Collaboration Archives

Snowdogs Support Life – Kirkless – Impact Report

27th February 2023 By EMELBI

Key findings and statistics from the Snowdog Support Life, Kirklees Art Trail showing how fantastic the event was for the local community.

The Snowdogs encouraged almost 40,000 visitors to explore Kirklees. This impacted directly on our local towns and villages with extra spending estimated at £437,000 The community came together in a big way and the trail created a huge buzz. Everyone seemed to be talking about the new sculptures that had popped up all over the region. This went a long way to helping raise awareness of the work that The Kirkwood does in the local community.

Local businesses, artists, volunteers and schools all came together to make this fantastic trail happen. All manner of networks of people got involved to bring this fantastic show of creativity to the local area.

See the final report below which outlines the overall impact of the trail and the positivity that came form this wonderful event.

Click here for the Kirklees Snowdog Impact Report PDF

East Ardsley Primary School – Space Illustration Workshop with EMELBI

24th January 2023 By EMELBI

One of the most important skills in art, is drawing. You can create wildernesses, vast landscape, detailed cities, fabulous creatures and just about anything your imagination can muster. Allowing yourself to be free to ‘JUST DRAW’, no matter where it takes you, is a freeing experience and it will always throw up surprises in term of what is created.

So many people say to me “I wish I could draw, I’m rubbish at drawing!” and I always ask, “Well, how ofter do you draw?” to which the answer is always either “Never.” or “Not often.” We get good at doing things by doing those things. You will never get good at anything by not doing it. Except perhaps, doing nothing.

This workshop has been devised to make the drawing process really free, where mistakes are encouraged and exploration is the key to making a collaborative piece of art. It’s always fun and the overall effect is fabulous, as a huge pice of cartridge paper is filled with wonderful and incredibly detailed drawings. The workshop is always fun and all the participants are always fully engaged and excited to create more and more.

This particular workshop at East Ardsley Primary School was based on the theme of Space. Below are a set of images taken from the collaborative piece of work that the children created over the course of the day. There are some fantastic characters and wonderfully brilliant and imaginative spacecraft within this imagery. When you make a process fun, inhibitions always seem to dissipate, leaving you with pure creativity.

The children also took photographs of the collaborative artwork and made digital edits of the imagery using various apps.

The Laughing Boy Project

22nd January 2021 By EMELBI

I was recently invited to collaborate on ‘The Laughing Boy Project’ by the artist and photographer Hersley Casero. Hersley-Ven Casero is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Dumaguete City, Philippines.

He and his partner Toulla contacted me through Instagram just before Christmas and asked if I would like to create my version of The Laughing Boy.
The invite came at a time when I was looking to get involved in more collaborations with other creatives, so the timing of this invite was spot on.

The Laughing Boy Project is a positive ongoing project that advocates the freedom of self expression through art. Art collaborations can be a powerful tool. Connecting people and ideas, towards positive change, on a global scale.

I really enjoyed making this image as my contribution to the project. You can see how it was made as I also put together a YouTube video of the digital illustration process, which you can see below.

To find out more information about The Laughing Boy Project, you can visit www.hersleycasero.com/ or check out the Instagram page to see all the collaborations so far instagram.com/laughingboyproject/

The image I made was hand drawn, scanned and then worked on in Adobe Photoshop adding textures, colour and other graphic elements to arrive at the finished outcome.

Below is the final digital illustration outcome along with the initial hand drawn illustration.

Oi! RUG

3rd March 2013 By EMELBI Leave a Comment

‘Oi!’ – Hand Tufted Wool Rug – Collaboration Artwork

Not so long ago I teamed up with Andrew Warburton of Area Rugs www.arearugs.co.uk

Andrew is a highly skilled and experienced carpet maker using hand-tufting methods in the production of his carpets and rugs. He has been designing and making unique and exclusive hand-tufted rugs and carpets since graduating in 1988 with a first class honours degree in carpet design.

He was intrigued by the style and technique of my illustrations and thought that they would transfer well into a carpet design. He had seen an illustration of mine called ‘Oi!’ that he thought would work well and that would be both quirky and impacting. Andrew set to on interpreting the image with pure wool. The results are below.

The design is first sketched out to scale.

The wool is then worked into a type of man-made muslin cloth!

When the tufting process is finished the topside is then cropped to get an even pile.

This is done with a machine that works a little like a lawnmower.

Rugs can also be carved and sculptured by using a carving machine a little like the clippers used to sheer sheep.

When the rug has gone through all these processes it is then backed with a natural latex and hessian.

Rug Entitled: Oi!

Size: 1.7 by 1.2 Metres.

The result was absolutely outstanding. Andrew made an incredibly accurate interpretation of the original design, I’m sure you will agree!