T&C Inspired: Jessica Gowling

After all the excitement of uncontained, we've finally had a moment or two to catch up on the interweb, and welcome our creative friends to our blog! The lovely Jessica Gowling has shared some of her favourite work with us <3

Name: 

Jessica Gowling

Where are you from: 

Canada, the great white north

Tell us a little bit about your work: 

I am an avid animal lover, and my company name is "nature's my friend," (because we make art together). I am obsessed with textures: fur, scales, and similar repetitive natural patterns have always been some of my favorite things to draw. I suppose I would label my work as "animal portraiture" since I mostly focus on individual creatures; I view them as special beings with their own stories to tell.

Who, what and/or where inspires you: 

Wild animals, line, process, detail, nature, texture, time, voids, fleeting moments, drawing, touch, learning, memory, intimacy, nostalgia, narrative, chance, love, anatomy, letters, postage stamps, and Canadiana collectively motivate my practice.

What’s your favourite tea: 

Green tea is always a go-to but I am currently loving a loose leaf Mango Apricot tea as well.

Links:

BLOG: http://naturesmyfriend.wordpress.com

SHOP: http://www.etsy.com/shop/naturesmyfriend 

TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/jessicagowling

I adore these postcard sets, not just because I am the fan of a creature, but how she's photographed them for her shop too. I want a nice rustic door to put some pretty things on

We love a wolf as well! 

x

YCC WEEKLY SCORE FEATURING TEA & CRAYONS

read our lovely interview by the even lovelier Young Creative Council <3

What a week! It's been a busy one! Last week I mean, haha, this week is set to be even busier for us crayons! And our collective, sort of late Valentine's present if you will, was our lovely feature by the fab-u-lous Young Creative Council! Thanks to them lovelies for our wonderful feature and letting the world have a little peek at our loveable collective, also massive thanks to awesome crayonette Rachel L for her massive contribution to the article. (We love you Rach!) Also, definitely check our all the other Weekly Score features, amazing work featured and the YCC's other awesomeness, including their live briefs, which are great for all you fellow creatives!

Burst Magazine

Hi all! Hope you're all having a good week, yes?

A little feature I just wanted to share with you :) The lovely Ali from Burst Magazine invited me to take part in their Pen & Pencil illustration issue, and it’s online now! Yay!
Go download (it's free!), there's lots of visual treats in store.

DIGITAL ARTS: COLLECTIVE FEATURE

Hello lovelies! Well it's the weekend again, hip hip hooray and the girls and I are going to be raising a cheeky glass thanks to Digital Arts for their wonderful feature on us and our collective! Lisa Giles-Keddie has written a lovely piece about how we came together, what inspired us to become a collective, and there's tips and advice from us all. It's fresh on the news stands but I think they will be selling like hot cakes, our local Smiths only had a few left!

We're very grateful for the top support they've shown us, it's fantastic to be featured in a magazine that has inspirational content and a zest for fresh talent. I noticed as I was reading through the mag that the lovely editor Neil Bennett has a portrait illustrated by our very own Abby Wright!

It's overwhelming to see our work in print -after our collective was featured in Digital Artist in May, we felt ecstatic and inspired! Thank you to each and every one of you who goes out and gets a copy of the mag- we hope you find it a good read! We are very happy illustrators!

Feature on The Young Creatives!

We've had a lovely feature written about us over on the fabulously inspiring Young Creatives blog - if you are young (or even if you're not) and creative then you need to checking out this blog! Packed with features of up-and-coming artists and designers, reviews and other fun stuff. Here's a lil extract:

Founded in October last year, the collective is the perfect way of showcasing the work of these six talented ladies who, from all over the U.K., ‘share their knowledge and creativity’ not only with each other but with their many fans too.

You can read the full post right here.

Thanks YC! ^.^

Tea & Crayons featured on Creature Mag!

Exciting news! The lovely people over at Creature Mag have featured Tea & Crayons this week - take a look!

"Creature loves this kind of co-operation, support and pro-activity among artists. we probably wouldn’t have discovered all these talents if they only represented themselves. It’s certainly a worthwhile endeavour, each illustrator brings their own skills, knowledge and contacts to the group, the whole collective benefits. Keep up the great work, ladies."

Such lovely words; and so true! T&C is going from strength to strength, and I'm so proud to be a part of it. Our self promo campaign is coming together, in the next few weeks we should be able to start the process of mailing things out!

xx

Kayleigh's work in Cellardoor magazine

Hi there guys and gals. This is just a brief post to show you one of my illustrations that is featured in the latest issue of Cellardoor magazine - Issue 5, The Magic of Winter.

I was asked to illustrate the promo image for the film 'Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist' for an interview with author Rachel Cohn. It's great seeing your hard work put into context, so please check out the latest issue of Cellardoor magazine to see for yourself!

Tigerprint Feature

Hello lovelies!
We hope you have all had a lovely Christmas. Tea and Crayons aren't back to work just yet, but we do have something exciting to post...

We were approached recently by the very lovely Victoria at Tigerprint who really liked our work. She thought the Tea and Crayons collective would be of interest to readers of the Tigerprint blog, and so asked to do a feature on us. Of course we said yes!


If you don't already know about Tigerprint (which I'm sure most of you do), here's a little bit about the business, taken from the about section of their blog.


"The Tigerprint business was formed in 1996 to supply exclusive cards and wrapping to Marks and Spencer. We now design and manufacture over 1500 new products created every year. We continue to expand into new and growing areas like toys, games and stationery. Marks and Spencer is now the fourth biggest retailer of cards in the UK."

We answered a few questions for Victoria, compiled them in to one Tea and Crayons - sized manageable chunk, and here is the finished post :D


We are all super pleased with the feature and would like to say a massive thank you to Victoria for getting in touch and making it happen. Please follow the link and have a read guys!

Company Magazine Finalists

Happy Christmas eve eve!

We hope you're all having a lovely festive season! Tea & Crayons are taking a little break over Christmas, to eat, drink and generally be merry!

I just wanted to share some exciting news. Both myself (Rachel P) and Abby were shortlisted for Company Magazine's Fashion Illustration competition this week! Along with 15 other very talented illustrators, we were featured on the magazine's website - click to have a look at our work and the other finalists

Here are our shortlisted illustrations (1 Rachel Clare Price, 2 Abby Wright)
1.

 2.

Many congratulations to the winner, everyone's work was amazing and we're so excited to have been considered!

Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year! We have lots of exciting T&C things to look forward to in 2011!