My interpretation of Illustration Friday‘s word of the week. Alien summer from my still-to-be-published space book – it’s a detail from one of the sections of the final pop-up spread.

I was recently sent a Ramakian postcard and Cut-out statue from my friend and colleague Joseph Coelho who is on his travels in the Far East. It’s a coincidence that I should receive something that you cut out and construct as I’m currently preparing a series of large frameworks that not only pop-up but have parts that fold up and slot into place as well. It’s for a visit to a school near Greenwich at the beginning of March.

Usually when I do this exercise I’ll present the children with a framework consisting of abstract shapes and challenge them to make something out of it. With this school I’ve been given the theme of pirates so I’m creating frameworks that are clearly the beginnings of three ships. It’s relatively easy to create pop-up boats but more difficult to make them fill up the whole space, hence the fold up bits. I’m very interesting to see what the children do with these – check back later to see how they get on.

Happy to say my cardboard structures from the Look out art trail project are still up despite the deluge over Christmas and now the snow. Here’s some photos from a few days ago. I’m curious to see how long they last.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The look out art trail is now complete and will remain in situ in St George’s Ward in Islington until early spring. The pieces  can be found using the map below – Insectum (blue) is situated in front of John Barnes Library. Happy exploring!