This paper-cutting illustrator has a degree in Print and Surface Design from the Leeds College of Arts: ‘it was great,’ says Damien, ‘but I didn’t really follow the conventional route of the course…’

Damien likes the woods, fruit tea and visiting museums. ‘I’m a bit like Tom Hanks in BIG,’ he says. ‘A little older, but still a kid at heart!’

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m from Newcastle but I am currently based in Leeds. All of my work is produced by hand with a scalpel and while it is a slow process craft, I love everything about paper-cutting. I like starting out with a solid piece of paper and cutting away to reveal an image – it really reminds me of when I was a kid. It’s a similar process to the magic colouring books where you scraped with a coin or painted with colours to produce images and colours from something that was originally blank.

What are your inspirations?

My inspirations include outer space, history, dark scary places, hidden places, nature, monsters, prehistoric periods… I very rarely draw from photos or landscapes. I prefer to just draw from my imagination… For example, if I think ‘oh, I want to draw a sea monster’, I just draw what I think one looks like at that particular time.

What’s your favourite piece of work you have produced?

Pretty tricky question when it comes to my favourite piece – they all take so much time that I really like them all! I guess this piece, Through Caves and Caverns (left), is one that stands out to me. I liked drawing all the little tunnels and caves and the creepy things going on inside them.

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

Again, I dont really have a clear favourite person who inspires me, but I do really admire anyone involved with the No Brow collective. The work there is really imaginative and inspirational.

Visit Damien’s website and Tweet him: @Damien_Barlow.

All images © Damien Barlow. To view the images in clearer detail, click on them.

When not working, Jess is a self-confessed ‘geek’: ‘I spend far too much time in the cinema and drinking tea!’ she says. She likes taking photographs of anything and everything, ‘but mainly my cat!’

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I am currently designing promotional material for a variety of clubs in Nottingham. I also volunteer as a designer for Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

I have had my illustrations featured in the 2011 M&S card range as well as designs to be featured in George @ ASDA’s 2012 Autumn/Winter babywear range. I like to keep busy!

What are your inspirations?

Most things that I come across inspire me. Being at uni is a great place for inspiration as very creative people surround me most days. I collect many things that may inspire me in the future. There are so many websites/blogs to get inspiration from such as, Pinterest and Designspiration. Inspiration truly is everywhere!

What is your favourite piece of work you have produced?

I enjoyed my designing my Christmas cards. In an ideal world I would have the means to letterpress them. I think it would be a nice area of work to get into, being festive or drawing for occasions seems like a happy job!

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

I love the work of Caroline Gardner. I like her designs, as they are quirky and sophisticated also, her use of traditional printing techniques, such as letterpress interpreted in a very modern way. I also love Sanna Annukka. Her work is lovely and graphical style being both simple and complex. It may partly be because I’m a stationary fiend as well!

Read Jess’ blog and see more of her work here; Tweet her, too – @Jess__Bright.

All images © Jess Bright. To view the photographs in clearer detail, click on them.

Illustration by Emma Block

As well as being charming and romantic, this film’s real achievement is in keeping a 21^st century audience enraptured in 100 minutes of film without a word of spoken dialog.  The silent nature of the film is more than a mere gimmick, and it would be impossible to reproduce it’s magic by just watching a film with the volume off and the subtitles on. The silence of the film is a story telling device in it own right, creating moments of suspense and subtlety that would have been difficult to achieve in a film with spoken word.

The film poses the age-old question of whether pride is to be considered a fault or a virtue, and it is notable that the film is called The Artist, not The Actor.

If all that doesn’t make you want to see it, go for the beautiful 1920s costumes, the original score and Uggie, the adorable scene-stealing Jack Russell.

Emma Block

The Artist is in cinemas now

Fabrizio is currently based in Rome, where he is studying architecture at university. ‘It’s another kind of art,’ he says, ‘and I really love it.’

Photography and architecture aside, Fabrizio’s other passions include reading (‘I always have a good book on my bedside table’), music, film and skateboarding (‘although lately I’ve not been practising so much…’).

Find out more below.

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I have taken photographs since I was 14. In the last few years I have started using mainly analogue cameras. I work with a Nikon F65, but a lot of my pictures are shot with a Pentax K1000 and cheap cameras I find elsewhere, too.

What inspires your work?

