It's Nice That's fave bits of Pick Me Up 2013 — and boy, there's a few!

We look forward to Pick Me Up a great deal – not only does it mark the beginning of spring and the joys of drinking beer outdoors, it also marks the point in the year where some of the world’s best illustrators and artists can bring their wares into one large area to exhibit to the public. What’s great is that most people, those outside of the strange hot-dog infused world of illustration, will never have seen a lot of these artists (and will be able to buy affordable items to take home with them).

So what’s in store this year? Well, as always, it’s crammed full of great stuff. The winding, two-floor space inside London’s Somerset House is a near-perfect location for all this art to be housed. As you enter in (if you manage to go in the right side) you are greeted with Pick Me Up Selects, a collection of artists’ work selected to be the crop of the year. 2013’s selection includes new work from Tom Edwards, some paintings by man-of-the-moment Jean Jullien, drawings by the inimitable Damien Florebert Cuypers and some seriously raunchy typography from Malika Favre among many other big old names.

Facestamp, the genius creation by the Human After All agency allows guests to make funny and aesthetically pleasing images from facial feature themed stamps illustrated by the likes of Siggi Eggertsson, Hattie Stewart and many others. You can see the results, and your own creations if you happened to make one here.

The work on display in Camberwell collective Day Job’s area was mighty impressive. These guys are young and fresh faced but are proving to be stiff competition to some of the professionals. Charlotte Mei Jones and her mind-blowingly beautiful pottery made us very happy indeed.

There was one section of Pick Me Up, however, which was the brilliant exhibition equivalent of the kids’ table, and that was Beach London’s area. Beach’s unsurprisingly excellent curated pick selection of artists was, for me, the most impressive display in the show, with works by the likes of Sister Arrow, Tom Sewell, Heresy, and Nous Vous. And that’s before we get to a staggeringly amazing mural of villains by bad boys Kyle Platts, Tom Slater and Sam Taylor, the only downside being that it was stuck on the wall, making it impossible to purchase and take home with you forever.