were even featured on the Print & Pattern blog!
The Four Corners second annual Advent Calendar Challenge has kicked off. I'm hoping to do an image every day and I'll add them here as I do them. You can follow along at the Four Corners Instagram feed.
Challenges like this are a great way to kick off a ton of new work. I know from last year that the image I post each day is just the starting point. One of my 2015 challenge sketches has gone through a few iterations and is now being test printed by a letterpress publisher in the US. It will be available for wholesale orders at the National Stationery Show in NYC in May next year. I wonder which of the designs below will make it out into the real world...?
I can't quite believe it's a whole year since the last Four Corners Art Collective Instagram Advent Calendar Challenge.
Last year, there were over 1,800 posts to our hashtag #adventcalendarart and some of those designs have since been licensed or bought for a variety of products including greetings cards, doormats, stationery and calendars.
This year we've picked a theme for each of the first three weeks of December and will be posting daily prompts for people to follow.
If you're an artist, we'd love you to join in and encourage your artists friends to do the same. It really is a fun way to fill your portfolio full of seasonal designs. And who knows who might be watching!
And if you're a buyer or art director, follow along for a daily hit of seasonal art everyday from December 1st until Christmas Eve.
Two of my fabric collections will be on show at Quilt Market 2016 in Houston this weekend, from 29-31 October. They are just part of the large collection of fabrics you can see at Booth 1751 with Haerae Co.
To celebrate, I mocked up a couple of simple quilts. This first one is using prints from Morning Birds.
And here's the same pattern but this time made up from my Pastel Blooms collection.
I just wish I could be there to see all the wonderful fabrics on show. Enjoy it if you're going.
For five weeks from Monday October 3rd I'll be busy in class on the MATS Illustrating Children's Books e-course*. In five weeks time I'll have a killer book pitch. How cool is that?
The image above came out of some course prep to get everyone in the mood. Publishers, take note! I have a whole story already developed for Miss Minette McCloud if you're interested.
For the course itself we've been asked to pick one text from a choice of three, and we'll work with our chosen text for all five weeks. All three are great but one absolutely leapt off the page at me.
This weekend I'll be stocking up on new supplies: a squeaky clean new sketchbook, a ream of good quality printer paper, some new uni-Pin fine liners - mine are all blurry and blunt - and some extra gouache paints.
* Of course, I'm still available for commission or to talk about possible projects. Email me if you need me!
I was delighted to discover that the brilliant They Draw and Cook featured my cake eating ladies and some of my cups on their very popular TDAC Instagram feed this week. A spike in my Insta followers and lots of lovely comments followed.
Over 1,000 likes for my cups and cake eating ladies on They Draw and Cook Insta yesterday!
Vote for my GTS hipster cafe!
You can view the whole Global Talent Search Semi-Final Gallery here and it's full of fabulous work.
Here's a direct link to my piece in case you'd like to vote for it. The piece with the most public votes goes through to the final automatically. The judging panel will then put through another five. I'd love to be one of those final six but it's a tough competition.
Our imaginary Art Director asked us to design the cover of a recipe book by Sunny Spindler, our cafe owner from the first round. We could choose to depict a cafe scene or focus on the desserts, or both. I came back from a research trip to a Brighton cafe with a load of surreptitious sketches of people eating cake, drinking tea and shooting the breeze, and I wanted to capture some of the quirky folk I saw.
I wanted to create a sugary vibe through the colours I chose rather than trying to create anything too cupcake-quirky, which isn't really my style. So I pulled some of the strong colours from my first round piece and put them into a sugary pink setting.
I love that big-haired fashionable lady on the left and who can't love a bearded dude digging into a massive cupcake?
It would be a dream come through to get into the finals but even if this is the end of my GTS road this year I have a load of ideas for new work, so it's already a win.
Happy days, I've been selected from 1,000 entries to go through to the Semi-Finals! The 50 semi-finalists have until August 29th to submit our next piece, so it will be up to the wire again. Wish me luck!
You can see all the selected pieces here.
It's time for another Global Talent Search, the annual competition run by Lilla Rogers Studio.
I used to work with 2014 winner, Zoe Ingram, at a digital agency in Scotland years ago, so I followed that first competition with interest. It was properly thrilling when Zoe scooped the top prize and a total joy to see how her career has taken off since.
In 2015 I was selected from 1,000 entries to go through to the Semi-Final with 49 others. What a high!
This year the first round came smack in the middle of our family holiday in Cornwall but I couldn't resist the brief to design a tea cup and paper napkin, with lettering. I couldn't stick to just one cup, I'm a total cup-addict. I got the impression that Sunny Spindler (the client) is the same, so I decided to make a virtue of having all kinds of different cups.
Tea cup and paper napkin designs for Sunny Spindler, the owner of a pastry shop who is opening a tea room. All images © Emma McGowan.
What a thrill it was to be one of 50 artists that got through to the 2015 GTS Semi Final Round. I'll be entering again next year, not least because of the fantastic brief you get from Lilla Rogers and her team. Here are my Round 1 and Round 2 entries.
One to tick off my bucket list. The Science of Everyday Life by Marty Jopson is a great read and a perfect Christmas gift. It was loads of fun collaborating with Marty on the illustrations even if it did mean reliving school science lessons.
It's such a privilege to be a member of the Four Corners Art Collective. We've become great friends since we starting talking about forming a collective and I love the support and encouragement we get from each other, despite being in different timezones!
We launched Four Corners with an Instagram challenge and were completely bowled over by how many artists and designers joined in. Over 1,800 images were created and posted under our hashtag adventcalendarart. So a big thank you to everyone who joined in. Here's one of my posts from the month of festive images.
I hope you've all had a restful and festive holiday. Roll on 2016 and SURTEX in May. Happy New Year to you all, wherever you are.