I’m inspired by a lot of known (and unknown) photographers/artists like Hedi Slimane, Corinne Day, Lina Scheynius, Ryan Mcginley and many others. I like to find inspiration from the people I meet in an ordinary day, too. I like to watch them walking, chattering and whatever else (I’m not a stalker, I promise!)

What is your favourite piece of work you have created?

A lot of the photographs I shoot are favourites, because they remind me of something I’ve done or a particular situation or a special person. But if I have to choose one, it would be this one (left) of Daniela, my best friend. Maybe I love her. 

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

One of my favourite photographers is Corinne Day, her style is brilliant and her use of light really amazes me. Unfortunately she died in 2010 and that was a huge loss for the photography industry. She wasn’t just a fashion photographer (although she worked a lot with magazines like Vogue and i-D and she helped Kate Moss to become who she is now). She was a great portrait photographer, which is different as it’s not so simple to work with people (for me, at least), but everything looks so pure and fascinating in her works. Her images are in praise of people, of youth and human shapes – that’s why I’ve said it’s not only about fashion.

Visit Fabrizio’s website, see more of his work here and Tweet him: @tommibpusher.

All images © Fabrizio Mingarelli. To view the photographs in clearer detail, click on them.

When I interviewed J.C. for his TYC feature last year, the one thing that struck me was his unfailing commitment to his work. When he initially emailed about being featured, I visited his website. I was struck then by his ability to write: his work was poetic, romantic and neat, his English and grammar as impeccable as his manners.

I cannot even try to claim to know him, but was very much aware of him – he seemed to have a blossoming career ahead of him and a real dedication and passion for his work. Judging by the response on Twitter today, he was surrounded by loving friends, both online and off. His death seems to have come as a massive shock to those surrounding him and I can’t imagine how he must have been feeling.

I challenge you to read his last Tweet without wanting to turn back time and do something, anything, to make him feel differently, whether you knew him or had never even heard of him.

I wish every single one of you a long and happy life. I love you. “…there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” Winnie the Pooh

It is very difficult to write this kind of thing. I hope that anyone else who feels lost, or trapped, is able to reach out to someone.

Our thoughts are with J.C.’s family and friends at this most terrible of times.

For those who are interested in attending J.C.’s funeral, details can be found on his Twitter page.

If you are depressed, please, please, please ask for help – the Samaritans are literal life-savers.

The Woman in Black

This is Daniel Radcliffe’s first big movie break away from Harry Potter. In numerous interviews I’ve read, he assures us that he is very proud to have been part of the Potter series, but has been equally keen to emphasise that he is now ready to ‘prove himself’ in ‘more challenging’ roles. He impressed on Broadway and the West End in Equus, but – was he able to make the film transition from boy wizard to versatile actor?

The problem with Radcliffe is, I think, that one look at his face and you instantly think ‘hey, that’s Harry Potter!’ Or at least that’s what I thought, five minutes into The Woman in Black when Radcliffe’s Arthur Kipps had been packed off to a mysterious location (Hogwarts) on a steam train (the Hogwarts’ Express) by his law firm boss (er, Hagrid?). But by the sixth minute, all thoughs of chocolate frogs and Quidditch had evaporated – Radcliffe is a good actor, even when not protecting Muggles from He Who Must Not Be Named. And hey, he’s even grown a beard, so give him half a chance.

Set in a dowdy Victorian village somewhere t’up North, it becomes clear from the moment Kipps leaves his train carriage that all is not as it seems. Wide-eyed children stare at him through windows, locals mutter mutinously as he passes them. Kipps is t’up North so as to sort the papers and property of the late Alice Drablow, a widow who died leaving no heir. We the audience are as bewildered as urbanite Kipps as the superstitious village-dwellers urge him to stay away from Mrs Drablow’s home, the remote and abandoned Eel Marsh House. The scene is set.

As a young widower with a four-year-old son, Kipps is a tortured soul, haunted by flashbacks of his dead wife. It is not long before he is sucked into the story of Eel Marsh House, the mysterious Drablows and the hideous Woman in Black, and he quickly pieces together a terrible chain of events. Tragedy strikes again and again in the village, and Kipps is determined to bring an end to the terror.

The Woman in Black is a crafty figure – she haunts Kipps whilst he works at Eel Marsh House, and continues her ghastly regime of revenge against the village. Her failure to forgive the death of her son pronouces her utterly unhinged, and it is the grief of the most deranged of mothers we see projected on the screen as she continues her wicked work.

