It all went a bit royal this weekend in London, but here at Ryantown, 126 Columbia Rd, London we only recognise one queen.

Stylist Mag Cover

The Stylist Magazine asked me if I could make a papercut design for them on the theme of a street party, here is my effort. I'm a big fan of the Stylist, they seem to have an adventurous streak when it come to commissioning artists to create special covers for them, only 2 weeks ago Nikki Tibbles made an incredible picture for them constructed entirely from cut flowers ! It was stunning. Tracey Emin did last week's and I remember a lovely cover too by the inspiring illustrator Quentin Blake. They are not dictatorial at all in their approach and seem to understand that by placing minimal constraints on the commissioned artist they will recieve in return the best results !

Achilles in The Guardian

In a feature relating to Greece leaving the Euro to return to the Drachma the Guardian newspaper asked me to do customise a 5 Euro note to act in transition. Here's my effort and the caption to go with it. 'Achilles and that damned heel of his. He's holding on his spear the letter omega, the last letter of the alphabet - the end.'

There's some new cats in town !!!

It seems as if we've been working on these pairs of cats for years but really it has only been many months ! They have been scattered all over the study staring at us as we go about our daily tasks "When are you going to hurry up and finish us" they taunt "We're bored being in this studio" They have been made in an edition of thirty, part transfer decal and part handpainted so in there own small way each one is unique ! They are hand numbered and initialled by me on their base, and come in smart black boxes. Off into the big wide world you go - Shoo !

Stationery nerd alert.

One of my favourite things to do in Japan is to hang out at the Tokyu Hands Department Store, especially in the stationery dept where they have the most incredible range of all types of sticky tape. It is stationery nerd heaven ! I have produced quite a few tape designs myself now, in fact we took delivery of a new one yesterday which you can see here . Although my dream would be to see it in here

Walk the walk

On Saturday thousands of women walked the street of London all through the night to raise money to fight breast cancer. The Moon walk ! The lovely (and inspiring and incredible) Nina asked me to design a T-shirt for them. Go Ladies !!!

Hot off the press!!

Check out our SPQR newspaper! It will be available to buy in Ryantown this weekend, priced at £2!

These T-shirts live 5937 miles away

I've done a collaborative project with Tokyo based T-shirt designing geniuses Graniph, the way that they've adapted my designs is really fresh and unique - I love them especially the diagonal rainbow fade ! The green on Black has been done in flocking so the color is intensely vivid, and nice to stroke too !!

The Senate and People of Ryantown

Although I guess I'm pretty busy all the time, I always have the feeling that I'm not doing a tenth as much as I'd like to be doing. In my notebooks I have loads of stupid ideas for work that will never properly see the light of day. As an experiment we are going to produce a little newspaper every quarter year that will in a small way fill the space between what gets done and what doesn't. I'm hoping that as it develops it will become more like a notebook/scrapbook of ideas and thoughts and pictures that would be nice to share. We've almost completed the first one and already I think this isn't quite what I wanted but I guess its a start! It will be available mid-May and is called Senatus Populusque Ryantown, The Senate and People of Ryantown. S.P.Q.R.

TAG Fine Arts will be representing me at this weeks' London Original Print Fair.

TAG Fine Arts | Stand 2 | Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
Thur 10am - 9pm | Fri 10am - 10pm | Sat & Sun 10am - 6pm
19 - 22 April 2012

For a complimentary ticket check out their blog here


or download a complimentary ticket here

I was honored to find out recently that I have been nominated for a Kate Greenaway medal for childrens book illustration for my work on 'The Gift' by Carol Ann Duffy. You can see a film interview with me here where I explain my inspirations, methods and techniques on illustrating the book.

My good friend and carpenter Graham Smith drew this little picture of Ryantown a while ago and I asked him if I could use it on the bags for the shop... and he said yes!!!

I think they look brilliant so thank you Graham!!! Have a look at some of his work here. As well as being a brilliant artist, he does all the carpentry work for Ryantown shop and here at Ryantown HQ too which you can see on his website.

Here's another sneaky look at another piece I'm working on for the exhibition at Charleston gallery. I love the way the decals overlap and create new colours!!!

I come from an Irish family and every year I make a St Patrick's day card to send out and I thought you might like to see some of them. So here are the last 7 years of St Patrick's day cards!!! Don't forget, the big day is tomorrow!!

A very small amount of the 2012 card (top) will be available in Ryantown this weekend.

Olympia is one of the great buildings in London which is used for all sorts of shows and exhibitions. This year is its 125th birthday and they are celebrating by commissioning artists to create artworks to mark the occasion, and here is mine!!!

At the moment I'm working on some ceramics for a new show in Charleston, the home of the Bloomsbury group. Its a fantastic place to visit, I've loved it for a long time and was honored to be asked to exhibit there. Here is a sneek of one of the pieces I've been working on!!!

A big congratulations to The Gentle Author of the Spitalfields Life blog who has had his blog posts published into this beautiful book!!
I was very touched to be asked to do the front cover especially something quite unusual as these Staffordshire dogs.

I've also done the little illustrations at the beginning of each chapter and there's a story about me as someone who works in the area.

Spitalfields is an area in East London and this book tells the stories of all sorts of people living in and around Spitalfields, from Tailors to Graffiti artists and everyone's favourite bag merchant Paul Gardner!!

The beautiful end papers are by Mark Hearld.

This is publication day for The Gentle Author so I'm sure he is very happy!! You can get a copy now from his blog here.