Christmas Day.

Have a happy & safe new year.

Merry Christmas All!

Round Robin

Family History

An illustration for the website of historian Owen Rees. Owen is a writer and researcher, specialising in Ancient Greece. He keeps an interesting blog too. 

Freeze

I did this illustration for the December issue of the great alt film mag Electric Sheep. The theme is "Freeze". I tried to allude to the festive and the macabre subjects they explore in this issue. Check it out here.

Weatherman

For anyone who hasn't caught the news for the past fortnight, this is what you missed.

Ambit Covers

Wandering the deepest reaches of Crouch End library on monday, I stumbled across an exhibition of Ambit covers. Ambit is a long-running magazine of poetry, art, reviews and short stories that has been Art Edited by illustrator/author Michael Foreman since the 60s. The cover images are often provided by up-and-coming young artists, including the likes of David Hockney and Ralph Steadman in earlier years. 


The prints are spread out around the walls of a giant hall in a seemingly random arrangement of wonky angles. A slightly strange but interesting exhibition.

Watching Ice Age 2 this afternoon.

Loy Krathong

At the weekend I went with Pat to the Loy Krathong festival at the Buddhapadipa temple in Wimbledon. The centrepoint of the festival (which falls on a full moon in november) is the launching of small hand-made rafts equipped with candles and incense. The rafts (krathongs) are traditionally made from banana tree trunk, though ours were made from styrofoam adorned with thin paper leaves. Releasing the rafts is a way of letting go of anger and bad things, and of giving thanks to the river.

Ace animation promoting the Finnish city of Turku's role as European Capital of Culture (along with Tallinn) in 2011. By Woodpecker Film.



Turku 2011 Kulttuuripääkaupunki from Woodpecker Film on Vimeo.


Lovely textures, non?

Pages

Some dogs

Sketched at a dog show at Earls Court last weekend.

Horsey

Portrait commissioned as a surprise Christmas gift for the steed's young rider. I don't really paint a lot of furry things, so it took me a while to get the technique right. Fairly pleased with the finished piece though. Acrylic on illustration board.

I've posted a little work-in-progress montage on my olde Facebook page.

More Lakes

A few more sketches from Cumbria.

 

Monkeehub Creep video

Just remembered this.



Love that facial animation. Couldn't get the version on the Monkeehub site to work.

Little Runners

These are Pat's running trainers. They're still pretty clean...
Sorry it's a pretty nasty quality image- just wanted to photograph it quickly.

Amex Ad

Really liking the new American Express advert by Ogilvy & Mather. Launched tonight. Awesome.

Lakes

Some sketches from my girlfriend and I's trip up to the Lake District last month. First bit of watercolouring for a good while. 

I've got a few more of these, but unfortunately I'm having to use a different scanner, which seems to be incapable of producing a decent image.

Jake's Cabinets

I went down to Potters Field on friday to see Jake Spicer, who was running free outdoor figure-drawing in the park as part of the Big Draw. 

Jake runs the Brighton Life Drawing Sessions, and he had brought up one of three wheeled cabinets he has fashioned for an all-night mobile life drawing extravaganza that he is hosting in Brighton on saturday as part of the city's White Night. A pretty awesome and ambitious idea- you can find out more about Enlightenment, Life Drawing from the Cabinets of Wonder (and see a photo of one of the brilliant cabinets) here. If you're ever in Brighton I'd thoroughly recommend getting along to one of his life classes too.

Thanks very much to Jake and co for a great couple of hours drawing in the park.

P-laaant

Went to Ikea with Pat the other day, and this was undoubtedly our most exciting purchase (even more so than the meatballs). They do a range of aquatic plants, which come packaged up in these lidded, plastic cups. I guess they're intended for aquariums and such, but we're just gonna keep it in the cup, because it looks ace.

Now just need some tiny tiny fish... And a reeeally small pirate ship.

Sunflowers

These were a bit droopier than I'd've liked by the time I got round to painting 'em.

Also...

...have a look at my spot on Creative Boom today:

http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/inspire/lookbook/illustrator-ben-mills/

Self portrait in mucky train window

'Crucible' Sculpture at Gloucester Cathedral

Really impressed by this exhibition today.

http://www.gloucestercathedral.org.uk/index.php?page=crucible

Dozens of works by a wide variety of contemporary sculptors, dotted around the cathedral inside and out. I hadn't realised it was such a blockbuster exhibition, and wandered in blurb-free. The sculptures are only identified via numbers, and as I hadn't picked up the map on the way in, I had the pleasure of looking around without being distracted by the names of the artist, which made a refreshing change from most exhibitions. 

The setting is what makes it though. Gloucester Cathedral is a stunner at the worst of times, and the sculptures just seem to fit in, rather than fighting with the architecture. Curated with a light touch- the pieces are just placed where they seem to fit, with no fanciness or pretension. No pointless pedestals or over-the-top spotlighting. Some sculptures hide from view in alcoves or behind pillars. A big, rearing bear in the main entrance. Abstract metalwork standing next to the tomb of King Edward II.

Quite a brave undertaking I reckon, perfectly executed.

I had a flick through the comment book- only a few morally outraged remarks.

Teapoles

This is shipped over from my Facebook page from a week or so back.

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust rear poison dart frog tadpoles in rebush tea because apparently its antioxidant properties reduce the risk of fungal infection and disease.

Little making-of of the Ikea 'Happy Inside' cats advert. Really nicely done, and possibly my girlfriend's favourite advert ever.

Visit me on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/benjamintmillsillustration

Last Emperor of China

Some sketches from a documentary on the TV, from which I'm working up a painting.

 

Masterchef

This is the big food critic chap from Masterchef Australia (which is far superior to UK Masterchef).

Horses

Hiroshige

I've got a calender of the Japanese print master Utagawa Hiroshige on my bedroom wall this year, and this is the image for August: Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (1857). I can't stop looking at it. To evoke so much atmosphere, and to so evocatively define the posture of the huddled figures with such relatively simple line and shapes...damn good. If there's ever been a better artistic representation of people sheltering from a rain shower, I'd like to see it. Awesome.

Post-it Sketch

These are some little thinky-scribbles from when I was planning out the Jackie Chan painting. I like this board of post-it-type labels- it gives a ready-made selection of different picture formats and orientations to think on.

Twit

You can now follow me on Twitter, if it so pleases:

twitter.com/benjamintmills

Cheers : )

Cards

I got a little heavy box of new business cards and postcards through from Hong Kong a few days ago, complete with tasty silver foil-stamped text.