Holy Moley Arty Party

Last August we bumped into our friend Helen Harrop who told us about a Travelling Moleskine Project she was involved in. What's a Moleskine we hear you cry!? Well...

"A Moleskine® is an iconic black book, beloved by creative types (Picasso, Van Gogh, Hemmingway etc) It can be a notebook, diary, sketchbook, city guide or planner." - The Culture Vulture.

Helen was in charge of one of the 80 moleskines that were dished out by the Culture Vulture (who teamed up with The Big Draw for this collaborative project) and she needed lots of talented people to contribute words/poetry, art, photos or doodles. Each moleskine had a theme, Helen's was 'Chinese Whispers,' and each of the participants were asked to make their own creative interpretation of this.

We've heard a lot about these travelling moleskines and collaborative projects like this are always fun so we thought we'd add our creativity to the mix. Here are our contributions:

'Oobly' © Johnathan Gallagher http://www.trumpetcleaner.co.uk'Me to You' © Katherine Moss http://www.quantempus.co.uk

The ones below were drawn on the train after our trip to the London Design Festival. We both took turns to describe the features of a character: eyes, nose, hair, mouth and then each drew one half of the face.

Image © Johnathan Gallagher and Katherine Moss

Image © Johnathan Gallagher and Katherine Moss

Image © Johnathan Gallagher and Katherine Moss

Image © Johnathan Gallagher and Katherine Moss

The moleskines were exhibited in their full glory at an Arty Party held at the Culture Vulture's HQ, Temple Works in Leeds, to help raise funds for the Campaign for Drawing.

The night's festivities included a line dancing hoe down by Axis, a circus sideshow photography session from creative duo Lord Whitney (more about this later ;)), an entry in the Year Book, some conversation ear-wigging/ under cover work for Helen 'Chinese Whispers' Harrop, some naughty caricatures by Alex Hughes from The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, some wicked wall drawing by Helen Entwhistle a.k.a Memo and a nifty networking room called 'Chumspace' from Numiko.


Related Links:

The Culture Vulture >> Travelling Moleskines®
Culture Vulture Travelling Moleskines Flickr Group
Lord Whitney
Memo and Memo Blog
The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation - The Bloghorn
Axis - The Online Resource for Contemporary Art
Numiko