trip to Poland in July 2012

Ok...it took me a while but here they are - the sketches from our trip to Poland in July 2012.

We arrived to Łódź and here is a sketch of myself (wearing far too many layers for the Polish summer)
and a brave woman who stopped the whole bus and helped to catch a thief.

In Kazimierz Dolny. Konrad is doing his presentation about synagogues and then chilling out
in the garden (slightly overwhelmed by the warm weather - over 35C and
the abundance of plants, insects and other creatures).
 
Chilling out in a coffee shop.
 
Some quick sketches of the architecture in Kazimierz and extreme sketching on an overcrowded
 minibus from Lublin to Kazimierz.

Iced coffee!

More landscapes and more architecture. I guess this is what Kazimierz is about.

Ola chilling out in the garden. Lots of chilling out and relaxing but it was the only wise thing
to do in these temperatures.
 
...

On the way back to Warszawa. Warszawa is cool!

Mada and John's flat and and a map documenting our alternative tour of the city.
(I always find Mada and John's flats very inspiring)

Some random sketches.

More random sketches.

This is when I thought I needed a proper break and decided not to do any sketching for the rest of the trip:)

little wolf and teddy

A little sneak peak of what I am working on just now. Little wolf and his teddy are having lots of fun playing with a wagon. And I have been having lots of fun playing with rubber stamps!

Kasia and Kate volunteer in Ghana

Exciting news!!! In August later this year my friend Kate and I will be going to Ghana to volunteer with the charity Akosia. We will be working on a filmmaking project with children who attend The Street Academy in Accra.
The project is pretty amazing and the aim is to give the children an opportunity to work on a creative project that will give them the chance to learn new, tangible and useful skills, as well as to develop their self-expression and self-confidence through creativity.

Over the next few months we will be fundraising to cover the costs flights and medical expenses to allow us travel to Ghana and contribute to this amazing cause.

We will be selling our artwork, organising online auctions and Kate will run the Edinburgh half marathon. 
Here is our blog that we set up to post regular updates on our fundraising activities and to write about our experiences when we are actually out in Ghana working on the project.

We also have our fundraising profile here for those who wish to make a donation. There are some lovely rewards waiting for our backers!

I will keep you posted.

happy easter!

School Meals Project

I took part in an amazing project organised in cooperation with Edinburgh College of Art, Scottish Book Trust and Dalmeny Primary School. We have been working with children's book writer Vivian French, illustrator Cate James, stage 2 illustration students and the school pupils, and writing recipes that would describe ourselves. And then we created plates that illustrated the recipes.
Here is a plate that illustrates my recipe - lots of cute animals, a train and a map of my favourite place in Transilvania in Romania.

I worked with Kyle and here the plate that illustrates him. This a a pop up plate...

...and I would think twice before putting any food on it!

The jaws open and there is a lot of beautiful drawings made by Kyle inside.

We had an opening event with all the students and pupils presenting their plates. They were all amazing!

And we made commemorative badges!
 
It was great fun working with the school pupils (I usually work with younger children). There have been coming up with the best ideas and also asking the best questons. One morning I worked with two lovely P3 girls and the first question they asked me was: "What is your favourite animal?". Just amazing! Why adults don't ask that instead of asking boring questions like: Where do you work? Where do you come from? etc.

crocs and lions

Some random characters from my sketchbook.

wool

A portrait of Flora I made a while ago for my friend Jeanine.

winter hibernation

 I haven't posted anything for ages. I have been busy working on all sorts of things and taking part in exciting projects but for some reasons I didn't feel like blogging. I will post about it all soon. I promise!
For now some pics of my studio space. Lovely mess (I thought my mum would appreciate this;))

Exhibition!

We are having a little children illustrators exhibition at North Edinburgh Arts! 'Surrounded by Stories' includes work of  five artists linked to Edinburgh -Helen Coburn, Cate James, Eilidh Muldoon, Holly Sterling and me.
Come and see it! It is up until 2nd February.

Happy New Year!

I don't how about you but this is what I look like after all the yummy festive treats I've had. This poor not-that-little mouse is now on a diet and she is having an apple for lunch.

This is going to be an exciting year!

snow

I know we are a minority but both Benjamin and I hate the snow.

Also, click here if you want to read an interview with me and see a picture which was giving me nightmares when I was a child. Lovely Jess from Alice in Baker Street invited me over for a chat about sketching, illustrating and inspiration. Thank you Jess!

Mongolian sketchbook

It took me ages to scan and post these sketches but here they are. Sketchbook from our trip to Mongolia earlier this year. I decided to go for a horizontal journal this time, which was fun to sketch in but it is not so good for blogging so you might want to see the whole album on my flickr.

Our trip started in Istanbul - my favourite city ever. Istanbul belongs to cats!

Then, after an 8 hours flight we landed in Ulanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. Ulanbaatar turned out to be less exotic than I expected (with all the rather familiar Soviet architecture and urban design). However there was a beautiful buddist monastery, totally unfamiliar. Inside:

And outside:

After a few day in the capital we went to the horseriding camp.

We spend a week in this beautiful place (no electricity, no running water, no internet) Amazing landscape and 30+ horses to ride.



Half way though our stay at the horseriding camp we were taken for a trip to the Terelj national park. Here are some sketches made on our absolutely packed minivan. The roads in Mongolia are not roads really (at least not in this part of the country) so the sketches are rather shaky.

Some very sad animals we met on the way and the ger we stayed in for the night. There was a mouse staying with us two.

And horses!

Lots of horses!

Even more.

After a week spent in the camp we came back to UB (took the longest shower ever) and set out for Kharakhorum. Some sketches from the long bus trip there:

And our very cosy ger in Kharakhorum.

There is an amazing monastery and Kharakhorum and ruins of an ancient city. I loved the wall paintings:

Erdene Zuu monastery and a spontaneous lesson of Hebrew alphabet.


Here is us chilling out in a lovely hostel in Tsetserleg. They had flat white coffee, English breakfast and stuff - at this point of our trip I would pay any price for something which is not a mutton stew with noodles.

At the centre of divine enlightment in Tsetserleg. There was a huge statue of Budda and people were going round and throwing all sorts of food as a religious offering. And the pigeons were going in circles too...

Oh, I forgot to mention that I received some very good news when I got an internet access in one of the hostels we stayed in - I had been selected to take part in the Picture Hooks mentoring programme. It made me very happy!

We stayed for a few days with a nomad (his name was Bogi)  in his ger, sourrounded by huge and spectacular landscape and herds of yaks and horses. Nothing more really. With the only facility being a nearby stream (not very clean as it was also used by the yaks). I think these few days there were the most extreme of our Mongolian experiences.

Bogi making fire in the morning.

Yaks are cute and silly.

The horses we were riding:

And one of the most surreal moments during our trip. We are having breakfast (a snickers + some coke) outside our ger while our host is killing a bull.

3 weeks in Mongolia were quite exhausting.  This is all I was dreaming about while on the flight back to Europe:

I am afraid it is never going to happen though...