Friday 12 December 2008

Working 9 - 5: Doll Face

Above: I am unusually proud of 'Doll Face', a design which I based on the babushka and painted up a few months ago at work. I scanned her into Photoshop, cleaned and re-coloured her in our palette for that month's range, then sent the artwork to China. There it was printed onto white cotton poplin, then turned under and neatly and sewn onto the t-shirts by hand. The hair was also made of two pieces of navy blue fabric, again sewn by hand. I hope that the people doing the sewing got some enjoyment out of it.
Pssst: next winter she will have a sassy sister...

Friday 5 December 2008

For the Love of Mordy

Above: Often I have moments when I think "I wish I had my camera". The other evening, when I found myself down in Mordy (that's Mordialloc to non locals) I realised that I actually did.

Above: I love this logo! It's so odd. I wonder what the thought process was behind it?!

I've included the above snap to contextualise the place for the non Melbournian readers: Mordialloc is not the most beautiful or exciting "sleepy" fishing town (suburb, really) but I think that's the reason why I like it.

Monday 1 December 2008

The Chef: Version 2

Above: the chef, who first came to life quite a few years ago now, reworked for the submission first mentioned below. I am not as happy with him as I am with the babushkas and the seaside children, but I think that if I keep going with him I will just get sick of the whole thing and will end up submitting nothing (I need to submit three at once, he is the last one I need to finish).Above: a beautiful 1950's TWA advertisement which I used as inspiration for the chef's colour palette. I love the mixture of bright and pastel colours, it's very 1950's and pleasingly odd to contemporary eyes. And the topic: aeroplane food (supposedly!) is one of my nearest and dearest. The uniform is also rather elaborate and looks technically impossible, except to a Paris couturier. I stumbled across this picture at work: I believe an ex colleague with no respect for the sanctity of books tore it out of a Taschen vintage advertising compendium.

January 9: I only just submitted the three illustrations today, after too many trials and tribulations for my liking: the test (which I sat twice due to a technical hitch), their server problems over Christmas, as well as (probably related but unacknowledged) changes in the format, including a now compulsory zip compression requirement for which I had to buy Winzip. I wish I could also download some patience...

Inspiration 4: A Primary Coloured Assortment

Above: the previously mentioned stunning Italian Dinner furnishing fabric from Svenkst Tenn. (The piece shown here is about 80 cm high I think.) I will have to return to Stockholm one day to buy a few metres. It so beautifully encompasses the bounties of Italian cuisine that I declare all Italian restaurants and Italian-cooking-loving-kitchens should be decorated with it! Or mine, anyway.
Above: Vindija quality, detail from a yoghurt container from Croatia. That landscape is crying out to be magnified many times over yet again and turned into something grand...
Above: Lodalientje, a plastic pin badge found at a second hand shop in Amsterdam. She is actually less than one centimetre tall. I have not had any luck in finding out who she is or what Lodalientje means, but I think she is very cute.


Above: my aunt's bowl. I realised during this year's visit to Croatia that my penchant for semi-kitsch fruit decorated kitchen items comes from her.


Surely the German artist Neo Rausch (b.1960) must share my love of primary coloured kitchen kitsch? His grand 255 x 199 cm oil on paper work Pfad (2003) above looks exactly like blue and white Dutch china brought to contemporary life. A man after my heart: if only he knew.