Tailormade tea towel v2.0

v2.0 Tailormade tea towel  © Peter Gander 2012

This is version 2 scamp/pencil, revealing a new banner message and slightly tweaked details elsewhere. Soft Derwent pencil on Canson tracing paper.

Tailormade Tea Towel: Tracy’s ‘T’

v1.0 scamp for Tracy’s tea towel  © Peter Gander 2012

During our show at Olympia last week, we were commissioned to come up with a bespoke tea towel design (1 colour) as a keepsake for a client hosting a party in Sussex at the end of June. This is the first stage sketch, or ‘scamp’ as we call them in the trade. This’ll print in green on white cotton. The client’s name is Tracy and she is also conveniently nicknamed ‘T’, a perfect excuse for a ‘T’ towel if ever I heard one. Not only that but tea plantations are part of the family business, so a tea towel doesn’t get much more apt than this! Soft pencil on layout paper.

The long slow road to the Sargasso (painting)

‘The long slow road to the Sargasso’ (painting)  © Peter Gander 2012

Scratching away white highlights with a scalpel

Going back a few years now, I posted a lunchtime sketch on this blog of ‘The long slow road...’, (see pic) with a link to The National Anguilla Club later picked up by a certain eel enthusiast from Cefas . (Hope you’re keeping up). Anyway, I was commissioned by the same person to produce the ‘Eel knot’ invite artwork and the above painting for the delegates of a Fisheries convention up in Edinburgh, Scotland, earlier in May. The original is a watercolour but I employed the fine skills of Michael Setek at www.gicleeprinting.co.uk in nearby Wye, Kent, to supply a number of giclée prints to hand out to worthy attendees. For any other artists in Kent keen on duplicating their paintings, especially watercolours (which aren’t easy to reproduce accurately) I’d recommend you check him out. Such is the excellent quality of the prints that you have to feel the original paper to check which one is the ‘real McCoy’!

The new painting (foreground) and the original sketch from 3 years ago amidst eely reference material

‘Eely happy’ print recipients, from left to right:
John Casselman (Canada), Mari Kuroki (Japan), Don Jellyman (New
Zealand), Katsumi Tsukamoto (Japan), Jim McCleave (USA) and Alan Walker
(Cefas, UK). Willem Dekker (Sweden)

The new painting remained very faithful to the original idea, changing little from my concept of a family and their belongings tied to a giant eel, travelling by night on their arduous journey to every European eel’s spawning ground - the Sargasso sea near Bermuda. In fact, I even kept the Biro element to lend an etching-like feel to the finished art. Also employed were a scalpel to scratch away white glossy highlights of the eels’ skin and candle wax to add texture to the flinty soil catching the moon’s rays. Winsor & Newton watercolour on The Langton Prestige 300gsm rough paper.

Proper news

No, honestly, it’s no Photoshop mock-up! The heady heights of local fame and I’m not complaining.

The real McCoy tea towels

As an artist sometimes you can’t beat the real thing and taking collection of your tangible design wafting around in big style on a cloth canvas is SO much better than the piece of paper you were looking at for months on end. Such is the case with our set of 5 (Jubilee to come) tea towels taken in last night. The colours were bang-on and the quality of the cotton excellent. We’ve also made them look trendy by hanging them on our magnolia tree. Hopefully you can’t see it’s spitting with rain. Well, it IS May in the UK. Buy ’em on Folksy

Tea towel delivery!

Buy ’em on Folksy

The 5 printed tea towels, the Queen taking centre stage.  © Peter Gander 2012

We took delivery of our 5 fabulous tea towels yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day folding, ticketing and wrapping a few hundred for our Kent, Sussex and Surrey shops plus a few online retailers too. If you’re out and about in any of these areas, you can buy them at: British Design British Made Battle, Sussex; Rising Star Tenterden, Kent; Smoke on the Water Sandwich, Kent; Nice Things Ramsgate; Murray’s General Stores, The Goods Shed, Canterbury, Kent; Feather & Fern Dorking, Surrey; ToDryFor.com (online); Carried Away Deal, Kent, Bourneside Gallery Gomshall, Surrey; Taking the Plunge, Whitstable, Kent Vintage Vacations Isle of Wight; PHG Cowes, Isle of Wight; Chique Antique, Ryde, IoW; Galerie Le Petit Chien, Navarrenx, SW France; Smith & Stephenson, Ryde, IoW; Den, Petersfield; Cabbage White, Midhurst, Sussex; Sparks Yard, Arundel, Sussex; Sussex Farm Foods, Bury, Pulborough. Thanks to all of our retailers above for their keen support! We’re gradually working our way out from the South East - next, look out Suffolk!

Teapot tea towels, wrapped and ticketed

‘You, me and a cup of tea’ greetings card

You, me and a cup of tea greetings card  © Peter Gander 2012

Unlike our tea towels, the greetings cards have the capacity for full colour, but not wishing to move too far from the original design, I added just a tinted green background variation and infill to the hand-lettering. Ink and dip pen on paper with digital colour.

Chocolate greetings card design

Chocolate greetings card  © Peter Gander 2012

Hand-lettered Chocolate A6 greetings card for Have a Gander range. Pen and ink, digital colour.

Great Britain’s Great bag design

Great Britain’s Great bag design  © Peter Gander 2012

Continuing the patriotic flavour and fervour, this is our single-colour Royal blue Have a Gander bag design for 2012. Hand-drawn illustrations with dip-pen and ink and hand-lettering. Digital colour.

Great Britain’s Great

Great Britain’s Great A6 greetings card  © Peter Gander

Another hand-drawn artwork, this time a patriotic Greetings Card (A6) for Have a Gander. The Union Jack is a scanned cardboard print and the illustrations scratch pen and ink with digital colour.