Bring the Paint - Leicester Street Art Festival 2017

So it's been just over a month since Leicester's 'Bring The Paint' street art festival organised by CQA alongside Graff HQ/Inspirate and MONO. It was such a great and inspiring weekend that I wanted to share some of my photos and thoughts on the event.

Even though the majority of work I do these days is digital I have always loved traditional art forms and have been fascinated with street art since I was a teenager. That is why for 2017 I made it one of my goals to "Learn to Spray Paint". So it was very exciting to have the street art festival right on the doorstep of my studio space. It has brought some much-needed creativity and life into Leicester's Cultural Quarter.

The week running up to the event was great with artists working on huge pieces across the area. Just having a stroll on my lunch break meant I could see these super talented artists doing what they do best. Being able to meet and chat to them as they worked was great bonus too.

The day itself brought the Cultural Quarter alive in a way I have never seen before. The streets were full, there was music, a pop-up skate ramp, and people were painting all over. The LCB Depot was jam-packed with DJ's providing music throughout the day and delicious street food stalls.

Below are some of my snaps from the week including some of my favourite pieces.

Philth

WON ABC

Cantwo

N4T4

Hombre & Boogie

Mono

Alex Rubes

Bates

Supplies

My other half (who is a graffiti artist) had been given a spot to paint in the city and had suggested we paint something together. I had spray painted in our garden before but never out on the street so I was a bit nervous about making a mess. I sketched out a design with a brush and then he tidied up the line work with the spray can. After that we filled it in together, the results was a big blue face in a doorway on St James Street. (See images below)

It was so much fun collaborating with him and gave me the confidence to do some more. A few weeks later we created a large piece together for the Nottingham Street Art exhibition at The Surface Gallery. There are so many things I want to learn and I'm hoping to continue making art in our garden this summer :) Watch this space!

Painting on St James Street, Leicester

Our first finished collab

Our second collab piece in our garden

At The Surface Gallery

Norman The Caterpillar Book Launch

In October last year tragedy struck my social circle. Overnight my Facebook feed was full of tributes to a young man, Johnny Mackay, who had tragically taken his own life. I remembered Johnny fondly from my days of catching the bus home from school. He was always smiling, extremely friendly and would always stop and say hello. Suffering from a number of problems it turned out Johnny had reached a dark place in his life and felt like there was no other way out. Mental health has always been something important to me, with depression and anxiety issues plaguing many of my family and friends. After finding out about the suicide of a dear friend just a couple of years previously Johnny's death was a fresh reminder of the pain some people carry around inside. My friends Rac and Georgie, who were friends with Johnny, wanted to do something to help others who may find themselves in a similar dark place. Together with Johnny's mum and sister they started Johnny's Happy Place with the aim of creating an environment where people could be themselves, eat, laugh, create and socialise. They put out a call on Facebook for volunteers who wanted to help with their new project. After seeing the grief amongst my friends and feeling their pain I wanted to do something to help and immediately offered my services. The result was an illustration of Johnny balancing a bike on his chin (something he was very skilled at!) which they are now using as their logo. This spring Johnny's sister Charlotte got in touch about a children's story Johnny had written before he died. They wanted to self-publish and asked if I could do the illustrations. This was how I become involved with the lovely Norman the Caterpillar.

After months of working with Charlotte last weekend saw the book launch event for Norman. It was a wonderful afternoon with tons of activities for kids, an excellent reading of the book and loads of Norman-themed stuff. My absolute favourite thing was the Norman the Caterpillar cake made by Charlotte's cousin. An absolute masterpiece! Hundreds of people showed up, filling and overflowing the venue. By the end of the day over 200 copies of the book were sold. Below are some pictures from the day.

It was an honour to work on this project and be able to bring Johnny's story to life. It was a pleasure to think that last weekend hundreds of children met Norman and Cynthia for the first time and I can only hope they will go on to become a bedtime story favourite. The kids in our place absolutely adored it. The story has such a wonderful message and to quote Stephen Fry:

"Everyone who travels in a different direction will fall in love with this delightful book."

The book is available to buy from: Amazon and the Johnny's Happy Place Shop.

Less than a year since starting, the girls have hosted several fundraising events and have set up Johnny's Happy Place cafe in Kettering. The cafe is at the old Keystone building on Rockingham Road where I used to spend a lot of my free time at gigs and skateboarding. They completely transformed the space I remembered into a lovely little cafe which is currently open on Saturdays and serves drinks, cakes and hot food with the menu continuing to be expanded. If you're ever in the area you should drop by.

Arty Party Time!

So, last year my boyfriend and I hosted a birthday BBQ / arty party. He put up two giant boards in the yard and primed the wall outside the house. We then invited our family & friends to come along to paint with us. We spent the day enjoying the sunshine, trying to cook food on the BBQ and most importantly, painting! These were the results of that day!

That was last summer. The summer of 2015 has finally arrived and we decided we wanted to do it all over again this year! :D Our birthdays aren't until the end of the summer holidays but with the great sunshine we've been having recently we couldn't wait until then to have another party.

Then... the perfect opportunity arose!

The art team, at the company I used to work for, wanted to have a get together. One of the remote artists was visiting the UK and well it's only polite to show him a good time during his trip. My boyfriend, who currently works there, suggested they all come over for an arty party. I mean, who better to invite to an arty party than a whole art department! So we invited the entire art team plus some of the originals who like myself have long since left the company. It was great to get together for a catch-up and do what we do best, make art! :) It became a mini reunion / painting paint. We had such a fun night that I wanted to share the results with you all!

If you're a creative type I couldn't recommend it enough as a party theme! Plus if you've got kids in the family they'll absolutely love getting messy and drawing on such a big scale. So if you've got some space in your garden then stick up some boards, slap on some paint, choose your art materials (I definitely recommend paint pens for speed!) then invite all your creative friends over and wait and see what they create! :D