Logo commission

I was recently asked to draw a logo for a photography project to be launched in Nicaragua, to be called 'Nicaragua through a lens'.

The idea is to empower children through giving them access to decent cameras, training and the opportunity to develop a career, as well as football training, which all sounds fantastic.

Creativity workshop Southbank Centre, London

Last weekend I was asked to take part in an open day at the Southbank Centre in central London for their 'Strive' youth programme:

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/strive-open-day-for-young-people-1001388

In a drop-in workshop I asked them to concentrate and ask themselves:
"What are you striving for?" and finish the sentence: "I strive to..."

I then invited them to express their answers either in images or text, a sort of 'logo for living' or personal manifesto, on canvas bags. After some thought, and drawing, some examples:

It was great to meet such a variety of young people all interested in different things, but some just struggling to focus on what they really were interested in. Hopefully they will keep asking themselves the question and it can help them on their journey...

Thanks to Jess Ihejetoh for asking me to take part.

Pinterest and drawing every day

Ok, it's the 1st of February - woohoo, January is out of the way!

At the beginning of the year I set myself a small challenge, of drawing/printing/creating something every day. It's observational drawing mainly because I could do with the practise.

Here are a few examples from last month, indoors and out and about:

I've uploaded the images onto a Pinterest board:

https://uk.pinterest.com/sandrahowgate/drawn-to-it/

Graphic Recording London

This was for My Plus Consulting's Graduate Recruiter's Disability Café Club. 

http://www.myplusconsulting.com/index.php

Here are some of the images I produced 'live' on the day (and coloured in afterwards) they were sent out to all who attended:

The aim of the café club is an informal discussion space for tuning into disabled candidate's needs and honing recruiter's skills to make their place of employment more attractive to disabled graduates, a win-win situation for all.

Screen print workshop

This week I was running a screen printing workshop in Deptford at The Albany arts centre. The day was pretty hectic due to the high interest in screen printing! But some decent prints were made, including these ones:

Next week I'm doing it again but I've prepped some stencils for people to use, if they want to, in case the whole concept is too mind bending, as sometimes it's hard to think in 'opposites'.

If you've never printed this way the stencil cut-outs act as a barrier and so when squeezing ink through the screen mesh, the stencil area will remain free of ink, creating simple shapes and if you're lucky, an image! Simples.

Thanks to Carolyn Nicoll at Thames Barrier Print Studio for asking me to roll my sleeves up and get stuck in:
http://www.thamesbarrier-printstudio.co.uk/

Etsy Shop - NEW!

I have opened an Etsy shop for some of my screen prints - please have a look here, I've called it SandraScreenprints:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SandraScreenprints

Here are three of the prints that are in the shop:

Graphic recording - at a wedding!

This was such a lovely day. On 30th December I attended a couple's wedding in Brighton.

It was classic 'Brighton Boho' with a camper van to take the bride to the registry office, 7 glorious bridesmaids dressed in deepest red, and even a golden retriever as the second ring bearer!

From start to finish it was just fantastic, as well as the couple and their family and friends being a very merry crowd, and it gave me loads of material to 'draw on', which I did in this beautiful Fabriano sketchbook:

After the event I collated all of the sketches and drawings from photos in to one big 'story of the day' and the couple will have it printed onto an A2 size canvas for their memories to live on:

Many thanks for the opportunity to work on this Carol, Naomi and Paul!