The only photo I took while in Japan...

There are more photos but I did not take them.

Zines and Sydney and Such

Ok, so I'm just at Sydney Airport now, hanging out for a while watching the planes and baggage trucks and things before heading into the city (I really love airports... usually I arrive in the mornings even when my flight is in late afternoon).

I'm here for the MCA zine fair, which is part of the Sydney Writers Festival, which also has some excellent events on (reminder to self, pick up some sort of pamphlet with events info). Also, I am here to go to seven Kraftwerk concerts. Because I can.

My friend Holly Leonardson came to visit in Hobart last weekend and we worked on a whole bunch of drawings for a new zine that I have just finished putting together in time for the zine fair this weekend. So, here it is:

We also did a lot more other activities like making quilts and cooking and museum time, it was so great to finally meet Holly in person, as we have been penpals for a while without ever meeting since I was living in New Zealand.

Winter is Coming

A little feature of my hand knit mittens in the May/June issue of Frankie :)

...also, really like the cover illustrated by Ana Albero!

Hello from Hobart

Hello from Hobart!

After an interesting month in Auckland making zines/art/food, a really great time working as "Deputy Warden" with Tim at Tongariro National Park (it is so so amazing there!), I flew back to Australia, Canberra to be specific, stayed with my brother and super nice other people, while we worked on zines for our table at the Canberra Zine Emporium. 

Now I'm in Hobart, busy making more art and getting ready to go over to Shanghai next week, and Tokyo after that. So far I really like 2013, it feels great to be so busy!

If you are interested, I'm going to do a shop update on the 5th, adding some more original drawings, mittens and a few other things before I head out of the country until May.

Here is a photo of me conquering a small mountain while I was at Tongariro...

(photo by Tim)

More soon,

From Sarah

Sleep Without Shelter

While I have been staying at Alphabet City for the past month or so I've been working on a few ongoing projects (as well as making new friends, exploring the city, eating lots of nice food and having a good summer time, so busy!). Something that I finished while I was here was an edition of 200 booked titled "Sleep Without Shelter". Sort of based around my feelings of visiting volcanic places and parks in New Zealand, being ok with being alone in places, ideas about things that I think about when I am walking or swimming in cold water. Each book is a little different, numbered, hand bound with string, and contains hand colouring in pencil and crayon, and washi tape.

If you would like a copy (only a limited number available, hopefully there will still be a few left for Canberra Zine Emporium later this month!), you can get one HERE.
 

Bye

I'm having a going away party/zine launch/art show tomorrow in Auckland if you want to come :)

Auckland! Workshop!

After the workshop in Wellington went so well, I have organised to run one while I am up in Auckland staying at Alphabet City for the month.

The flyer is below, with the main info and specifics on where and when, but the basic idea is that we'll be discussing illustration, relevant/interesting artists and publications, and trying out techniques and materials that you may not have tried before (such as screen tone, different watercolour papers, pens, brushes etc). Participants will get started on making their own handmade art book/comic armed with some more knowledge of how to get started on one. Morning and afternoon tea provided! Last time the class was great but not quite long enough to fit everything in, so this time it will be running from 11:00am - 5:00pm, with plenty of time for all the discussion and drawing.

(facebook event page)

(if you want to book a spot...)

Wellington Workshops...

So, eight more days until I move away from apartment overlooking a wooden cathedral in Wellington, where I have spent the past three years.

I wanted to do something nice as a sort of creative goodbye to the city, so I am running two workshops on the 26th of this month at Matchbox studios (on Cuba Street). All materials will be supplied for the drawing workshop, but you'll need to bring your own sweater to mend for the mending workshop (all other materials for that are going to be supplied though). There will be morning and afternoon tea, lots of discussion, interesting reference materials and a relaxed atmosphere (I'll bring some music to play while we are making things).

Below are the flyers for each of the workshops (they'll click through to the facebook event page if you're into that sort of thing), and spaces are limited!

Hope you can come!!!

From Sarah

1000 Portraits

About this time last year I was asked to contribute work for some pages in a book called "1000 Portrait Illustrations". It's finally been published and features a bunch of my portrait drawings as well as work from so many other great illustrators and artists (320 pages!). Printed by Quarry Books. I am also very happy to have my work in a book which has Elvis on the cover.

Start Small

I just realised that I haven't made a blog post on this blog yet about the book of drawings I made in November this year. Should probably do that before the year has gone...

Ok, well, I'm moving countries again at the beginning of next year, so I have been trying to consolidate all my art notes, ideas, thoughts on papers etc. I decided to make a neat little book titled "Start Small" (pt. 1, because I still have more notes that I need to compile) that I can carry with me to remember my ideas. I thought other people might like to look at them too, so I've made a limited amount of these books that are available (here) if you would like one.







