Pattern Repeat and Heart Fawn napkins

Batten down the hatches - stormy weather here!

The clocks went back last night and gaining an hour today, I went for an early morning walk at Simonsbath on Exmoor (pronounced Simmonsbath). Got totally drenched through, but exhilarating nonetheless as Exmoor is incredibly beautiful at this time of year. Then to the studio for a spot of screen-printing. It never feels like work whether it's Monday or Sunday and anyway I was dying to sample print my new napkins.

I had designed a simple repeat background using some of my notebook drawings selecting those that would balance well together as silhouettes, as for this design I wanted to create a single colour print - this was how I started...

(in case you didn't recognise them here they are in their full colour glory all from my notebook..!)

I then developed the design by mirroring and balancing the elements until I felt it worked well as a repeat pattern - now in perfect digital repeat...

I scaled down the design and placed it in a heart shape, carefully cutting around the pattern to keep an uneven edge. I then added the Fawn because it's Christmas!

They come in packs of two - screen printed on 100% natural linen. I love the fact that you don't see the heart shape until you open them fully...

'Heart Fawn' - designed with some of my best friends in mind...

A postcard from Simonsbath today, in the foreground Moorland Bracken and Chip dressed appropriately for the weather ...

'Heart Fawn' linen napkins are £26.50 for a pack of two. Screen-printed with love (!) the price includes UK postage (Please email me further details and for shipping costs for the rest of the world).
(Heart Rabbit and Pheasant coming soon!)

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Sweet Chestnut brown

Kicking through the leaves every morning with Chip and it's beautiful! I love this time of year when the woods are becoming the colours of gold, bronze and rust.

Unbelievably vicious spikes on these Sweet Chestnut cases, the spikes face all directions making them painful to collect, dangerous to prize open but interesting and fun to draw.

My days are full up at the moment screen-printing, sending out orders, designing a new tray collection, illustrating for Buckfast Abbey as well as getting stock together for the Selvedge Winter Fair in a few weeks - all very exciting but little time for my notebook... So, I drew these chestnuts late in the evening on Saturday night (multi-tasking!) drinking a glass of wine and watching 'The Jane Austen Book Club'.

(and woke up on Sunday morning dreaming of Hedgehogs)

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Cyclamen pink

Last week driving through the local countryside here in North Devon, I spotted a bank of naturalised Cyclamen. It was a narrow country lane, but just had to have a closer look. I pulled in at the next slightly wider space and put my hazard lights on. Suddenly the road became a major highway (Sod's law!) so had to race back and move the car (I did get a quick picture on my phone). Apologies if you were there - yes, held up for a bank of Cyclamen!

I often plant them (they always die). Fragrant to be close to, elegant in form as well as colour, (not stolen from the bank on this occasion by the way), heart shaped leaves and lovely to draw.

Car stopping pink and white in this Devon bank..!

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

My favourite things - Still life with Chris Taylor vase.

Another in 'A few of my favourite things series'...

A few months ago I went to the private view of an exhibition at White Moose gallery (in the North Devon market town, Barnstaple). As soon as I saw the latest work of the talented ceramicist Chris Taylor I knew I had to own a piece. Just like that - fell in love with it and this piece in particular.

In case it isn't obvious why this particular piece - it was the Indigo blue and copper glazing, the rose like repeat pattern, the creatively distressed erosion and controlled roughness of the finish. Take a closer look at Chris's ceramics here.

Also of course - as anyone who's met him will know, he's a thoroughly nice bloke.

Selvedge Winter Fair 2013

For the last few weeks I've been sourcing linen, ordering more screens and screen printing new colour-ways of some of my most popular designs and I'm really looking forward to exhibiting these at the Selvedge Winter Fair at the end of November.

Mr. Rabbit is looking very festive in screen printed bronze and Blackberry black

I take the photos of my work, my studio has good North light and so providing the day is bright enough I can (usually) take decent product shots using a tripod, that are good enough for press and other publicity. Below, Budgie and Chrysanth runner and Adams Pearmain apples.

