Ellie Curtis – Illustrations and Textile Prints

Earthernware head

Illustration of a Ted Hughes poem ‘Earthenware head’ about a clay head portrait of Sylvia Plath’s head, made by a friend. Sylvia felt extremely disturbed by her clay version and after collecting it, they left it in the branches of a November tree.

Matador in the woods

Victorian Parade on fabric

Some victorian creatures taking a walk down their street..Idea for fabric or wallpaper.

Cad I saw at a party

I saw this cad at a party in Hackney, East London – grey boiler suit, moustache, pointy blue shiny shoes.

‘Ingrid and Stephan’ textiles print

A couple of melancholic, slightly confused characters..

‘Bird Jig’ textiles print

It’s me birthday! Ok.
Here’s a new print that I’ve named Bird Jig, because the bird things are a-jigging. When I started drawing the figures, they were standing quite still, but then someone in my studio started playing some music, something between 1970’s folk and with a twist of medieval, and my figures started jigging in a medieval fashion and wearing pantaloons from the middle ages etc.

The prints are on linen, an oatmeal and a scarlett. I’m planning to also make calico cushion covers from these prints..I’ll add those when I’ve made some up to put on my Etsy shop, hopefully within a month..

‘Double animal’ print

This is a trial screenprint, navy blue onto calico cotton, so the images here are roughs, in particular the larger repeat here. The idea is similar to my ‘Alfredo y Alberto’ print in the ‘Screenprints on paper’ catagory, two very differnt bodies joined up to each other, and so they’re all a bit confused.

Mural for ‘Wonderland’ exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood

This mural was painted by me and my friend Nick Morely who I sometimes make collaborative drawings with. It’s part of the East London Printmakers exhibition Wonderland, which is comprised of prints related to fairytales (my 3 exhibition pieces are in my screenprints section on this blog – The Battle of Birlundula).
We ran related workshops with kids in the October half-term; The kids created colourful fantasy characters, which they then stuck onto the landscape and created their own stories from the new giant picture..
We went to see the Indian minature show at the British Museum ‘Gardens and Cosmos’ for some inspiration for landscape layout in paintings, so some of my buildings became sort of indianafied. Have you seen that show? I think the last day is tomorrow, it’s really wonderful! I keep drifting off to sleep thinking about the paintings. The colours used are sublime, as is the line. In some places the details are so fine, that you may need spectacles to see them. Apparently, Indian minature artists can’t really work past 30 years old, because their eyesight fails because of the work. Do correct me if I’m wrong! You can have a look at some details of the paintings in my ‘Inspirational things’ link.