| fashion musings, art-inspiration and thoughts from my home studio…

London MCM Expo this weekend and a new comic book!

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

Just a super quick one to say that I will be at the MCM London Expo this weekend selling my small press snacks and art prints. If you’re visiting the Expo I’ll be based in Comic Village on stand D3 – which, at the moment, I think is correct in the highlighted map below! I’m not too sure where that is in terms of the overall Expo hall, but you will be able to find me once you’re in Comic Village I’m sure! I will be next to the talented and wonderful Richy K Chandler of Tempo Lush and Van Nim!

As well as selling new art prints and smaller A5 ones from my Ctrl Z series (a new range of digital fashion illustrations!) I will be selling my new comic book “Four-point Lily/ Gentle Breeze” (£4):

For more information about the London MCM Expo visit there site here: http://www.mcmcomiccon.com/london/ I recommend buying tickets in advance because the queue to buy on the day can be long, and a few hours!

If you’re not visiting but would like to buy any of my work, just drop me an email. I am in the middle of setting up an online shop, so details will be revealed soon!

Hope to see you there if you’re going! And don’t forget – if you have a smart phone and 3G connection you can now buy my small-press work via card instead of cash!

Over and out x

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Comica Comiket at Central St Martins – This Saturday!

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

I’m very excited to announce that I will be selling my small-press books and art prints at the Comica Comiket this Saturday! The Comiket fair will be held at Central St Martins – in the Platform Theatre by Kings Cross. Entry is free and the fair will run from 11am – 6.30pm. There will be plenty of independent publishers, small-press artists like myself selling their wares – definitely worth coming to see what’s out there, or to shop >_<”

comica2013

If you attended last year’s Comica you might remember that I took part in the Drawing Parade – this is happening again this year and the line is up amazing! There will be a rotation of different artists showcasing their skills every 30mins on stage, it’s wonderful to watch and great to see how everyone’s art is created.

PLUS – for the first time, I will be offering original A4 watercolour fashion sketches. These will be £10 and in full colour washes. Here’s an example of one I did at a beauty event at the end of last year – what’s not to love?

ZLiew_Live#2WEB

I will post the details of my location in the theatre as soon as this is released, for not, why not memorize the map to get there around Kings Cross, and hope to see you there!

platform-theatre-map

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Seeing double! Illustrations for ShopStyle SS13

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

Since the weather’s been a bit gloomy lately I thought this would be the perfect time to share with you some summer-inspired illustrations that I recently created for ShopStyle’s sponsorship for London Fashion Weekend and Berlin Fashion Week.

This was quite a fun brief – to create one girl that could carry two looks for the different Fashion Weeks – for London, we kept with the Vodafone brand colour palette and dressed her up with the current trends, for Berlin, she was more sporty, and had a different colour palette altogether.

London or Berlin? Which one is your favourite? >_<”

BFW-13_Final_WEB_cu And because I’m based in London, here are some action shots of my illustration during London Fashion Weekend. Enjoy! x

^^cheesy pic =_=”

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Webcomic Artist Swap Project

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

You may or may not know that last week I was involved in #WASP – a webcomic artist swap project involving twelve comic artists based in the UK, swapping each other’s strips for a week. The idea behind it was that someone would draw your webcomic strip that week, and in turn, you would draw someone else’s webcomic strip – drawing their characters and telling their story, in your own style!

There’s a great illustration of this concept here. >_<”

For this project I drew Richy K Chandler’s Lucy the Octopus webcomic. This was exceptionally fun because I’m a big fan of Richy’s story and characters. I knew that I wanted to draw Lucy as a teenager but I wanted to keep her personality and the feeling that you were watching Lucy, and you felt sympathy for her, as you would do with the original strips. Anyway, here was my illustration of Richy’s strip for the #WASP project:

And I also added an extra illustration of Lucy with Puffy her pet pufferfish:

I loved drawing these characters, it was great to work on a strip you love, and interpret everything in your own way…

Which nicely brings me to who drew Le Mime for me that week:

Evelyn Hewlett of Fruit Machine! I wrote a one off Le Mime special for her to draw, tying in her webcomic (Fruit Machine) within the theme, giving her the opportunity to draw all the Mime characters in her own way. This is what Evelyn came up with:

I love it so much I may have to print it out and frame it! Thanks so much Evelyn, I love how you have depicted all the different characters, they feel so right, as if they are really trapped in an alternative reality >_<”

To round things off I also took part in a #WASP radio interview during the London Super Comic Con. You can hear the interview by Alex Fitch with Richy, Nich Angel, Naniiebim and I here originally on Panel Borders, for Resonance 104.4 FM.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the little strip swap! Why not check out the #WASP site to see all the comic work that was produced?

Enjoy x

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London Super Comic Convention + iZettle

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

First convention of the year alert! I’ll be attending the LSCC this weekend at the Excel Centre and I will be armed and ready to take your orders with my iZettle – which means I now except credit/debit cards at my stores!

I’ll be placed alongside the brilliant Tempo Lush and Van Nim just by the exit – you can see from the map below, all arrows point to us >_<”. There will be plenty of amazing artists to visit and comics to buy all over, but if you’re coming along, do pop round to say hello!

For information about LSCC visit their site here.

As I mentioned above, I have now installed iZettle on my iPhone. This is a portable device which allows me to take credit/debit card orders. So you don’t have to worry about carrying too much cash, or not being able to buy something from me if you only have your card on you.

