Porch party land

Xavier promises me that he's going to build me my dream house when he grows up (in between being an inventor, film director and goodness knows what else). My perfect imaginary house would have a belvedere. I once knew some students who lived in a glorious rambling Edwardian villa with a belvedere crowning the top of the house. It was a tiny room with a trapdoor in the floor which you opened to get down the tiny staircase to the floor below. But the room had windows all the way round and panoramic views over London. So although not big enough to be someone's regular bedroom it made the most wonderful guest bedroom. And although we don't really have the climate for it, my perfect imaginary house would also have a verandah. The verandahs on these Macon houses are the kind of thing that would do.

Another Macon sketch

Another one of the 'atmosphere' illustrations for the historic Macon website.

Showing my age

I’ve been a bit quiet recently because I’ve been carrying out some consultancy work with some lovely designers at a very big corporation. So when the very experienced designer I was working with said ‘so what is paste-up?’ I knew that my children were right – I am quite definitely over the hill, a relic, a complete and utter dinosaur. For any of you who don't know about how you put together a brochure or magazine before computers, the Fullerton website gives some idea of the torturous process us older designers went through. And I never had the luxury of a waxing machine, it was spreading all the galleys and artwork with cow gum and sticking them into place.

Historic Macon

One of the illustrations I produced for the historic Macon website I mentioned in my previous post.

Historic Macon website live!

Over the summer I had a rather delicious illustration job to do, which was to create a number of spot watercolour illustrations of the lovely old city of Macon, Georgia. I also painted a location map of the historic centre, which served as a linking device to the various parts of the website. I haven’t been able to mention it until now as I was waiting for the website to be completed. If you’re interested do visit the site at http://www.livinghistorymap.com/ . If I have time I’ll post some of the illustrations at a larger size here in the next few weeks

Xavier drawing