Amélie Fontaine

I recently found Amélie Fontaines work via some trawling through pinterest and immediately fell in love with her textured pencil drawings. I've been returning to using pencil more and more in my work recently and am really enjoying it, so it's great to see practitioners that use pencil in such a beautiful way. The textures created my her choice of media give off a kind off dark, mysterious vibe whilst still remaining quite gentle and sophisticated in their appearance.

I've also been having a bit of a crisis with colour at the minute. It's never been something that I've particularly enjoyed working with, and I feel that when I do try work with colour, it's very difficult for me to be able to apply it in a way that looks any good. But then when I leave my work in black and white, I'm constantly feeling like it's not enough and that I won't be taken seriously if I'm not producing full colour images. I did have a bit of a chat with Ben recently about it and as he works in black and white a lot he kind of justified why it was fine for me to work like that. I think I still just need to relax and start doing what feels right for me, and start working in a way that I know that I enjoy, rather than being stuck in the rut of constantly trying to produce work that I'm not happy with.

Another Zine - Tainted Love

I had another idea for a zine the other week at work. Basically, I was putting out some Double Decker Chocolate Bars at work and it reminded me of a guy I used to go out with who's favourite chocolate bar was Double Deckers. It made me laugh that I still had memories attached to such a trivial object and that how these memories made me feel could be provoked by something so simple. I thought this would be a good idea for a zine, if I could get some other people to send me their own objects that had become tainted via past relationships. I put out a survey to start collecting ideas for zine pages and got a really positive response! 

I've already started illustrating a few of the responses and am looking forward on working on this over the next week or so. I'm really hoping I can get this done and printed by the end of the upcoming week. I think it's really important for me to continue producing work for myself outside of uni briefs, it's giving me a chance to relax a bit, and disconnect from the stress that illustrating can sometimes have. it's also giving me a chance to not focus on grades and ILO's and just make something for myself to be proud of! I've put a few of the finished illustrations on here now and will be updating later once the zine is finished! 

Industry Research Presentation

I don’t see the point in limiting myself to one person to contact so I’ve chosen three that I feel would be beneficial for me to interview. As much as I know it might be in my best interest to talk to art directors, editors, big important arty people etc, right now I don’t feel like it’ll benefit me too much. I’m having a bit of a struggle figuring out where my work sits in the big old scary world of Illustration and feel that it’d maybe be good to find out how other people found their feet and found their place in such a competitive industry. To me, that’s the kind of advice I need right now and to get that from any of these three super talented gals would be dreamy.

Possible Contacts

Oh Comely - Accept & read letters from readers in each issue, also the contact details for everyone that works for the magazine are printed inside, so trying to contact the art director could be pretty straightforward. Also the readers letters feature could be a window into contacting them.

Lizzy Stewart - Contact details on website

Talulah Fontaine - Contact details on website

Nomi Chi - Contact details on website

Beach London Creative Agency - Address and contact form are available on the website, might be able to find out who actually runs the agency. Also they stock really cool things on their online store so that'd be another route to investigate.

Stay Home Club/Olivia Mew - Started off as a one woman basement business has now developed into a 5 person operation that runs globally. Collaborates with a small set of illustrators on products. Contact details available online