It feels really nice to have made and finished a book with my drawings in it. It really is the first book of drawings/art I have made, and I am so happy with it. I want to make more books now! :)

Design Yeah!

The people from Design Assembly and Fancy have put together a great calendar for 2013, featuring designers and illustrators from around NZ (with the month of February by me :). Each month's image can be torn off to become an A3 sized poster (printed on nice thick 250gsm paper).








Find the Design Yeah! calendar HERE.

Holiday Shop

If you follow my twitter at all, you might remember a month or two ago when I was frantically knitting 12 pairs of mittens in one week for a special order (it was a good week, I also watched all of "My So-Called Life" and a bunch of other films while knitting).

The reason for all the knitting was that I had to send a whole bunch of mittens over to the Etsy Holiday Shop. I wish I was in New York so I could go and visit (also wish I was in New York so I could be in New York, but anyway...). If you are around that area, I suggest you go and have a look at the shop, there are lots of nice looking handmade presents, like the good parts of Etsy in real life. It is only going to run for a short time (November 29 - December 8), if you need any more info, then you can go here.

Meanwhile, I should get back to knitting a few more pairs of mittens and finishing of some drawings. There is way to much work to do at this time of year, at least the weather is getting a little warmer now!

Each pair comes with a button/pin with my art on it as well. A very rushed photo... after I took this I ran out the door to the post office and got there 10 minutes before closing so I could get them to the holiday store from New Zealand in time!

Clubs

A button I made while I was staying with Erin and Moira at Alphabet City recently. I should have made more buttons while I was up there, I thought I had made a giant pile but I hardly have any left now, and it was only a few weeks ago that I was there.

Must Keep Blogging

So quiet over here on this blog. But I have a lot to say! I made a book! I went camping some more! I feel happy! Many future adventure plans!

I need to find out how to link to this blog from my website maybe, it seems to only accept wordpress and tumblr blogs which is silly. Maybe I should delete/archive this blog altogether and only have a tumblr? Hmmm...

Wellington Zinefest

So, as you may or may not know, this coming summer is my last one living in Wellington. Actually, I am leaving to go on another adventure in January (more on this later perhaps), so it's my last half-summer here. This also means that this years zine fest in Wellington will be the last time I have a table there (unless I happen to be travelling through the country and coincidentally in Wellington at the same time it is happening).

I'm going to bring with me a bunch of comics and zines from my collection to sell (I like to travel light so a lot of things have to go), new zines I have made, art, stickers, buttons, prints etc (not sure if I should be bringing all of these things since it is supposed to be a zine fest, but maybe I'll keep them "under the table").

Anyway, please come by! Next weekend!

Portraits...

 Hi! I'm taking commissions for pet portraits at the moment if you would like to get one for your friend or yourself in time for Christmas. Send me an email or message and we can organise something! :)   (alternatively, I have some portrait listings in my shop as well)

Fashion

Pink and yellow forever.

Eyes

A few weeks ago I had some leftover sticker paper from cutting out my sticker sets, so I spent a day/night making too many eyes.

Portrait

I recently made this portrait of "Frankie" the cat and since it turned out so well and I would like to do more like it, I decided to put a listing for portraits similar to this one in my shop.

Tapiiri

Recently I sent some of my knitted mittens to a shop in Japan named Tapiiri. Tapiiri is located in a forest (!) and they sell handmade items, stationery, and food.

Lovely photographs by Sayaka, the owner of Tapiiri.

The mittens I knit for the shop.

More information about Tapiiri can be found on their website and blog. Oooh also Tapiiri means tapir and I think I have to draw a tapir now because it reminded me that they are good.

In other Japan-related news, I went to a talk by Yuichiro Miura on Wednesday night. It was a very inspiring and motivational talk (especially because we went camping and hiking on the weekend and climbed a mountain on Friday). He discussed his past adventures, as well as his upcoming plans to climb Mt. Everest again next year (at the age of 80 years old). I might have previously blogged about his film "The Man Who Skied Down Everest"(perhaps on my tumblr blog) I recommend watching it.

Really got to get back into writing frequently on this blog again! I feel so rusty and my writing does not flow as well as it used to. Maybe this is from having too much coffee though, or because I've just come back from 4 days away in the wilderness again :)

Surprise Germans and Other Things

On Friday we made friends with a nice guy named David, who has been visiting Wellington for the past few weeks. At 2am in the morning, we decided it would be a good idea to all go camping on the weekend (it doesn't actually get all that cold in Wellington over the winter, usually it's about 10ºC, although summer is only a few degrees warmer than that.)

