Bob Robber and Dancing Jane

'Bob Robber and Dancing Jane'; a children's book illustrated by Bee Willey and written by Andrew Matthews is to stage as a ballet!

Produced by Clare Prenton,  the story now evolved as 'Shadow Thief' is a thrilling development of the original book about the dark souled Bob Robber who learns to dance and live in the light with help from Dancing Jane. Bee says "Both myself and Andrew were delighted at the clip with the lyrics we were sent by Clare's agent, and also by the twitter info around the rehearsals in Barnes, seemingly leading to a premiere in 2014 in Edinburgh! It is wonderful for a story like this to take off in a new context…"

Grover at Zizzi

port crane detail

suspended frames

James Grover creates a mural for Zizzi Ipswich.
Commissioned by the Design manager at Zizzi, James worked over a five day period to complete the different elements of the painting. Using a scaffold tower for the high parts, James has produced an awesome piece of art for the restaurant. He says "The mural is a map of Ipswich’s centre, showing the main attractions and significant buildings. There are also a few little bits of info about the town dotted around too. The frames are made to look like they are suspended by a port crane which I was also asked to draw. The designs were produced using acrylic paint pens and emulsion."

New Talent Alert: Jo Rose

Take a look at Jo Rose's playful character creations, full of story and theatre...

Winter Wonderland

Emma Rios is commissioned to create her own winter wonderland backdrops for a range of fragrances.
Now showing in the current issue of Tatler, Emma uses paper silhouette's to capture these evocative scenes which were then photographed by Ted Humble Smith.

Jo Rose at The Henries

Deer Little Forest

We are delighted with Jo Rose's nomination for The Henries 2013!
Jo's card range 'Deer Little Forest' was up for the award of 'Most Promising Artist/Designer 2013', a category with some 14,000 entries. This range which is one of Jo's latest creations about a 'cast of colourful creatures who form a magical and musical travelling parade', made it to the final five. She says "The awards evening (was back in October), I didn't win but am still totally chuffed to have been nominated".
We are sure her hand crafted work, full of character and theatre will be up for more awards in the future.

Arturo Ui

Steinar Lund works with Feast Creative to produce this illustration for the play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui showing in London now.
After a receiving a photo of the actor Henry Goodman, Steinar set to work creating the body and cat. He says "The actual costume was sent down from Angels The Costumiers which I then modelled myself and photographer Robert Dixon took the reference shots. Robert has a nice big cat that fitted the brief, but alas he was not happy with me holding him.......in the end I used many different references to create the final 'digital' cat".

Cheers Shannon!

the art

the beer

Shannon at the event

Shannon Toth proudly holds a bottle of beer adorned with her 'Mascarilla' art!
The Collective Arts Brewery in Toronto, Ontario hold regular contests for artists to have their art on a beer label, with the belief of "raising the creative consciousness by linking art and artists with the sociability of beer. This collaboration extends from visual art to music and film." Shannon's striking image of the lady in the skull mask won the attention of the brewery, and now drinkers can enjoy her art whilst downing their beer!

An Emmy for Aardvark

Nathan Aardvark played Art Director and Lead Illustrator on this Emmy Award winning title sequence for Starz's 'Da Vinci's Demons.'

Last night's Emmys saw Nathan and the team crowned with the 'Outstanding Main Title Design' award for the show. Talking of the commission, a very proud Nathan says "The job was to create short animated illustrations to go on top of footage from the show. I was supplied with various clips and painstakingly sketched over the top of each frame....frame by frame! In the end I had hundreds of drawings which were then composited later in post production. I tried to keep it close to the classic style of Da Vinci as much as possible."

Another cool feature of the title is the crab cannon; when the music is played backwards the melody is the same. Watch the titles.

BoomArtwork's Solar Weekend

 

The final  piece

BoomArtwork's lettering

 Eric at work

Boom Artwork aka Eric Van Den Boom recently participated in a music and arts festival entitled Solar Weekend 2013. Working alongside Maarten Berkers, Eric created an installation consisting of an interactive mural. Eric says "This year's theme was 'experiment'......(the installation) allowed festival visitors to create their own fantastical creatures by rotating three circular boards with different body parts illustrated on them. Visitors could place their heads through the holes in the mural, making a perfect photo opportunity". Eric used his skills to complete the lettering on either side, whilst Maarten created the central illustration for this theatrical piece.

Pretty Nostalgic

Victoria Scott's recent commission for Pretty Nostalgic magazine illustrates an article on the rise of the Pop Up Supperclub, her happy art features in this month's issue.

Patronaat Bar

This rather gorgeous bar has been designed by the multi talented Eric Van Den Boom of BoomArtwork. The Dutch venue Patronaat in Haarlem asked Eric to design this drinker's heaven from scratch, so with rough dimensions, a brief that it should have a fairground/church theme and two weeks to come up with the goods, Eric began with sketches of the shape, details, lettering and decoration. He says "When I had the sketch ready I art-directed the 3D artist Jasper Hesseling to create a 3D digital model of it, giving the client a good image of how the venue should look. The builders constructed the bar from these 3D images, and they did an amazing job". We'd love to have a drink there (or two)!

Fantasy Flight Games

 

Anthony J Foti has worked with Fantasy Flight Games for some time, and three of the Star Wars projects recently completed are now out. Star Wars: The Card Game is a strategy game for 2 players, with future expansions being released every couple of months, one of which shows Anthony's Darth Vader art on the cover. The other two products are part of the "Edge of the Empire" line of roleplaying game products, including a beginner set and a "Game Master's Kit". Must haves for any Star Wars fan!