Jane Goldman’s screen adaptation is good for edge-of-the-seat moments, and masterfully uses suspense to create an atmosphere so unnerving that you find yourself shrieking at various intervals. It drips Gothic – there are tombstones, ravens, faces at windows, scratched-out photographs, sinister muscial boxes, thunderstorms… The list is endless. But whilst the ending of Susan Hill’s novel left Kipps in a perptual state of torment, Goldman’s retelling is arguably far kinder. For those who haven’t seen the film, I won’t go into any more detail but, in my opinion, Goldman’s ending loses the sense of hideous horror of the book.

Definitely worth a watch – just make sure you don’t find yourself home alone for 24 hours afterwards…

The Woman in Black is in cinemas now.

Originally written as a novella in 1950, Star Quality was never meant to reach the stage; however, Coward decided to rewrite it as his final work for his beloved theatre in 1967. It’s a play within a play: the tale centres around Bryan Snow (Bob Saul), a young playwright whose latest work, Dark Heritage, is being brought to life on a Manchester stage. Directing Dark Heritage is fussy perfectionist Ray Malcolm (Daniel Casey), and starring as the leading lady is Lorraine Barrie (Liza Goddard).

Much like all stars, Lorraine Barrie’s light is no longer burning as brightly as it once did. On stage, we are reminded of her former glory by a Dorian Gray-esque painting of her younger self, looking entirely removed from the mid-20th century setting by her Edwardian attire. Lorraine Barrie is the original diva: she shrieks, she sobs, she stamps her silk-slipper’d foot. Bryan Snow is enraptured by her; catty Ray Malcolm is as repelled by her as he is intrigued.

Coward himself was notoriously a woman-hater, and here he explores these feelings. Tony Orford (Anthony Houghton), Ray Malcolm’s personal assistant, explains to young Bryan – who confronts the two about their negative responses to the female members of the cast – that without women there would be no theatre. They speak of the sisterhood as if women belong to a different species, a different planet even. However, by the end of the play – when the curtain has come down on the first night of Dark Heritage- Malcolm is able to acknowledge that Lorraine delivered a first-class performance, which is satisfying.

Noël Coward

Now on the home run of a pretty lengthy national tour, the play is definitely worth seeing if you can. Director Joe Harmston – as well as adaptor Christopher Luscombe – have done an excellent job of creating a compelling, evocative and bitingly amusing insight into the golden age of the theatre and its thesps. The actors were pitch-perfect, and Liza Goddard was particularly good as faded starlet Lorraine. And there was even a dog named Bothwell, who managed to steal every scene and the curtain-call at the end. Eat your heart out, Uggie.

Star Quality is visiting a number of theatres across the UK before the tour ends in March. Full view listings here.

Miranda’s aim in life is to ‘float by, taking photographs and drawing on top of photocopies.’ She likes the challenges presented by entering creative competitions and collaborations. Her one true love is Soho. ‘I’m a Londoner to the bone,’ she says. ‘The people you meet in Soho, and the knowledge they bestow, is simply incomparable.’

Find out more below.

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m currently studying Illustration at the London College of Communication. I’m a bit of a tea connoisseur. I like my teas like my work – dark, a little on the heavy side, not overly complex and not to everyone’s taste (like a Lapsang Souchong or a Russian Caravan). I think I’m meant to be an illustrator but it’s never good to restrict or categorise something. I’d say I’m a collector. I find old film cameras and taxidermy much more interesting than Nicki Minaj and if I had to describe my bedroom, I’d say its comparable to the old cabinet of curiosities idea.

What inspires your work?

I like to document ideas and places like most people and I tend to turn to film photography for that, I prefer old processes, the time consuming, hit and miss ways of creating that makes everyday more satisfying. The cut and paste style of the 80′s punk era undeniably creeps into my practices.

What is your favourite piece of work you have produced?

My favourite piece of work at this moment (it changes like the weather) is my Candy Pop photography project (left). I usually steer clear of bright colours but was encouraged to go all out and think pink for this project. I think images capture an eery voyeuristic feel with an strong sense of femininity and above all else I enjoyed creating those images. I got up from my desk, dragged my friends to Brighton and everything was done in a different frame of mind in a different location to usual. If you’re ever stuck in a rut thats the most beneficial thing you can do. Get up and go somewhere new.

