#beetle cherry

Illustrating our egg collection

One of our volunteers, Claire, is an illustrator that has created her own virtual wildlife park: Beetle Cherry

Claire has been documenting our egg collection and is clearly inspired by the wondrous and surprising patterns. In one of her photographs you can see the careful measuring of an egg with metal calipers!

Beetlecherry is the brain child of Buckinghamshire born Claire Munday, a designer and illustrator who is now based, luckily for us, in Brighton.

Her stunning illustrations, digital artwork and papercuts relate to a wide audience and have been very popular at our past exhibitions, and its not hard to see why! Claire's artwork reflects her humour and love of nature, gaining inspiration from the natural world around her and visiting Museums and Zoological gardens which are rich with subjects to sketch.

"All my work is made by combining hand drawn with digital processes. My original love has always been drawing with a good old pencil on any scrap of paper, and this is still my primary tool of choice. Some projects are created entirely by hand, using pencil, ink, gouache, watercolour, even the occasional bit of collage, and only digitised at the last stage in order to reproduce them. Other projects start out as pencil sketches, but then are fleshed out entirely on the computer. My favourite projects are those where I get to include my hand drawn illustrations or type (I LOVE hand drawn lettering!) within a digitally created piece, contrasting the two techniques and playing around with the layout and juxtaposition".

"...and I love colour, especially strong splashes of unusual colour combinations. My inspiration comes from many different places… I’m a big animal lover so if left to my own devices, tend to end up drawing an animal in some form or another. But I’m also fascinated by people, their interactions with the world, and a love of having the touch of a human hand in all my work".

Claire is also a freelance illustrator and can be commissioned for individual projects, like creating stationery, wedding invites, digital artwork, illustrated logos and unique art.

Her range also includes colouring books for the big and small kids in your life and DIY papercut packs so you can try your hand at papercutting yourself!

and she designs these gorgeous unique wooden necklaces and brooches featuring her artwork...

She is currently exhibiting her work alongside 17 other local artists and designers at our event at Brighton Fishing Quarter Gallery untill 13th May, see here for more details...

Claire has an interesting blog detailing her new work, inspiration, offers and what she gets up too, but here she has shared with us here a day in her life and what she got up too...

8am: Get up, feed myself and the cat and put 6Music on the radio (which stays on all day!). Whilst drinking my tea, I try and do as much of my email/admin stuff as possible – replying to emails, checking my website (and Etsy and Folksy) shops for sales, making any payments, and sorting out my social media.

10am: I need to go collect a papercut from the framers for a customer, so I use that as a nice excuse to go for a morning walk. I use The Framing Workshop in Hove, partly because they do beautiful bespoke framing for a good price, and also because they’re really lovely in there!

11am: As well as selling my work as Beetle Cherry, I also do commissions and illustration work. I am off to meet my newest client, a lovely photographer who wants help with her branding and logo. She wants hand drawn type, little illustrations and a nice strong colour palette. Such a great project to work on!

12.45pm: Back home and I have some crumpets (among other things!) for my lunch, while checking my emails.

1.30pm: After lunch, I have some product making and packaging up to do. There are brooches to make, my DIY packs I picked up from the printers yesterday to package, prints to sign and some other bits and bobs. Most of this is to replenish stocks after some recent craft fairs and a flurry of website sales, but I also have a big order to send to the Old Fire Station shop in Oxford.

4.30pm: Just about got time to take some of my things to my Brighton stockist, Edited. I love this shop so much, it makes me very happy that I get to sell my work there! They have a great little gallery space upstairs with a nice big window, you can see some of my papercuts on the shelf there.

5.15pm: Home again and time for a sit down, cup of tea and hang out with the kitty (she is very distracting). I check my emails, and do a few minor bits of website updating.

6.15pm: I get dinner cooking in time for the boyfriend to get home (this doesn’t happen every day!) so we can chill out for a bit together.

8pm: Time for a bit of evening doodling, coming up with new ideas or just random pictures, like this one.

  11.30pm: Day over, off to bed!

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Artist: Claire Munday - Beetlecherry

Website: http://beetlecherry.com

Blog: http://beetlecherry.com/blog

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeetleCherry

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beetle-Cherry

Location: Brighton

You can find Claire exhibiting at Brighton Fishing Quarter Gallery, 28th March - 13th May, Kings Road Arches, BN1 1NB. We are right on the seafront to the right of the Palace Pier if looking at the sea, in the Fisherman’s Quarter. See website for opening times.

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