New pig on the block

Pencil sketch ('scamp') stage for Ham Client  © Peter Gander

This pretty porcine pencil drawing was sketched recently for a client who supplies no less than the Royal Family with the most handsome of hams and grandest of gammons. Those familiar with our piggy portfolio will recognise that the inspiration here was our pink ‘Pig Cuts’ tea towel. The final design will adorn aprons, tea towels and signage and, like every product with a Royal Warrant, one will be shown to Her Majesty for a Royal seal of approval, literally!

More Herne Bay Festival kids' tee ideas...

© Peter Gander 2012

Wall design idea for ‘The Beaney’, Canterbury

My mock-up of the design in-situ

The original 19th C High Street, Canterbury entrance to The Beaney.

So now you know!  © Peter Gander (after Chaucer!)

Details from the artwork  © Peter Gander 2012

The new bit of The Beaney to the rear, (the artwork would appear bottom left, full width of the stairs)

My rough sketch indicating the final idea - ‘The A to Z of the B and C’  © Peter Gander 2012

 

Canterbury City Council (CCC) recently asked local artists to submit their ideas for an artwork to coincide with The Beaney’s re-opening after redevelopment. The Beaney (formerly The Beaney Institute) is a museum, art gallery and community library/cultural centre.  The winning artists’ work will appear in the new wing which has been developed to the rear of the main 19th century building’s entrance. Occupying a lovely airy space above the entrance stairs, it measures 1.5m x 10m so it’s a great opportunity and one I particularly relish as I went to art college in Canterbury and it would be a fabulous opportunity and honour to have my work exhibited in such a great venue as The Beaney so I wait with bated breath for the council’s decision.

THE IDEA
The concept is that whilst the area is huge and people are just arriving, leaving or looking across form the nearby mezzanine and perhaps can’t take the whole thing in at once, they can take a bite-sized fact away with them. This sits in line with the spirit of the place in imparting information in an interesting fashion. ‘The A to Z of the B and C’ provides an amusing alphabet of Beaney and Canterbury (the ‘B & C’ bit) tidbits such as the connection between ‘Canter’ and ‘Canterbury’ in a palatable way. I chose the new Beaney identity’s purple colour to add a simple two colour effect to the drawings, with a tint of the same, ensuring the piece wasn’t visually busy. A simple papercut-style floral trail snakes through the work, adding a ‘journey-like’ element to the work. I didn’t address every letter of the alphabet, it was merely a sketchy indicaton of my main idea, the intention being, should I win the work, that I will work alongside The Beaney to complete the piece. It will be reproduced digitally and exhibited on a large roller-blind-like ‘canvas’. The whole thing will be hand-drawn, of course. And hand-lettered.

 

Herne Bay Festival 2012 commission

The Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year

I have just met up with a Canterbury City Council (CCC) client and have been asked to come up with a kids’ tee shirt design in one colour for The Herne Bay Festival 2012 in August, so watch this space. I will post up the 1st stage scamps (pencil sketches) here next week. The festival is a 9 day event with music, street theatre,dance, bandstand performances, workshops and entertainment and this year the festival is 20 years old. I hope to incorporate many of the following in the tee shirt design: Pirate & Lantern Parade; a Giant; a Crab Catching Competition; Spitfire/Breitling/Mustang air displays; an Open Air Screening; Science Museum Shows; a Sandcastle competition; a Giant Picnic and Fireworks, so my work is cut out, as they say. Oh, and a Punch and Judy Show, of course.

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.

‘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.

Tea towel: Pig cuts

Pig cuts tea towel  © Peter Gander

Another in our range of Have a Gander tea towels featuring a slightly less orthodox-than-usual dividing of the pig’s meat including Sunday Roast and Bacon butties! Hand-painted with brush and ink and coloured digitally.

Eel postcard image

Eel postcard image  © Peter Gander

A client who works for CEFAS commissioned me to come up with some eel-themed designs for a conference coming up later in the year in Edinburgh, Scotland. After forwarding some rough ideas, we settled on this celtic design-inspired ‘Eel knot’ as it was seen to not only look striking but also represents one of the creature’s habits of writhing underwater in huge ‘eel balls’ where hundereds of the creatures form a rolling sphere of eeldom, careering downstream in a dark shiny mass! Hand-painted ink linework with charcoal and digital colour. As usual, the type is hand-drawn too.

Re-drawing the design in pencil with a tad more precision thank the original scamp

Getting knotted over the puzzling shapes...

Painting the final linework on Canson Detail Paper, beautifully thin and transparent, so I can see the pencil sketch underneath

Treating this as a completely seperate layer, I drew some stylised ripples in charcoal, later turned to white

Tea towel: teapot

Teapot tea towel © Peter Gander

This one of our 5 new Have a Gander tea towel designs for 2012 in a lovely shade of slate grey. All hand-drawn and featuring ink and brush hand-lettered pure tea varieties (we’ll do a favourite fruity infusions one day) in the shape of a traditional teapot with tea leaf pattern wallpaper. Illustrated in Kent and printed in Great Britain on 100% cotton.

Tea towel: The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee design

Working on the layout

Inking out a 1st-stage visual in black and white

Drawing the corgis

Diamond Jubilee tea towel  © Peter Gander

To be launched at The Spirit of Summer Fair at Olympia, London this is one of a series of tea towel designs Fiona and I have devised to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Unapologetically patriotic and cheerful, it’s inspired by a playing card design and features a couple of flag-waving and crown-wearing corgis and is completely hand-drawn. Printed in Great Britain and available in Royal Blue on 100% cotton from 16th May 2012 at the fair and thereafter online.

Fish & chips

Fish 'n' Chips  © Peter Gander

Another ‘Mosaic square’ painting. I used Winsor & Newton ink for this one, which gives a rich finish on this 300gsm rough paper. Salt & vinegar anyone?

(Celtic) fish knot

Fish knot © Peter Gander

I’ve always loved the graphic quality of medieval heraldry and Celtic designs. Using one of those out-of-copyright books on Celtic designs from The Dover Bookshop in London, I chose my favourite subject of fish as my inspiration. And as much as this design would look fantastic as a clean black and white linocut, I thought I’d paint it in gouache to keep the design tonally interesting. The gouache, in various states of dilution, conveys a rich, painted glass-style quality. The background is actually a deep violet colour, which doesn’t come across very well in the scan. Winsor and Newton white gouache on 160gsm deep violet Daler Rowney Murano pastel paper.