Lisa Stickley-Levis

I was shocked to discover randomly online yesterday that Lisa Stickley had walked away from her company last year. Her 'magnificently grand jug' stands tall on the book case in my room, just one of many of her products that I loved.

I came across her Tumblr which can be seen here and it has many a lovely photo on it and some illustrations I have inserted below. There is so much British/olympic/jubilee imagery around at the moment, and these olympic inspired designs from Lisa are by far my faves. They are quirky as you like, use highly original colour schemes, and her drawing style is just lovely. Lisa is launching a new business called 'Hillside Way' and I am so excited to see what it has to offer.

New drawing from start to finish

At the moment I am working on a new animal range of cards. I have spent part of the afternoon working on an elephant drawing and decided to document my development of the design in photographs. I always us a propelling pencil as they feel soft and easy to draw with, and then when I use ink I use a Muji 0.5 tip. After being introduced to these at uni I never draw with anything else.






Once the drawing is finished I scan it and open it in Adobe Photoshop. Here I can erase any blemishes and make small alterations if needs be. With the elephant I wanted to change the eyes slightly, and decided the ears were too white with no shading, so I amended that.

I colour all of my designs using Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to add a simple pattern onto the cards background and finally place the elephant into a simple circle, as I have with the rest of my animal cards. I wanted to keep emphasis on the drawing so have kept my designs to two colours with the addition of black and white. Each card will have a different patterned background depending on what I think suits the animal.

Laura Amiss

I am a big fan of architectural illustration and I think the colours included in these prints by Laura Amiss are just perfect. She is British but for the last few years has called Amsterdam home. Her work combines textiles and illustration, making for a very individual body of work.