After walking for a few hours, we found a little secret hut to sleep in. We set up camp, building a fire in the river bed to sit around with wine and music and food. The next day we walked down along the river for a few km's (at the start of the year I was really afraid of river crossings, that I would get swept away, now they are fun) then walked up a mountain (technically not a mountain, apparently to be a mountain it has to be 1000m, the mt we walked up was only 700m, it was quite hard work nonetheless). So that we would make it to the bus on time (which ended up not arriving anyway!) I ran down a lot of the way (I don't usually run). Tim got me some good trail running/walking shoes for my birthday last year which I was happy to have while running downhill with a backpack on a slippery track!

The hut we stayed in, "Baine Iti". We didn't bring a camera, so I found this photo of the hut here.

It was really great to just even feel like a real person again for a weekend. For so long living here in New Zealand I really just felt like maybe there was something wrong with me that I haven't managed to make any good friends, I thought perhaps I am aggressive without realising it, perhaps expecting people to be friendly and honest was too much to expect. I don't know... managing to make a friend in real life was a good reminder that I actually exist, which sometimes I worry about.

Otherwise in my life, I've been reading a lot (Goodreads is my favourite thing at the moment!), a few months ago started vegan/strict vegetarian diet (I hesitate at saying vegan, as I think many of my motives are different than other people who don't eat animal things) which has made me feel a little happier, and have been doing a lot of knitting and writing and watching good films. I might try to get back to using this blog more than I do, but I kind of prefer tumblr more than here (my nice thing/personal blog here and my art/inspiration blog here) (also other ones but I'm not going to give you the links to those), so I may even import this blog to tumblr somehow and keep writing it over there.

I hope you have been having a good year so far,

From Sarah

Walk

Back from the walk. I will get Tim to upload his photographs this weekend to show you. Making travel plans for this year/next year and they are fun and exciting.

Soon

At the end of the week I am going on my long walk for a month. If you want anything from my shop, then please make your order before the 14th of December. If you put the word "GOODBYE" in the code part with your order I'll let you have 10% off also.

Hello hello!

Thought I would do a bit of a shop-related post as it is coming up to holiday gift-giving season. Ok, so, I've got some new things in the shop, and some things on special. Let me begin...

Two new hand-knit pairs of mittens for you cold hands...

Purple mittens HERE

These ones HERE

Finally a NEW ISSUE of my zine (gotta take some better photos this week too! HERE

New postcard, featuring my galah ("New Years Eve and an Awkward Kiss") drawing. $4 HERE

I've put this print on sale for the next few weeks, I am selling two of these cotton circle scarves, newly listed drawings, plus heaps of other things.

Right now Tim and I are working on the plans for our big walk in two weeks. We are starting at Cape Reinga (the very tip of New Zealand, where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea meet, then walking as far as we can in 3-4 weeks. Going to be so so much fun, I love walking.

p.s. if you are in Auckland and want to hang out I'll be there maybe around the 10th of January. We can drink tea and coffees and beers and eat snacks.

Drawing

Wellington! Zines!

Hi! It's a long time between posts these days (I've kinda switched to my tumblr account and have been working a lot on commissions lately) but heres a blog post to tell you Wellington people that I'll be at the zine fair tomorrow. It's at Mighty Mighty, from 12pm - 5pm, come and hang out and read zines. Here's the flyer if you want to see it:

Booklet

If you are in Tokyo sometime between the 8th and 13th of November, this looks like a show worth checking out. Lots of zines and publications from around the world (including a few of mine) from the library that Booklet Press has been putting together.

Dialogue

Everything you create, whether it exists as visual art, a passage of writing, or something different, becomes part of a dialogue as soon as someone else other than yourself sees it. This is absolutely unavoidable, and sometimes I think people don't really understand this, or maybe they don't want to or they struggle with the idea and fight against it.

Having an intelligent discussion (about art, life, or whatever) where two sides have opposing views can be very enlightening and interesting. If each party has the ability to weigh up the evidence provided to them, and change their point of view based on the evidence, then the world can be like some kind of giant cultural open source project where things slowly get better.

Sometimes it is not possible to have an intelligent conversation (for example a normal person trying to have an evenly weighed argument with a racist or hateful person, or between an atheist and religious person, or with someone who adamantly believes that fairies exist) but generally, in the context of art, writing, etc, it is possible to talk things through and come up with some kind of conclusion (whether that means one of the parties agreeing with the other or not).

If you are not willing to become part of the dialogue you have created, or you are a viewer and just want to add "your two cents" without continuing the conversation, then you should probably seriously consider why you don't want to hear what the answer is going to be.

In other words, please don't leave anonymous comments on my blog and then delete them so I have no way of replying to you. Jerk.

Drawing, painting.

Terrible Things are Possible.

A large drawing from 2010, finally edited all the scans together to make one image.

So Awake

Two new Kickstarter projects that seem cool...

Comics in Cambodia

and

Albuquerque Zine Fest