guest blog with Craig of Fishink

It's been a busy week - my new book 'Drawn from Life' came out yesterday. It's always a busy time as social media becomes livelier than usual. In the past 24hrs I've had some wonderful feedback on Instagram. Thanks to all who have contacted me so far.

Now for the posting of this overdue guest blog article....

My old art college buddy Craig is known as Fishink. He posts great content to his blog every Monday morning (GMT). 

Last time we met up for a coffee and chat we decided to do a guest slot on each others blogs. He has very kindly posted my part of our swap-guest-blog here.

Craig says

Thanks to Helen for asking me to do a guest post on her blog, quite an honour! 

When we were considering a suitable subject to talk about, it didn't take too long for my thoughts to come around to dogs. The readers of my own Fishink Blog know that these furry friends are now, after all, quite a large part of my working day.

Helen and I met way back in the mid 80's and studied Textile Design at Nottingham Poly'. We not only used to go clubbing together to indie nights at tiny, hidden away nightclubs, but we also had a joint exhibition of our work, in a gent's clothing shop in Leicester. 

Helen created the poster background design. Back then I was more obsessed with fish imagery than dogs!

Textiles still play a part in the work I design today, however it's more about using pattern to work around my illustrations. 

I usually start with sketching

and they often end up as images for stamps, greeting cards

 or collages 

which I sell through the shop on my Fishink site

Dogs also often appear on my Instagram pages

and as I now have a dog of my own, a lurcher called Boo

I find she inspires me daily, in my sketches 

and also in the occasional textile design too

I'm even thinking of putting one of my cartoon dogs into space in a children's book 

… watch this space !

When I'm not taking on commissions for illustrations or collage work

I'm happy to collaborate with other designers and produce pieces from my sketches. 

Like with ceramist Tone Von Krogh 

or jeweller Heather Fox, who literally turned my sketches of Boo into silver

You can read more about the process here on my blog.

I hope you can now appreciate where my hound fascination comes from. 

Thanks again to Helen for the collaboration suggestion and let's hope we can do more joint ventures in the future, after all, it's fun to work with people you like.