UPside exhibition Private View tomorrow night!!

Just a quick reminder that the UPside exhibition is currently on at the Medcalf Gallery, 38–40 Exmouth Market and the Private View will be happening tomorrow night (21 September) from 6–9pm if you have a spare evening and fancy popping along to check out the show...

Here's a sneak peak at a section from one of my works in the exhibition featuring one of my personal reasons to be cheerful – eating sushi! *nom nom nom!*

UPside exhibition

I've been busy the last few weeks producing work for the UPside exhibition, a group show that I'm taking part in along with 13 other artists. Yesterday we went along and sorted out hanging the work in the gallery.



I've got two pieces of work in the show, my series of portraits of my friends faces and another new piece, which you can just about make out in the photo above...

The exhibition opens today at the Medcalf Gallery on Exmouth Market, and will be up until Sunday 7 November (Mon-Sat 12–11pm, Sun 12–4pm).

UPside exhibition UPdate

Okay, so over the past few days I've been scribbling away working for the group exhibition that I'll be taking part in next month. You can read more about it here and here...


These are the first portraits of some of my friends that I've completed. I started working alphabetically through my list of friends, but quickly decided it would be more fun to work in a more haphazard approach and just draw people at random depending on my mood...

When I've completed all the portraits, I'll review the positioning of each portrait in relation to one another.

I'm enjoying the challenge of this project, to capture a good likeness of my friends and drawing a range of expressions, face shapes and hair styles. It's also quite interesting to concentrate solely on drawing a face with no added background details or elements.

The exhibition will be on from the 13 September until the 7 November at the Medcalf Gallery 40 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QE.

UPside - reasons to be cheerful

I'm taking part in a group exhibition, to be held next month, alongside 13 other artists as part of our ongoing Playroom collective.

The exhibition is entitled UPside and aims to present a varied collection of private fascinations, small joys, curiosities and indulgences. In short, our reasons to be cheerful!

I've been doing some initial thinking about the project and decided that my own personal reason to be cheerful was my friends. Good friends are always there when you need them, and even when you don’t. They are there to share the good times and can help make a bad situation seem less so.

Or to put it another way...



Anyway, inspired by my recent illustration for Amelia's Magazine which involved a series of portraits, I decided to produce a number of portraits of my friends. My idea was for the final piece to be large in size (around A1) but the individual images to be relatively small, so that the work will reward closer viewing, while also providing a pleasing overall aesthetic.

I mocked-up a version of how I envisage the final piece to look, using a series of faces from recent birthday cards I've produced for friends...


I'm going to be working on this project over the next few weeks, and will post some more updates in the meantime.

The exhibition will be held at the Medcalf Gallery in Exmouth Market in September, and I will post the details of the dates and times of the exhibition as soon as we've finalised everything.