Home-made

What is it about celebrations that bring out the creativity in everybody?

This year I had a significant birthday and a Christmas where we cooked for the whole family for the first time. That 9-course extravaganza is dealt with in another blog, but I've spent the last few days soaking up the goodness that's flowed my way over the last couple of weeks, at times feeling a bit overwhelmed by it. Every day, something has appeared at the door in an envelope, or in the hands of the person who made it, which delighted us in its originality and - at the risk of sounding uncharacteristically sentimental - the love it brought with it.

First there was our friend Lisa, who took a handful of our dinks and turned them not only into jewellery but into tree decorations and a Christmas card to be hung on Tom Hare's improvised Christmas trees. These are sure to come out again every year - and will hopefully find their way into the shop.



Following in the creative footsteps of his turntable-and-pencil-wielding Dad, this little boy had his first piece of work published on this enthusiastic Christmas card. We're assuming it'll be his twin brother's turn next year! Go Alex!
Michael, creator of the Inkymole website, made this birthday card from him and his wife Anna (whose yoga classes keep me on the straight and narrow) with the sort of gleeful crayon-work usually reserved for the under-10s - and if the pop-up sunflower and effervescent ladybird weren't enough to have me beaming, it's the sentiment expressed that I love:


And our friend Jed Smith, master chef and food designer for all Inkymole's creative events, even found time to manufacture and post this card between Christmas shifts at his brand new job in New York at Momofuku. The lad's only just moved there, on his own hence the picture. You'll be hearing more about Jed later.


Now. Birthdays in our family come with a cake, regardless of what age you are, which is always made by my Mum. Since this one was 'a particular number', she was tasked with making one which was more about spectacle and flashness than flavour - although, it's impossible for Mum to make a cake that isn't delicious. After a series of experimental cakes tested on Dad's harrassed girth, this one, kept secret till the day, strode into the house in a giant box, showing off its three vegan tiers of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate sponge, and laying the smack down with its fantastically girlish icing. There's a bit left, if anyone wants a piece.

The cake next to its creator. Yes, it is holding up those girders!

There was a companion piece to this creation which came from The Woods - no, not emerging from a dark clearing among trees, although it could have - but from our friends Simon and Caroline Wood. In the shape of a Mole wielding an ink pen, it was a phantasm of insulin-panicking icing and manic Allsort eyeballs; all-chocolate, and largely consumed there and then in the brewery. The cake was a reply to one I made for Simon on his 21st - 15 years ago - which you can see here.

The birthday brought presents of course. I'm not hard to buy for - there's a handful of criteria, but really, if it's sparkly, pretty or hand-made, sounds good or I can eat it, you can't really go wrong. However I was unprepared for the lump in the throat and the thinly-disguised tear to the eye triggered by this, from one of my two best friends who is just three weeks younger than me, knows all my haircuts including the 80s perm series, and has been critic, colleague and sidekick for years. It's not hand-made, but the phrase is hers, and means a lot since we live just a ten minute walk away but sometimes struggle to find each other in the fervour of our day-to-day lives. It's going to live on my desk, to remind me I only have to run down the street if I feel like a chat. (Jules' Mum and Dad bought me a Sindy, but you'll see her another time!)

Birthdays also bring a healthy amount of subterfuge. A giant 'hats off' goes to Melanie Tomlinson, my other BFF, for managing to stay quiet about these. Commissioned by my Mum and Dad, she made these, her first pair of earrings, in collaboration with a local jeweller, via a series of undercover trips to their house and furtive emails to and fro with designs attached. They took my breath away.

In their own hand-made box bearing a quote from Emily Bronte - who Mel knows is a pivotal influence on my early work - they're hand-cut from tin and covered with Mel's tiny gouache paintings.





Each piece - two birds, two flowers, two butterflies, a mole and a dragonfly - was strung together by the jeweller, and are finished with a little jewel. A bird appears to hold each earring aloft by its beak as you open the box.
There were, apparently, other designs - I'm chasing those down, as I can't live with the idea that they remain unmade.

There's no receipt for these objects, nor could I get one; and there were obviously many other objects and acts of thoughtfulness - the hamper filled with vegan goodies and notebooks, the sparkly yoga gear, the running shorts, the fabric-covered Wuthering Heights, Charles Darwin, the Angela Carter edition - that I can't fit on the blog. But they've filtered osmosis-style through the last couple of weeks, as little representations of the people who made them, to colour the days like brightly-coloured inks in fresh water.

Birthday suit.

On August 30th I gathered together a nude model, two men with cameras and a tea-making heat-overseeing logistics man to create what was a spur-of-the-moment idea, triggered by a request for some voluntary art by an American client.

Sometimes, I'm amazed how far people will go to help when they're inspired by something. A large American cancer charity asked me to create an illustration for their new fund raising website, through a creative agency (a previous client), to expand on the theme of 'birthdays'. Now I've been involved in tattoos for a number of years, just lately doing a few more, and the first idea that occurred to me was 'I have to draw on a body!' Because, of course, what is cancer all about? The body, and its survival and battles when invaded by cancer.

This of course meant a photographic approach rather than one on paper. Which meant I needed a cameraman, or two. Michael at Zensplash, who takes care of all things web and screen on the Inkymole team, volunteered immediately. And then I needed a model. Up popped Danielle, who's done a bit of modeling before but is more usually found in the worlds of books, languages and hardcore academic debate. Since we decided to make a film of the work in progress too, it also needed stop-motion photographs and filming. Step forward Andy.


With the studio still at the stage of being empty with underfloor-heated concrete, the space under our big skylight was ideal for the drawing. So armed with lights, camera and some serious tea action, we began.

I drew on Danielle using a handful of surgical skin markers bought from a medical supplier, which gave exactly the right purplish hue, but would clean off with relative ease (though Danielle would be the ultimate judge of that). The theme was 'Birthdays' - based on the concept that the cancer charity allows cancer sufferers to celebrate more of them - and the particular quote I'd been asked to illustrate was its founding in 1946 and the amount of money it had raised since - lots of figures and words, but I concentrated too on what are actually the very beautiful shapes and structures of cancer cells; divorcing myself from their devastating nature, I looked closely at their form and construction, organic and creeping, and built those into the illustration.

As it turned out, the illustration took an unintended 'clothing' shape, which if I'd had more than a day I'd like to have extended further across and down the body - but I hope I'll do this again so I can try that next time. The resulting film, painstakingly edited by Michael and with a completely charming bespoke soundtrack by our friend 47trees, is destined for the website, and very large prints of the photographs shown below will go on sale to raise money for the charity. A thoroughly satisfying day with an experimental but beautiful outcome, and one which we'll remember for all sorts of reasons.

See the video here.