New natural linen and colour ways for my Twine table runners. Although available with an alternative plain edge these now have a beautiful hemstitched finish. 

They look even better in reality!

Positively gleaming in teal and bronze, Fawn cushion (12" x 24").

Selvedge Winter Fair takes place 29th - 30th November - organised by the fab design led textile magazine Selvedge. If you love textiles, I can guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Find more information about the Winter Fair here.

I look forward to seeing you there! 

Colour from the season - Pine needle green

It's that time of year when the weather turns chilly and the concrete floor of my studio acts like a giant refrigerator, so for anyone else suffering from the cold, blocked up nose, or stuffy head, I thought it was timely to bring a few freshly cut Pine branches and their bang on trend colours to the notebook...

Just in case you are still feeling cold (or lonesome) this video of Laurel and Hardy singing 'Trail of the Lonesome Pine' works for me..!




...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Seaweed green

Every now and then I open a particular Photoshop file on my computer which contains layers of seaweed drawings (not dissimilar to the image below), because I find endless inspiration in the random piled up imagery that's very much like seaweed strewn on the shore. So when one day last week I was on the beach with Chip, I decided it was possibly as seasonal as it ever would be, to document a few of these intense sub marine hues in my notebook and share the pleasure of it.

Seaweed (aka Marine Algae) comes in all sorts of extraordinary natural forms and the three main colours are green, brown and red and of course shades of these.

The drawings were the motivation behind my 'Seaflower' fabric design. A surreal mix of Seaweed, Dahlias and Chrysanths.

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Chinese Lantern orange

Keeping a notebook of seasonal colours was I seem to recall, going to be for one year only, but then I discovered that it gave me a greater awareness of the plants and colours around me and kept me drawing regularly, which just in itself has to be good!

I've kept my blog closed to comments as I'm not at all thick skinned, can be easily put off, and can ponder far too long on emails, but thank you to those people who have contacted me, I've really enjoyed hearing from you! Quite unexpectedly it's also brought work my way - which has also been a great pleasure.

Walking Chip today I noted - Rowan berries going over, Spindle pods starting to ripen, Rosa Rugosa hips in full and seemingly never ending splendour, Acorns forming on the Oak, Blackberries ripening or ready to pick - all previous notebook pages and which remind me that another year's passing.

Just when I was wondering what could possibly grab my attention next, whamm! I spotted these fiery coloured Chinese Lanterns (Physalis alkelengi) in the local market. They'd look great screen printed I decided, so that's how I've coloured them...

Looking pretty hot here in a 1950's Freeform Poole Pottery vase, the dog ('s bottom) is by the marvellous (and very collectable) ceramicist David Cleverly! see more of his work here

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Natural Pattern - Dock Green

I happen to like Docks - not only because they are such a great remedy for Nettle stings, but also for the delicate skeletal patterns on the humble Dock leaf as it starts to decompose -

For anyone who may not have fully appreciated them yet - I thought I'd highlight four of North Devon's finest...

Dock shadows...

and bolder - alongside stripes of Dock green, brown, deep pink and shades in between...

p.s. outline pen and ink - infil the leaf itself - stripes experimental - colours CMYK
First day of September and there's a definite chill in the air!

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Zinnia Pink

If you've been missing a regular dose of uplifting botanical colour - my apologies! I've been away and busy at Cornwall Design Fair!

It's fitting then to return with an explosion of colourful Zinnias - which in the language of flowers can mean absence, or thoughts of an absent friend!

Intensely saturated colours, I discovered these last week in a village shop in Chudleigh Knighton (near-ish to Dartmoor). The contrast of the tiny golden yellow starred pistils against the vibrant magenta petals is clashing and dynamic, but somehow manages to be not at all garish! A single red/yellow flower completed the fiery posy.

I wasn't familiar with Zinnia so it took me ages to work out what these flowers are called - (thank goodness for my RHS A-Z ) Those of you who live in their native Mexico and South West USA will (I imagine), be far more familiar with them!

