Time for Tea

IF - Similar

I was doing some drawing over the weekend from a cool Soviet Military book, which, after the point was made clear to me by a rather dashing mustachio'd gent, I've decided to draw more from portraits and life again. My people are starting to look a little similar which isn't that much of a bad thing except I do need to practice drawing people better or at least showing more emotion ^_^

IF - Balloon

As I'm sure you can tell this image is greatly inspired by all the 50's animation Ive been watching and reading up about lately, also AMAZING day trips to Chester Zoo as a kid!
Its not the best image ever but I had fun doodling idea's for this weeks topic, if I get a chance I might draw a few of them up :)

IF - Opinion

Keep the posties busy! ^_^

IF - Pretend

Doing these Illustration Friday topics is really rather fun, work had sort of killed all creativity in me so its nice to be back drawing AND enjoying it ^_^

IF - Wise

Stephen Fry, I know no one wiser than this man. I believe EVERYTHING he says simply because he said it, No need for your facts, photos or years of scientific evidence, Stephen Fry said it you say? well that's good enough for me.
Space is actually Beige coloured you know ^_^

IF - Vacant

Vacant, like my face when approached by fundraisers and charity workers. My brain bails out, leaving me on standby until they get bored and move onto someone else.

Idle Hands

I havent been very happy with myself lately, havent been drawing. Tsk Tsk, well time for a change me thinks! turn of events means I will have some free time to get my act together and do some proper drawing again. Sweet!
I did do something arty though, the other weekend there was a excellent exhibition on at the Lowry (would recommend you go check it out), one of the contributors was the amazing Ali Graney who was also involved in the Big Draw 08 where you got to make your own pop up's!!
This one is mine, its Envelope City!

To see other pop-up's from the workshop go HERE!

Download Free Mothman Comic NOW!

The download-able pdf version of the first Mothman comic is up and ready for you to download, free! Artwork by Tony Knox, Anna McDade and myself, you are also invited to contribute Mothman related artwork for the next issue, all work will be put together and published into an anthology at the end of the year! if interested please get into touch with Tony and he'll tell you how. Its fun and Mothman is a cool character so I hope you enjoy it and any feedback on my first ever comic pages would be much appreciated! ENJOY!

click here!

Sneaky Peek

Here is alittle look at the comic I have been working on, its part of the Liverpool Biennial 08 and thats all I can tell you for now ^_^ "Fly to the light!"

Click!

This is the little office area Ive finally gotten round to setting up, its squeezed into an alcove in my bedroom but I like it, its rather cute. Those walls are still a little too bare for my liking though but I'm sure I can have them covered in no time at all ^_^

He's a lumberjck and he dont care..

AW YEAH! thinking green for a timberland 'treeshirt' competition, this is my first design, I'm pretty happy with it so I'll probably submit this one but I think I'll do a little bit more doodling just for fun, I did enjoy drawing beards ^_^

Phew!

I handed all my work in, had the degree show and then went to D&AD New Blood. Its been very very busy. I'm just settling back into life at home so I don't have any new work but I do have Elvis with a raygun at last and a other friends. I'll just post these up for now ^_^ These are the three book covers side by side!

smile its more editorial

Yes indeedie more editorial, this one is for Amelia magazine. I HATED the first one I did (that's why it isn't on the blog) SO I have redone it. The idea was to creative a image of a Utopia, an ideal state. I think if you want to make the world a utopia you got to make people smile, not the evil looking over your shoulder kind favoured by pretty much all the bad guys in hollyoaks, the kind that you cant control like when someone pulls a silly face or cracks a terrible joke. So here is my Utopia - me, a cat and a rat chilling out with some brews playing cards! What could be simpler? ^_^

tasty bit of illustration

Its not Elvis with a ray gun but it is a editorial image for Taste Italia magazine. I just had a small break from book covers to do some quick fire editorial. The article the image is for is about classic Italian dishes, the ones we think are classics like "spagbol" aren't and it has recipes and tips for those such dishes, very nice! its making me hungry just thinking about it. Bon Appetite.... wait.. that's not Italian.. ehh.