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

The work and processes of Sophie Calle are a deep influence and Kate Breakey is an artist to whom we should all bow down to at her ability to be so elegant and yet macabre.

See more of Miranda’s work here and visit her blog. Tweet her: @MirandaFoxx.

All images © Miranda Foxx. To view the photographs in clearer detail, click on them.

LOVE IT

With Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, love is in the air – indulge your inner romantic with these two events.

Cadbury World are hosting a choc-tastic weekend at their factory in Bournville. Life-size Cupids will be wandering around and the experts will be making chocolate hearts all weekend.

To burn off all that chocolate, you can also enjoy a three-hour couple’s photography tour around London. Stroll around the capital with your loved one, whilst learning how to snap like a pro from an expert. The tour kicks off from Eros’ statue – meet you there.

Also! Don’t forget to enter our Valentine’s Day competition – send us your creative interpretation of the day and what it means to you, and you could win 1kg of Thornton’s heart-shaped chocolate truffles. More details here.

DEVELOP AN EYE FOR FASHION

This fabulous exhibition showcases the work of Norman Parkinson, one of the most prolific fashion photographers of the 20th century.

Featuring dozens of rare and original prints, these snaps of the beautiful and famous are an insight into the evolution of the fashion image, as well as a great insight into a hugely talented individual.

Until 15 April at Bristol’s M Shed. £5 entry. Click here for more details.

LAUGH

If the gloomy weather is getting you down, the Leicester Comedy Festival will certainly put a smile back on your face.

Billed as Europe’s longest-running comedy festival, the festival is a must-see if you want to spend your weekend LOLing. This weekend’s talent includes: Nathan Caton, Tom Deacon and Tania Edwards, the huge range of acts means that there’s something for even the most reserved sense of humours.

Until 19 February. Find out more here.

GET GROOVY, BABY

It’s London Fashion Week next week, so get yourselves in a suitably sartorial mood by paying a visit to the Walker Art Gallery’s Feathercuts and Flares exhibition.

Depending on what you define as ‘cool’, the 1970s were host to some of the best (or worst) fashions. With everything from platform shoes to disco-tastic dresses, this brilliant exhibition, is, if nothing else, a subtle reminder that the flare should never return to the high streets again.

At Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. Click here for more information.

COOL COLLAGES

Vladimir Sulyagin has made collage portraits of some of the biggest and best-known international personalities. His subjects include Albert Einstein, James Joyce and a whole host of others – and now a selection of his works are on display in the Paper Spirits exhibition at The Lightbox in Surrey. His imaginative renderings of people are truly remarkable.

For more information, click here.

If you would like your event featured, email us – theyoungcreatives@hotmail.co.uk

Niki is based in Wales but is currently in London working for MTV. She also works as a fashion illustrator: ‘I’m going to be exhibiting my work at the Pick Me Up Fair at Somerset House later on this year,’ she says.

Find out more below!

Tell us a bit about yourself…

My work is portrait-based, fashion-focused, colourful, playful – and hopefully nice to look at too. My main influences are colours, shapes, fashion and the people who wear it.

I studied GCSE, A Level and Art Foundation in Wales, then received a first class honours degree in Fashion Promotion and Illustration from Ravensbourne, London.

What are your inspirations?

It may sound obvious, but the person I’m drawing is the biggest inspiration on what I’m drawing. Whether I’m working from found images, or on personal commissions, for me, the most important part of my work is that I portray certain personality traits of the girl that I’m drawing and allow the viewer to get an insight of what she’s all about. I draw these girls because they lure me in for some reason, and I want the person looking at the picture to feel the same way. If you’re going to tell a story, I believe you should tell it right.

What is your favourite piece of work you have produced?

The illustration of the girl holding a paper chain (the background on my twitter page) has to be one of my favorites. It was the start of my 3D illustrations and was the first piece I made in my new studio too, so I’ll always remember that one.

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

This is such a difficult question to answer because there are so many wonderful talents out there in illustration right now. Ok so if I had to pick just one, right now, it would have to be Esra Roise. I love how feminine and beautifully consistent her work is.

Visit Niki’s website and blog, and say hello on Twitter: @NikiPilkington.

All images © Niki Pilkington. To view the photographs in clearer detail, click on them.