Pointe Blank Part 2 Launch!

Pointe Blank launched at the Birmingham Royal Ballet on Monday night with a fabulous selection of artworks by 27 different designers/illustrators. This is the second collection for this project, (read about last year's project Coppelia here) this time for the ballet Hobson's Choice. Check out the collection online at http://www.pointeblank.co.uk/ and if you are in the Birmingham area pop along to the 6/8 Kafe 6/8 Temple Row,
 Birmingham,
 B2 from 5 March for six weeks, with nine images shown for a fortnight at a time. Form fifty five coverage  | Design week coverage

JoSpencer

Blog banner update by BRÁULIO AMADO

We've been pretty snowed under with other work over the past few months so haven't updated the blog banner for a while. A massive thank you goes to Soupa member Bráulio Amado for allowing us to use his illustration for Novembers update. His vibrant illustration really gives this month's look and feel a up tempo contemporary vibe. Check out his website for more design and illustration work.

http://www.iusecomicsans.com/

Soupa Zine Day – The Big Reveal

Last Saturday, a group of Soupa members made their way into London (some coming from *far away* so big thanks to them for getting up early) for a get together at The Book Club in Shoreditch.

The aim of the day was to design a promotional zine and the theme was 'Reveal.' This was decided by members ahead of the day to give them time to do a doodle or pen some pictures before we began. As you know, each member favours a different way of working and this is what we like best!

Soupa illustrators Harriet Gray, Luke Waller, Elissa Elwick, Jamie Littler, Anna Spencer, Carlos Garde-Martin, Mariana Lobao brought their pens, pencils, inks and other various materials, photographer Ted Kozak came along to photograph the event and went out and about in E1 gathering material for his photo collage piece.

And designers, Jo Spencer (me), Eurico Sá Fernandes, Pinelope Kourmozoglu and Mark Richardson created some typographical pages for the zine with Pinelope stitching her type into the paper.

After the event, Jo Spencer collated all the finished artwork and put them together to make up the zine so here's the big Reveal. We hope you like it.

Open publication - Free publishing - More creative

August banner by Wolf&Bear

This month we see a brilliant new banner design from Soupa's Eurico Sá Fernandes and Mariana Lobao aka Wolf&Bear. Check out more of their work and links over on their website here or go and check out their Facebook page.

New banner by Madi

A big thank you to Madi who has designed this month's banner for us. Taken from her Monster alphabet she developed this composition exclusively for Soupa.

Follow Madi on twitter here: http://twitter.com/madiillustrates

Soupa at Latitude

Posted by Jo Spencer (Soupa founder) We headed down to Latitude festival last weekend to take part in the YARN set 'YARN presents 10 stories about smoking' in the Literary Arena. YARN invited us to be part of the set to visualise the 4 performances from Katy Darby, Jarred McGinnis, Verity Flecknell and Camila Fiori. After a few meetings Gemma Mitchell (YARN director) and I decided we would create a visual book to record the experience of the set – live on stage. We initially invited people to submit their own stories, illustrations and photos about smoking – from which we received a brilliant response including submissions from Soupa members Spiros Halaris, Jason Lear, Anna Spencer, Joshua Marshall. I then collected these all together and added them to the book on the night.

The set was a great success, we received a brilliant turn out and response from the crowd – thank you if you were there! We handed out 200 Kazoo's which the audience used to accompany Verity Flecknell's performance of the a re-written version of Johnny Cash song – Final Cigarette Blues.

I was on stage for the whole set (1 hour) treating images, designing and building up the book... and trying not to look too serious!

The book is now available to view in full here.

Click here to view a video documenting part of the design process of the book.

Thank you also to all of you who submitted work, it has made this project really special.

To the pointe

Post by Clare Kelly Curated by graphic designer and illustrator Claire Hartley, Pointe Blank is a collaboration between Birmingham Royal Ballet and 27 artists across the UK. Claire invited Soupa members Jo, Harriet and Jamie to take part and they were delighted to oblige.

Themed around the story of Coppelia, each artist was asked to represent the story any way they wanted to; and here are some of my favourites. Of course, all the Soupa ones are my faves!

Design week coverage | Form Fifty Five coverage

Jo Spencer’s lino print which has been digitally offset.

Harriet Gray’s figurative portrayal.

The Hidden Dingbat Collective’s beautiful paper cut.

Claire Hartley’s heart-shaped offering.

And Jamie Littler’s somewhat dark illustration.

See the full collection of artists’ work, here http://www.pointeblank.co.uk/

Pointe Blank project

Soupa creatives Harriet Gray, Jamie Littler and Jo Spencer were invited and are taking part in Point Blank which is an exhibition of original images inspired by the story of Coppélia. In a first-of-its-kind project for Birmingham Royal Ballet, a selection of artists and designers have been invited to produce a single piece of artwork which envisages the plot of the classical masterpiece as told in a manner of their choosing. You can see the full brief here.

The collection will be seen for the first time at a live launch event in Birmingham, scheduled for 13 June 2011, with the work being made available online on the same evening.

The show is being curated by Claire Hartley with Rob Lindsay from the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Here are some previews of the work from Jamie (left) and Jo (right) – but go and check out the tumblr blog for teasers from all the other amazing illustrators!

Keep updated with the progress on twitter #PointeBlank @clairehartley @robintheoffice

New banner for June by Spiros Halaris

We are lucky to have the brilliant fashion illustrator Spiros Halaris on our showcase section of Soupa. His work is now heading up the June banner in style.