A photoshoot with Vera Chok

Vera and I have struck up quite a little artist-muse thing of late - you'll probably recognise her from previous appearances on the blog at Samantha's Supper Club and as Fifty Faces #4. Though she didn't appear in the images, she was also the drive behind last week's trip to the Torriano Meeting House, where I shot images of a production she was in. A couple of weeks ago, keen to test my tasty new lighting kit, I headed over to her house for a fun little shoot. Vera was interested in exploring the stereotype of the submissive Asian lady (she'd just returned from a visit to family in Malaysia - that's a vintage dress of her mum's she's wearing in the shots!). Somehow it all turned into a modernised In the Mood for Love inspired sort of piece - one part dissatisfied housewife, and one part ice-cool fashion kitten. Maybe it was the vintage ad poster with Mah Jong playing ladies Vera showed me before we kicked off? Anyway, I really like these images and I hope you do too. You can contact Vera through her website.

Torriano Meeting House

What a place. I caught The Fever here last night, and you can catch it too; in Brighton this Sunday.

Portobello Gastrotour, yes please

Last Friday I trotted off merrily to Golborne Road to begin my Gastrotour of Portobello. I never ever venture into West London so it felt like an exotic epicurious safari. The Gastrotours are the brainchild of Celia Brooks Brown, a food writer and cook who used to live in the area, and now runs half day tours of all the secret hotspots that you wouldn't know unless you were a local (there are also tours in Marylebone and Borough). Any day that begins with a coffee and a Portuguese custard tart (from the Lisboa Patisserie) is a day that's already started off just fine in my opinion.

 The clothes and bric-a-brac market was in half mode when we started.

Garcia's Deli was our first stop-off - it's been in the area 50 years and is run by the grandson of the original owner.

 Who knew canned tuna could be so pretty?

 Celia holds out a platter of cheeses. I am forced to restrain myself from snarfing the lot.

 The jamon iberico (furthest left, out of focus, duh) was insanely good. Fat melting into your mouth, all acorny and delicious.

 I took home some of the air-dried tuna (back row, in the middle) and had it with avocado and lemon juice on baguette. Hell yes.

 One of Garcia's oh-so-charming workers...

 Next door is a cafe where we sampled some gazpacho (cucumbery and slightly sweet, perfect for a summer dinner party)...

 ...and churros and chocolate, which apparently is a breakfast dish in Spain. I would sugar crash and burn by about 9.10am if that was my breakfast. (Not pictured: samples of tortilla, paella).

Next stop: The Spice Shop. Like being in a souk, all savoury smells and weird gnarly looking things that could blow your head off.

 Yes, I sniggered at the packet below. 

 Moving up the road, we came across flower and vegetable stalls.

 And so on to a paired cheese and wine tasting at Jeroboam's in Elgin Crescent. I usually assume wine people are snobby but the chap who served us was lovely, pointing out various ways of tasting the wine and highlighting why they chose the particular cheeses. (Celia's pouring below).

Argentinian Malbec and something nice and crisp from the Languedoc. Both yummy. 

Manly cigars for sale.

I'm embarrassed to admit I've completely forgotten this nice chap's name. But he's gone off to work in their Belgrave Square shop, so stop by if you're in that neck of the woods.

 Getting into antiques territory now.

 And our final stop, at Melt chocolates. They make almost all their truffles, bonbons, and caramels on site. Michael is the chocolatier on duty that day (there are three others) and he demonstrated the tempering process, and we tried all sorts of different origin and cocoa percentage chocolate. 

Celia highlighting the deliciousness of everything!

 Tempering the chocolate.

 The crowd gets restless waiting for a taste.

 Cocoa pod and cocoa nibs.

 Everyone was terribly accommodating when I asked for portraits. Thanks Michael!

The Melt shop was beautifully laid out, with these gorgeous flowers in full bloom.

The mistress of ceremonies also kindly posed for me. Thanks for a wonderful morning, Celia! I can't recommend the Gastrotour highly enough - mine was a present and I think it was a terrific one.

Celia's website: www.celiabrooksbrown.com 

Bloom

Observation

Evolution

COLLABORATION: Sidekick Books, the originals

Here are the originals of the images I posted about a couple of days ago.

Having revisited these images, I'm reminded that I meant to do more with this collaging technique. It marries well with an idea I'd had about organic and inorganic shapes and the abstracts you could make from them, and some experiments I've been doing with portraits of people incorporating old biological drawings. So keep your eyes peeled for some sketches of these thoughts in the next few weeks.

COLLABORATION: Sidekick Books

About a year ago I got involved in a collaborative poetry and illustration project with publishers Sidekick Books, an offshoot of Dr Fulminare's Questionable Arts. The book is based on a 1960s guide to British bird life - all the poems in the book are based on one of the birds listed, and each has an accompanying illustration of the appropriate bird. Well, the book arrived in the post last week and it looks marvellous (it's a very high quality print). I have three illustrations in there - a collared dove, a robin, and a blue tit. I created them with cardboard and paper cut outs, materials, and collage bits and pieces before laying out the elements and photographing them. I then also photographed some suitable bits of text relating to the birds in question and created layers on layers digitally. I am very pleased with how they turned out in the book (I'll dig out the originals shortly and share those too).

The poets I'm illustrating are really talented - Matt Merritt, Beth Settle, and Caroline Crew (her post about the book is here). 


And if after all this, you're keen on having your own copy, you can buy one here.


PS: apologies for the appalling pictures...it's quite difficult to hold open a new book, manually focus and compose a good image all at the same time it turns out!