Big Cheesy Grin! :-D

And shes back. Hello! thank you very much for the supporting posts I received I really appreciated them, you'll be happy to know that my work was saved! the amazing, did I say amazing? I mean fan-tab-u-lous ali saved it for me! but I was abit thrown for awhile so have been trying hard to catch up with myself the past few weeks, think I am back on track now hooray!
I have been working on a limited edition postcard artist book (long title?). The book is called "Pictophobia- a fear of illustration" and other relating phobia's that I have with my work, like mixing colour, being too polite and stuff like that. Ive been having fun playing with CYMK colours and halftone, finally I have figured out how to do it without fiddling around for ages like before, it was surprisingly easy but most things are once you figure it out ^_^ my next project is book covers from none other but the great Robert Rankin and his Armageddon trilogy, I'm speed reading them now, look out for Elvis with a ray gun, beew beew beew!

Sad Face

External Hard drive, if you havent got one, GET ONE! I should have but didnt and my laptop died and Ive lost all my work, le sigh! So there wont be any updates for sometime as I redo the images I lost for university before starting the other stuff yet to be done. Cant help feeling abit blue but no time, got to get on get on with my work. So yeah, external hard drive, get one of those suckers!

Children's Book

I began writing a children's book in the first semester of the 3rd year, long story short it didn't go as I had planned. So! now I have some free time over Easter with which to chill I decided to go over the images I made before Christmas and fix them. Here are examples of the double page spreads for three of the pages with accompanying text. I like how this is going because I simplified it, you wouldn't believe the detailed inking I had planned just for those borders. As nice as it would be I only plan on making one copy of this book and I don't intend to give myself brain failure again with it so the catchphrase is... "keep it simple" ^_^ I also tried some duo tone versions to see how they would look, they don't look too bad. I was worried the collage detail would be lost completely but you can still see it. Any comment on these images would be GREATLY appreciated, I asked my 3 year old niece what she thought but see didn't give me much feedback, except she did like the teeth monster ^_^ with is a bonus.

Hustla t-shirts

This is the catalogue cover for hustla's new design range that featured the spark and myself. It occurred to me that I hadn't actually put any images of the t-shirts up yet so here they are, my designs are the pink and blue ghost tee, the brown and orange cat tee and if you look closely you might be able to see my black and yellow monster tee. It's ace seeing them up in the shop, they say they are selling quite well which is sweet. I have a few I seem to be living in at the minute, its all self promotion though so its all good! Myself and a few other designers have been asked to work for them again to design some tee's and brand logo which I will be starting soon.
Hopefully they will have their website up and running asap so you can buy them online, at the moment they have a shop open in Preston which is pretty cool.

Zine

I got set a brief at Uni to make a zine based on a journey, unfortunately (but surprisingly inspiration in the end) I got distracted all week watching films and chatting rubbish with my flat mate Alice (who just happens to have a blog by the way -check it!).
We decided to turn this unfortunate event around for the better and use the fact we got distracted for inspiration for our zine!
It is about the terrible illness known as Distraction that effects everyone at some point in their lives. We made a few in colour but we are going to see how they would turn out in black and white and maybe you will see them hanging around in bookshops soon! Free stickers and pull out posters included, how much of a sweet deal is that!? ^_^

Say hello to...

Little Miss Alice

She is a new addition to the UCLAN blogging world, she's a total colour fiend so check out her blog for lots of colourful delights!

Beast Book 2 Entry

This is my creature design for the Beasts Book Vol. 2 The creature is "Cait Sidhe" from Irish and Scottish folklore, it is a cat fairy and some say collects the souls of recently deceased people. Ive been working on it for the past week and I seem to have looked at this image for a little to long so I'm rather stumped as what to do with it. I am going to complete it but unfortunately I wont be submitting it for the March 1st deadline. Shame really because it would be a great opportunity and you'd never know unless you try but I made the mistake of looking too long at the submissions posted on the blog and the ideas in my head got all fuzzy, I didn't want to rush it for the deadline and not be 100% happy with it.
Who knows MAYBE they will make a Beasts Book Vol.3, if so I will be submitting my work extra extra early instead of super last minute.
This first image if the original idea I had, the cat doesn't look that sinister as I'd have liked and the little ginger tom doesn't really have a place being there really, but I do like the speak bubbles.. but then again I would say that as I put them in everything ^_^

