Italian Architectural Drawing Collection onboard Spirit of Adventure

Last year I worked in collaboration with the art consultants SMC Design on a collection of street view drawings to decorate the interiors of the Saga ship Spirit of adventure. The ship is going to sail around the Mediterranean so the brief was to produce seven drawings of European street views focusing specifically on Italy. 

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The drawings have recently been installed and I’m thrilled to finally see them in situ. I love the way they have been framed and they look fantastic side by side as a triptych. 

I  chose to draw buildings from a variety of different Italian cities: Florence, Modena, Venice, Trento and Rome. I drew these streets in my signature style with the context left as an outline and the focal building drawn in high detail. 

Thank you to the interior designers AD Associates London for sharing these photos with me, and a big thanks to the SMC Art Consultancy team for their help on the project. 

All seven drawings from this collection can be seen in more detail in my ‘Street View’ Portfolio here:

Hermès International Scarf Design Competition

I wasn’t able to share this at the time as the competition was still underway but I took part in the first Hermès international scarf design competition called Le Grand Prix du Carré Hermès.

5,500 candidates from 123 countries around the world applied, from here I was selected by the jury along with 97 other artists through to the next round of judging. 

For making it through the selection process Hermès gifted us a limited edition silk scarf designed especially for the competition candidates. What an honour to have one of these! It is much more colourful than the rest of monochrome wardrobe! 

Unfortunately I didn’t win the prize but it was such a fantastic opportunity and great to have a completely new design task to challenge myself with. Following on from the competition I had my drawing featured in the Hermès magazine which is another lovely memento to keep along with the beautiful scarf.

Trip to Faber-Castell Headquarters in Germany

It turns out using Faber-Castell's pencils for my work was a brilliant choice, not just because they make great pencils but because I was lucky enough to be invited to Faber-Castell headquarters this summer, which is a beautiful Castle in Germany.

Faber-Castell invited me, along with a small selection of other Faber-Castell superusers from Instagram, for a VIP weekend at the castle and a peek behind the scenes at their brand new product line. They organised all the travel plans and put us up in a beautiful hotel in the historic centre of Nuremberg.

Taking a sneak-peek at demonstrations of the new product line was a great insight into the work they are doing, and it was so interesting sharing advice and ideas with the other artists from Instagram.

Seeing as I was already in Nuremberg I decided to do some travelling in the area. I made a plan to visit Bamberg and Rothenburg de Tauber, two absolutely beautiful German towns which I would definitely recommend to everyone to visit. They are both architecturally stunning and are surrounded by picture perfect landscapes.

Danke Faber-Castell!