4 tribal headdresses, 3 ghost stories, 2 bears who makes my heart melt and a partridge in a pear tree.

My face right now...

Things are going swimmingly, working on some really exciting new stuff that I'm trying to push the boundaries with little. Fun both to create and to look at.  Pre-warning of some new work to be up next week too. 

On the third day of Christmas Grace gave to me...

... the promise of more work updates. I've been/I am snowed under at the moment with lots of new work and commissions so this promise shall be fulfilled in the near future. I've had the wonderful opportunity of working with a very high profiled client on an extra special Christmas card commission recently, and excuse me while I blow my own trumpet, but the client has since come back to me and said that it is the best they have ever produced! Christmas has definitely come early. That will be up on the website *fingers crossed* just before christmas. I'm also involved in another project at the moment along with an amazing group of illustrators (most of whom intimidate the crap out of me) working on perhaps an illustrators dream brief really. Its so cool and should be all ready to show in the new year with the promise of an exhibition at some point. And finally I have a super top secret project (it literally hurts to not be able to tell anyone about this) on the go, its amazing and fantastic and I could go on but I won't and I again don't know when this will be shared but it will be amazing. So yeah, end the year on a bang lets hope. To be continued. 

For now though I'll leave you with an illustration to accompany Joelle Taylor's poem 'No Man's Land' as part of SLAMbassadors poetry anthology. I't also on the website: http://www.gracerussell.co.uk

Cold Mountain

I have a set of new illustrations up on my website. 

Robert Macfarlane's 'Mountains of the Mind'

Some really exciting things will be posted soon-ish. But for now there's a new piece of work up on the website; a cover design for Robert Macfarlane's 'Mountains of the Mind'. Its an amazing book, my head was permanently in it for the duration of my trip. More to follow!

And so I have returned.

I'm backkkkk. Yup Canada was pretty amazing. I have so many photos its crazy. Some of the workshops and activities I did were so awesome I cannot believe how much control and scope I got to pretty much do what I wanted in terms of programming, I got to completely redesign the whole Arts and Crafts program which was great. Travelling across the country was unbelievable too, the mountains oh the mountains, I love the Rockies so much. 

Ok so reading that back it appears as though I have verbal diarrhoea therefore I will stop typing and leave you with a few pages from one of my sketchbooks. 

Creative Review

Just a little write up on the winning entries on Creative Review 

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2014/june/va-illustration-awards

Winner of the V&A Illustration Awards 2014

I am very happy to announce that I have won the Student Category for the V&A Illustration Awards 2014! I'm soo so happy, the judges had some really lovely comments about my work, saying they had a strong compositional sense and created very evocative imagery. The awards ceremony and private view on monday night was unreal, there was even a string quartet and my award is the weight of a small child. The rest of the work on display is truly breathtaking, Helen Musselwhite's work especially; the intricacy of her paper cut outs are really something to be marvelled at, a deserved winner and overall winner. Please go and have a look at the work if you get a chance, its on display until the 2nd of July and you can follow the link here.