'Secret London'- Serco Prize for Illustration 2012

The 2012 Association of Illustrators Serco Prize exhibition is currently on at the London Transport Museum. This year's theme was Secret London, with entries tasked with exploring hidden and lesser-known aspects of the capital's history, culture and geography. My illustration, London's Ancient Trees, can be seen there along with the other selected entries until December 10th.

Many thanks to the AOI, Serco and the LTM for putting a great show together, and a brilliant opening night. Congratulations to the winners, and look out for Finn Clark's winning design on posters throughout the tube network.

Shows

I had a couple more exhibition-heavy days a couple of weeks ago. Swung by the Brighton Ill. & GD London private view at Rochelle School in the East End. They made very good use of the space: it's pretty cavernous and spread over two floors, but they managed to fill the walls, which I found impressive. Good open rooms and well-lit also, especially on the bottom floor.

I also made a morning visit to New Designers in Islington, to check out my friend Chris Parsons' graduation exhibit. He's a product designer and belt-wearer and also my old running buddy. We wandered around and had a good look at the product design shows- some really good new creations, and some really weird ones too. Didn't have the time to look around much of the Illustration stuff though.

I would also recommend the the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery. This wasn't my favourite year, but it's always ace. And the National Gallery's Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries exhibtition was really good too. Equipped with the accompanying leaflet and its glossary of obscure art restoration terms, it was fascinating to nose at the broad range of paintings and read their stories, trying to guess the fakes from the real deal. It made me want to be an art restorer a little bit. And the Portrait Award always makes me want to run home and paint portraits.

Extracurricular

I've been spending too much time doing necessary stuff on the computer lately, getting a bit annoyed at not spending enough time drawing and painting.

I have been pretty active in terms of getting out and doing things though. I caught the now-finished Christen Kobke: Danish Master of Light exhibition at the National Gallery. He's a 19th century painter virtually unknown outside Denmark, but the man was incredible. Incisive documentation of everyday street scenes, use of landscape compositions that seem daring even today, and the aforemetioned mastery of light blew me away. Best exhibition I've seen in a long time.

I'm utterly gutted to realise I've just missed the Ronald Searle exhibition at the Cartoon Museum. I even set off there twice, both occasions being on mondays when the museum's closed... Damn.

I will though be swinging by the PV of the Brighton Uni Illustration & Graphic Design exhibition in London on thursday. I caught their Brighton show last month, so I'm keen to see what they'll do for this one.

Also went with my girlfriend to the WWT London Wetlands Centre in Barnes a couple of weeks back. The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust sites are some of my favourite places in the world, and it's an organisation I'm very passionate about. The London Centre is brilliant; less developed than Slimbridge, but moreso than Arundel. The landscaping particularly is awesome. It's almost in the centre of London, but apart from the planes flying overhead you'd never know. A full-on oasis in the city.

Degree Show

Way back in the stuttering summer I had my degree show down in Brighton (top). A brilliant end to three years, and incredibly satisfying to see my work up alongside that of my coursemates on the shiny white walls.

The paintings are taken from two documentary illustration projects I'd produced in the preceding months, one based on the UK's disgustingly abundant vacant property, and the second (the rightmost trio) based on the construction of a new sports stadium. The latter formed a book relating Darwin's theories on the struggle for life to modern humanity's interactions with the planet.

...of course, with the paintings separated from the books they are produced for, this all falls a bit flat.

For our show at the Rag Factory off Brick Lane a month later, I dropped the Darwin paintings in favour of some smaller illustrations from a picture book, trying to show a bit more narrative. This show was also ace, particularly on the busy private view night. Everyone seemed to get very excited about the gallery's multi-coloured floor.