This is the revised image, it still needs a lot of tweaking, the solid white areas are just ideas of placement for the legs of the dead person and the spirit that the cat is stealing. I'm happy with the more solid black cat and this thinner outline/outer glow but I think it still needs a lot of work to tie it all together nicely.

lets celebrate... me atually doing some uni work

Hooray! 2 editorial images only... 3 to go? Argh.
The first is for a Bill Oddie interview, in it hes just talking about his garden an how he has all these random objects like glitter balls, plastic figures, gnomes, cat statues and wind chimes that are suppost to deter wild animals but it just ends up attracting them instead. I thought it was quite a nice interview so illustrated it. The second is for a article called "lets celebrate Darwin" from the new scientist magazine that talks about creationism and the Evolution Weekend that tries to bring creationists and scienctists together. I was drawn to the title but the article was rather interesting so I ended up illustrating it also.
I am very happy with the Darwin image but I think Mr Oddie needs abit more work, but that can wait alittle while ^_^

manly cat

I had so much fun drawing this picture, everytime I looked at it I burst out laughing. It reminds me of the time I caught my cat Sooty taking a poo in the rose bush, I swear he looked at me just like that an scowled until I walked off. Hahaha.. memories.
Errr.. maybe I should have kept that story to myself.. ahem.

Make my day, kaplunk

Ladysnail says I make her day which is really sweet of her (Im going to make her an extra special cup of tea later ^_^) so now its my turn to chose five people that make my day, 'ere we go

Mr Andy Moombaduo! His little quirky characters make me smile everytime! (he also lets me steal his cute pillow to cuddle whenever I want ^_^)
http://moombaduo.blogspot.com/

Marky P, hes bringin' tashes back!
http://m-d-penman.blogspot.com/

Caroline, I really like her photography and digital illustration
http://viridian-house.blogspot.com/

Amanda Visell and Michelle Valigura, those girls are just amazing!
http://thegirlsproductions.blogspot.com/

and Scott MacDonald who's characters are simply fan-friggin-tastic! ^_^
http://scottkmacdonald.blogspot.com/

To pass it on, here are the details:

1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Display the “You Make my Day Award” logo
4. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news.

the t-shirt reads: wee bit bored

I have just done a few more t-shirt designs for hustla, this is one that I just decided to play around with. was abit bored.

avoid if you have a lisp

Bless him,
poor little Sid the Squid,
went to Specsavers yes he did.

I drew him for my classes Degree Show poster, Squid Inc. 08 (more about that coming soon!) I was very happy with how he turned out so I thought Id make him into a lovely picture for all to see. Hopefully he will soon have some little sea dwelling friends to play with that wont take the 'michael' out of his lovely new glasses like those mean old crabs did.

welcome back to illustration

The first project back was set by our tutors, a series of 4 quick editorial briefs, the first was for a magazine called Transmission magazine. I chose the short story Stanley to illustrate. It is a dark image than I would usually produce because it suited the story and the content of the atual magazine. I enjoyed making this image mainly because I knew it was editorial which meant I had to work fast and that limited my options of working methods, which was a good thing. I was alittle knocked by my feedback after christmas but I think I'm starting to make head way with how I approach work now so I just threw some stamps down on the page and worked into it with carbon paper. I cropped the original and played with colours alittle then printed onto my envelope. I bloody love envelopes!

Hello 2008-)

Self-freakin-promotion seems to be where it is at (currently researching for a essay so its all Ive seen for the past hour) So Ive added to my list of many a New Years resolution that I will stitch, scribble, print, paint, doodle (maybe even 'collect') as many things as possible so I can finally, FINALLY figure out what I'm doing with this illustration lark and find this fabled style I hear so much about and get my self out there!
No more looking at peoples work and feeling blue, when that miss snail finally moves in to the flat we wont be having anymore of that type of thing!


(I just didn't want to post without a picture ^_^)