Embroidered illustrations by Lucky Jackson.

Every now and again when i'm randomly browsing the web i'll come across something that is completley brilliant. These hand stitched textile frames by Lucky Jackson really make me smile :) They're right up my street, they look cute and also have a very strong collage/illustrative feel, at first i thought the figures were drawn but when you look closer you can see they're actually stitched - amazing ! And what's more - this artist has set themselves up to produce one of these textile pieces everyday for a whole year ... 365 unique works of art, all in the same format which realy makes a lovely seires :)

Polly Becker - Tactile Illustrations.

I recently came across this artist/ illustrator and i am totally baffled by her work :) She creates little characters (or assemblages) from all kinds of odds and ends, old dolls, collage, textile elements, jewellery etc. and photographs them against a white background - in a way that makes them seem as if they could be real.

 It's not just the figures she creates that really interest me but also the concepts - on looking through her gallery (link) you can really see the connection between the pose, or expression of the figure and how that represents an issue or explains the article the piece was comissioned for. Here are some examples of her weirdly brilliant creations...

The Decorated Octopus.

I came across a spare piece of wooden board today so I thought i'd use it to make a collage. I've been pretty interested in octopuses recently ( weird? ) so I decided to make an octopus collage, and a little story to go with it. I made the image and story kind of child-like, but not too much as I wanted the story to have a meaning.

The decorated octopus- collage and pen on board. Hard to photograph due to reflection , may update with a better pic sometime :)

And here's the story behind the image...

Every day the octopus would stop and look up at the surface of the water she lived in – she knew people existed on the land, walking with legs instead of swimming with tentacles. She wished she could be more like the humans, wear fancy clothes and jewellery, and read colourful magazines. She envied the way people could decorate themselves , as she thought life under the sea was pretty dull.

One day, as she was going about her usual octopus business, she noticed a shiny heart – shaped necklace floating by her in the water. ‘One of the humans must have accidentally dropped this into the water’ she thought to herself. She reached out for it with her tentacle, and as she held it she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. She was amazed – dazzled by what she saw! She realised that she no longer needed to be jealous of the humans, as she too had been decorated and fancy all along!

You see, the ocean is like a huge mirror to those who can look down upon its surface - but the animals that live in the water may never get to see their own reflection. To this day, the decorated octopus wears the necklace around her tentacle, and shares it with all the other animals in the sea, letting them look into it, and see how beautiful they are, too.

Detail of the collage, still not the best of pictures haha.

 

The meaning behind this story is that you shouldn't judge the way you look in comparison to others, or be jealous because everyone is beautiful and sometimes people just lack the metaphorical heart - shaped reflective object needed to see themselves and love themselves for what and who they are :)