I have fully tested this device and it works very well. How does it work? Simple…

I type the amount the order is on my iPhone and insert your card into the device.
Payment is then authorised (over WiFi or 3G).
You sign your name on the screen, using my handy Cosmanaut pen.
You enter your email address on the following screen to receive a receipt.
Payment is processed!

It’s immediate, so you should receive a receipt up to an hour later.

For more information about iZettle visit their site here.

Hope to see you there this weekend!

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Happy Valentines!

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

Just a quick one to say – Happy Valentines! It’s just another excuse to eat a lot of cake right? Or, in my situation, visit the dentist to get a filling >_<” (so, maybe I shouldn’t eat cake…)

My illustration for the day is actually taken from my Higgs webcomic from Monday. It’s a sweet illustration of Caramella showering Mezzo-noni with flowers. I hope you like it, and if you’re on Tumblr, why not follow The Higgs for more weekly updates?

Sweetness (not sweets) fill the air!

Posted in For the love of..., Illustration of the day! | Leave a comment

Drawn: Transeasonal Pencil Skirt

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

Finally I have updated my blog! Yeah, I know it’s been a while since my new years’ resolution update but time has just flown past – scary to think that we are nearing Easter already…

I promised I would post work of my digital painting so here is my latest piece, and an ode to transeasonal dressing with this bright and beautiful SS13 pencil skirt by Jonathan Saunders.

On the left is how I would style this for our current climate, tights and a long woollen waistcoat. On the right is how I would style this for warmer weather, kitten heels and a crisp short-sleeve shirt.

I had a lot of fun (and a bit of a headache) producing this – I’m a traditionalist at heart so digital painting is a new and exciting venture for me. I didn’t want to create something that looked artificial – an effect that is so easy to end up producing in digital (cringe), but I wanted to use digital to its advantage – in promoting graphic details and shape, something you can’t do with watercolours and ink.

The close-up above just goes to show how manic I find it to neaten this stuff up, but, it was fun and I’ll admit it needs more work but for now, I’m happy with it.

I hope you like it! x

Posted in Fashion Inspiration, Illustration of the day! | 1 Comment

Resolutions, revisited…

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

Looking through my blog I realised that at the start of 2012 I drew this little New Years Resolution comic which made me laugh and cringe at what I had achieved and what I totally missed…

I can happily report that I managed to achieve some things, and am still on the fence with others*. But who cares, the fun part is just drawing them right? So, here are my resolutions, revisited. Some I managed to achieve in 2012, and others, well, lets hope I get them done this year!

What are your New Year resolutions? Enjoy >_<”

2013-resolutions-web

*So, I finally saved up enough to buy myself an Alexander Wang Diego bucket bag (see its beauty here). But, having saved, I can’t decide whether I should go ahead and buy it, or save for the good of my unreliable future! Typical =_=”

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The Higgs Webcomic has launched!

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Cobaltcafe

I’m very excited to announce that my new webcomic The Higgs has launched on Tumblr! I know that it launched last night (officially >_<”) so I thought I’d share with you a little back story about where this project came from and my thoughts behind it…

I started sketching out The Higgs about ten years ago after I finished university. I was in-between temping jobs and was unsure of my future. On a whim I entered a competition to create “catchy characters with a lovable edge” and after a summer of drawing, Caramella, Mezzo-noni and Bianca from The Higgs, were born.

I can’t remember what competition I entered and obviously nothing came of it but I remember having a lot of fun illustrating these guys and expressing myself through them. Here’s an illustration that I managed to dig up from the early days:

Spot-the-Difference

And another one

Falling

I enjoyed the little details, illustrating the clothes and making up little stories about The Higgs – now, the style and way that I draw them are really different to my early sketches, but I think they fit better now and feel better

fm_chibi-web2

I’m glad that nothing came out of it and that I didn’t develop these characters until now. After years of sketching The Higgs for fun I feel like I know them like the back of my hand. They are my friends, my story and I feel very comfortable to share them with everyone. And confident of my knowledge of fashion enough to illustrate the many beautiful pieces out there

I hope you have enjoyed this little back story and I hope you will enjoy The Higgs as the webcomic develops.

Whoop! The Higgs has finally launched!

PS no similarities to the Boson Higgs particle of course :p

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Another Festive Competition!

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Cobaltcafe

OK, I know my Clippy Bag competition is still going on (finishing Monday 10th Dec) but I drew this fashion sketch the other day at an event and I’d like to give her away as an original, because I am loving all the support you are all giving me at the moment!

Since a lot of my competitions are on Facebook, this time, I’d like to give her away to someone on the Twittersphere

This is a super quick one – just to Follow me and RT my tweets to win this illustration and on Monday 5pm I will pick a winner from those who are following me and have retweeted my tweets about this!

What’s not to love? Get RTing! >_<”

Terms & Conditions

This is a Twitter only competition.

To enter you have to follow me on Twitter (https://www.twitter.com/cobaltcafe) and RT my tweets about this competition.

I will pick a winner at exactly 5pm GMT on Monday 10^th December. Any RTs to the tweets made after this time will not be entered.

I will notify the winner via a private message on Twitter first, so keep a lookout if you get a message from me. As soon as the winner has confirmed that they accept my prize, I will make the announcement.

If the winner does not get back to me within 24 hrs I will randomly pick another winner.

Woot! Good luck!

Posted in Competition Time, Illustration of the day! | Leave a comment

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