Thank you to the Le Grice family for selecting my work for the second year to exhibit in the fabulous  drawing room at Trereife House during Cornwall Design Fair. It was a really successful show, hard work but a lot of fun!

(p.s. the Artisan feature about me in the September issue of Period Living magazine is now online! Read it here)

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

The little things - uplifting articles!

The little things in life that make the difference...

...After a fabulous holiday in France driving 2,300 miles in my VW van, (only one minor incident involving a very sneaky lowdown bollard!). Meandering from the Loire valley to the Pyrenees, exploring a landscape that was more varied, sun drenched and inspirational than I had ever imagined. Highlights included the breathtaking drive over the Millau Viaduct (designed by architect Sir Norman Foster), Chateaus, vines, vineyards and wine! Miles of empty straight roads landscaped with shady Plane and Poplar trees, fields of Sunflowers, Vultures flying like great planks in the sky, and lastly to Bilbao in Spain making time for a visit to the Guggenheim museum (Riotous Baroque exhibition!) and at last getting to see Frank Gehry's architectural masterpiece. Phew - all incredible!

...avenues of Poplars

Olargues (Haut Languedoc)...

On arriving home, I must admit to feeling just a little bit flat - returning to the realities of life again! so it was really uplifting to find a complimentary issue of the latest Period Living magazine (with a five page Artisan feature on my studio/work!) on my door mat! So a huge thank you to Rachel Crow and Period Living magazine for such a lovely article - on sale now..!

Colour from the season - Sunflower yellow

Young Sunflowers rotate their heads throughout the day to track the sun (called heliotropism) and driving past fields of them, almost every single one, in each regimented row, is facing the same direction. Therefore, on one side of a road they may all be facing you, on the other side you are looking at their backs, amazing!

Challenging to draw - I almost stopped here. A bee considered landing on my notebook which was very flattering...























Are there any flowers more full of Summer's sunshine? Hello August!
...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Passion Flower blues

I'm starting to think that using slower drying oil paint (in an Impressionist style) might have been a better bet in such very hot sunlight, rather than my usual dip pen/ink/acrylic notebook sketching. Drawing this flower a few days ago in the Pyrenees (where they were wildly rampant), the paint dried before I had time to colour a single petal, the ink persistently clogged the nib, the flower wilted and then closed as I drew it (do they only last a single day?) and I was also wilting in the heat. So...

...not so much passion in the sketch of this extra-ordinary flower, but strength and sharpness of shadow and a fabulously intense colour palette...

  

Phew !

...from my seasonal (Mediterranean) colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Wild Artichoke Thistle purple

Globe Artichokes growing wild at the edge of a small field of gnarled vines. As I started drawing this one, an entire army of earwigs marched out of it!! Delicious with butter and lemon, but worth growing I've always thought, for these reptilian heads, their architectural leaves and their astonishing purple spikes...

slightly overheated drawing outside in fierce sunlight.

...from my seasonal (Mediterranean) colour sample notebook.

Colours from the season - Corn grass yellow

Ripe Corn coloured grass, Dragonflies (not drawn yet), strong shadows, Poplars, Summer sunshine, lazy days! These grasses (unidentified) were far taller than me and a single graceful detail from the landscape.

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colour from the season - Cornflower blue

Cornflowers are a very unique blue, looking them up I discovered why!

"The ions that bind in cornflower blue

Roses are red and cornflowers are blue, but both flowers are coloured by the same red pigment. This conundrum has puzzled people for 90 years, but finally scientists have worked out what makes cornflowers blue, publishing their findings in Nature. Kosaku Takeda of Tokyo Gakugei University in Japan, and colleagues, used x-ray diffraction to investigate the structure of the cornflower pigment. They discovered that the bright blue colour comes from the arrangement of four metal ions, which bind to a complex of six different molecules, made up from two pigments. This pigment structure is completely different to the pigment found in other blue flowers. A strategically placed iron ion and magnesium ion give the blue colour, while two calcium ions give the structure stability. "This tetrametal complex may represent a previously undiscovered type of supermolecular pigment," says Takeda".

from The Guardian Thursday 11th August 2005.

