London Outing

Today I went with fellow designers in the company on a visit to London.

We had an explore round some galleries, including the Illustration Cupboard (below) which I'd never been to before. There were some lovely prints and illustrated books on display there, as well as a beautiful Shirley Hughes exhibition.

The Illustration Cupboard, London. Shirley Hughes : Alfie's Christmas

 Lovely patterned wrapping paper in Fortnum and Mason

There was a lovely stall in Covent Garden selling letterpress stamps. We bought some Christmas-themed ones to experiment with on our letterpress machine at work and I bought a saxophone one for myself. Haven't tried it out yet but once I get some ink I might experiment stamping onto notebooks or making wrapping paper, who knows?!

We also had a look round the Royal Academy at the 'Honore Daumier: Visions of Paris' exhibition.

Daumier's work was very expressive and ranged from lithography prints, sculptures and satirical illustrations to large scale gestural oil paintings. 

What I thought was most amazing, was that although he most often dealt with people as a subject matter, he apparently never used models/reference for his work and they were all drawn from memory! I also liked how the exhibition was laid out, showing several re-workings of the same image and rough pencil sketches as well as the final artwork, which really helped give a sense of how he worked.   

London Transport Museum, London. Poster Art 150 - London Underground's Greatest Designs.

Whilst in Covent Garden we had a look round the London Transport Museum at the poster exhibition. There was so much surprising variety in all the different posters, spanning decades of different styles and media. Some were simple and graphic, others meticulously painted, but all conveying the same message; encouraging people to use the London Underground.


Also, if you ever fancy a cushion made of bus/train seat material, this is the place to get one! I really loved the colours and small details in some of the posters

An inspiring day! I hope I get chance to visit London again soon, there's always so much to see and do and it's hard to fit everything in one day!