They remind me of Van Gogh paintings - perfect with Poppies! Difficult to match such incredible Iron and Magnesium ions against printed CMYK colours(!) but here's my very best attempt...

Happy 4th July! and very Happy Birthday to my son Josse! xx. This is a detail from his Graphic Design degree show at Central Saint Martins a few weeks ago. He's designed a Font which can't swear - brilliant!! See more of his work at.. http://cargocollective.com/Jossepickard

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

Colours from the season - Wild Rose pink

I've had a touch of designer's block lately! 

The Ash has formed bunches of elegant keys, the hedgerows are full of Pink Campion, Buttercups, Ferns and Foxgloves. I still have the Beetle and (broken) Blackbird egg that was left on my doorstep, I've thought about drawing all of these and more, but haven't managed to put pen to paper. 

Until yesterday that is, when I spotted these roses rambling...well...wildly in the garden. Aren't they amazing? I think so and drawing them made me feel HAPPY!

Heart shaped petals, Wild Rose pink and yellows, to celebrate the start of Summer. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.

The little things - favourite things...

The little things in life that make the difference...

...meeting up with a whole tent-full of amazingly creative people at the Bovey Fair, here are a few of my favourites!


The wonderful graphic and organic jewellery of Chie Mannami - on the stand next to me. You can't have this particular piece as it's now mine! But lots more of her work on her website here.

These are Clare Crouchman's intricate wall ceramics, diagonally opposite me, her work reminded me of Dartmoor - it was like looking across at the most beautiful landscapes. See her website here

Clive Bowen's highly collectable earthenware ceramics, I'm a huge fan, and such a nice man! See more of his work here

Beautiful ceramics by Adam Buick, reminiscent of the Pembrokeshire landscape where he lives - see more on his site here

Great to catch up with Pacha Design and their latest eco furniture collection made from locally sourced, reclaimed slate and wood. See more of their work here

Last but not least, some of my own flora and fauna at the private view!
(Thank you to Anna Trussler at the Devon Guild for taking such a nice pic! See this and more of their festival photos on their facebook page here)

A rustic selection! - can't be helped, surrounded as I am by old A frames and moorland!

The Contemporary Craft Fair

I'm exhibiting at the Contemporary Crafts Fair this weekend in Bovey Tracey (near Dartmoor in South Devon). It's celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year and showcasing nearly 200 high quality designer/makers work. I last exhibited there 7yrs ago! so I'm really looking forward to to meeting up again with friends and customers old and new. Come along and say hello if you're in Devon this wk/end - I've heard a rumour that it's going to be sunny!

Chip in the morning sunlight in the studio. Waiting patiently for me to finish working out the stand layout and take her for a walk...

P.S. A big thank you to the person who left the (dead) beetle and egg in a jamjar outside my front door! which I hope to draw when I have a bit more time x -

Colour from the Season - Dandelion Seedhead Grey

Yesterday I woke with the idea that I would deconstruct the parts of a Dandelion seed head and put them back together. It's great to wake up feeling inspired and I decided to act on it.

It was the most gorgeous May day, so I drew outside. No wonder Dandelions are so prolific – a brilliant piece of design, the parachuted seed heads take off on the slightest of breezes and little hooks to anchor them when they touch ground. I'm afraid there could be quite a lot of collateral damage in the garden next year.

Later that day I went to a crowded memorial service for industrial/graphic designer, teacher, mentor, automata maker and friend Tony Mann.
Tony inspired many people, including me. He had forceful opinions, especially about design and education, but was always ready to pass on his extensive knowledge and give constructive advice. One of the things he said to me was "What is it that has actually inspired you Sam? Don't ever write inspired by nature about your work, it's just wishy washy nonsense."

Which I've always taken on board, therefore...

Inspired by a Dandelion seed head – Analysis of the construction and colour.

(Just heard that I/my studio have been selected for an Artisan feature in Period Living magazine - very exciting!!) 

N.B. Discover the brilliant yellow of the Dandelion flower in an earlier notebook page here!

...from my seasonal colour sample notebook.