It's time for pancakes!

Hooray - it's Pancake Day!
Here are the ingredients you need to make pancakes:

Place the flour into a bowl with a pinch of salt. Make a well in the centre. Then:

Melt the butter gently on the stove or in the microwave and add a spoonful to the mixture.

Heat a saucepan and add some butter or oil to grease.  Pour in some mixture and quickly spread it around the pan surface to make a round pancake shape. Once it has begun cooking it should become loose in the pan and reading for flipping:

Garnish with classic lemon and sugar or anything you like:

The Science of Splats

I have been working on an illustrated character for a long time, trying to envisage his macro world (he is very small). His name is Marvin and here is a glimpse of him:

I wanted some paint splat textures to use as background elements. This coincided with an episode of creative funk. It turns out that what I needed to do to regain my illustration mojo was to throw some paint around:

These splats were made flicking paint from a paintbrush about 1 inch wide. They are useful but despite me scanning them at 1200dpi I still wasn't getting a big enough splat for my requirements.

I then tried pouring some paint from a height:

This is better though the paint has a bit too much water in it. Good splat spread (also on my shoes, and the road, but at least I went outside right?).

I love working digitally but also adding real textures and ink lines to my work. It always give the resulting images more freshness, character and life. Marvin is made up of crisp vector lines, ink lines, finger prints and smudges.

It was all great fun and brought up memories of my art school floor which was multi-coloured with paint splats. The only trouble is it makes me want to get big pots of paint, a step ladder and a large bare floor with white walls and just go for it!

Greetings Cards

I have been working on some greetings card designs for a while now. I find it a good way of developing illustration ideas into themes. When I first moved into my studio space a year ago I thought I'd start with a small project to develop some characters and little ideas I had into suitable card images. I often make my illustration work into stories so it was good to do a project which was less ambitious than a story book project but with different and specific challenges of it's own.

I decided to dip my toe into the online shop world and am selling some of my printed efforts on Etsy. My shop is here:

I have made a Christmas collection with gingerbread character designs:

and a Birthday collection based on characters from my Monsters work:

I am curious to see which designs are popular and what online traffic I can attract to my shop and website.

Wedding Invitation

Recently some friends asked me to design their wedding invitation. They had seen some examples they liked, so had quite a specific idea in mind. It was to be fully illustrated - they requested cartoon versions of themselves outside the venue with hand rendered type for the information. Here is the printed result:

It is a double sided A5 card:

The Order of Service is designed along the same theme.

Face

Last summer I was commissioned to create a large scale graphic image. My client had found a pop art style black and white picture they liked and wanted a similar image for their living room.
The original image was very small - 6 x 4 cm but my client wanted it on a large canvas sized 5 x 4 feet (152.4 x 121.92 cm):

I created a version of a face image in Illustrator as a vector file so that I could blow up the scale without losing any information. I then tile printed it on many sheets of A4 paper. If I'd had an overhead projector that would have been a quicker process but I didn't so instead cut out the shapes I wanted to paint in black and drew around them to transfer the image onto the canvas:

I then coloured it in with block colour.

The actual painting process was fairly quick. The most time was spent on preparation.
It was a fun project to take on.

Here is the result:

My client was very happy with the final result and once we found a big enough car to transport it in took it home!

Lions and Dragons dancing

During the two weeks of Chinese New Year (until the lantern festival at the end) there are plenty of opportunities to catch a Lion and Dragon dance in Hong Kong. At any time of day you may be out and about and the sound of crashing cymbals and beating drums will travel through the air as a nearby troupe burst into action. The Lion has two performers inside and leaps and prowls at the crowds that eagerly await the spectacle. Businesses will offer the Lion something - often a lettuce or foodstuff hanging at the door. The Lion, it's roars represented by the loud bashing of cymbals and drums, scares away the bad luck from the previous year. Mandarins are thrown to the crowd to represent gold and good fortune.

A Dragon often accompanies the Lion to offer good luck in the coming year. The Dragon is carried high on sticks by lots of performers, their number depending on its' length. It weaves around and looks spectacular!

Year of the Snake

I have just been in Hong Kong absorbing the wonderful sights, sounds, smells and peculiarities of Chinese culture. Everyday was a sensory overload. Since my return I have begun digesting into illustrations the noise, bustle, skyscrapers, temples, food and hectic pace of life lived in a haze of red and gold.

The Lunar Chinese New Year was celebrated while I was in Hong Kong so lots of dragon and lion dances occurred to the sound of clashing cymbals, scaring away the bad luck to herald good luck in its' stead.

 

It was great to be in a city full of activity and familiar things but one that felt very different to London. A trip to Kowloon Park amidst tower blocks and busy roads and you can find a tranquil pond inhabited by flamingos.

Peace and joy

Greetings from frosty London!
Recently I have been working on some Christmas designs to mail out to friends and family as a festive e-card. It is the first year I haven't made a physical card and that fact does sadden me a little. It is a small, delightful pleasure to receive letters and cards in the post and I hope it doesn't die out entirely as a practice. I am between homes at the moment and doing some stints of travel. This is all very exciting but with all my papers and materials boxed up I resorted to some digital creativity instead. I shall endeavour to make an extra effort next Christmas to get back to making some home made cards. Until then here are some digital messages of goodwill. I created two images, unable to decide which one I prefer. Perhaps the first. You can decide for yourself!
Wishing you all a happy holiday of peace and joy. And gingerbread.

 

 

Stopgap Dance Pack

Recently I have been working on some illustrations for a resource pack for the dance company - Stopgap.  Stopgap is the UK’s leading integrated company for dancers with and without disabilities. The resource pack is for dance teachers to aid them in including dancers with physical disabilities into their classes.  Here are some examples of the work I produced to accompany and support the text. I am still working on the cover and also doing all the layout too!

So if anyone would like to get involved in dance - whether you are able bodied or not - check out Stopgap's website - http://www.stopgap.uk.com and see some clips: http://www.youtube.com/user/StopGAPDance and be inspired! It is amazing what people can do!

Olympic legacy and meatballs

I've been working for a while on some animation projects and then the 2012 Olympics came along so my mind has been a little diverted from illustrating for a few months.

The Olympics were a great time to be in London. I think I am still in a post Olympic funk. So in trying to get back to reality, this is a picture of how happy and obsessed I was when the Olympics were on - Looking at the world through an Olympic Haze;

I've been going back into my picture book projects and here is an element I have made for possible inclusion in a spread.  Anyone for meatballs?

Swallows and Arrows

I was recently asked by Ferment magazine to create an illustration in response to a poem on the theme of upside down.
The poem entitled; 'This Way Up' is by Ted Piker.
I drew lots of things but eventually it became whittled down to quite a simple image:

Ferment magazine is published quarterly in Oxford. 
Ferment is a quarterly non-profit zine combining original creative writing with complementary illustrations.
We invite writers and illustrators whose work we admire to make contributions on a theme that is chosen for each issue.

Moby Dick

I recently took part in a project called DoeDeMee (Dutch for "Are you in").  It involved lots of international artists, designing a selection of classic book covers from a list of 'The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time' (list originally from The Observer newspaper in the UK).  The idea was conceived by the talented graphic designers at Beshart in Belgium.

The main idea is to promote reading and celebrating well loved classic stories and to hold an exhibition of the resulting covers as posters.  I was selected and chose Moby Dick as my book.

I read Moby Dick a couple of years ago and loved the depictions of life on a whaling ship. It is very visceral and dramatic. A time and lifestyle far removed from me. It is a layered book with lots of symbolism with themes of obsession, religion, mortality, might and progress. I was inspired by the whaling log books I saw scans of online, with their beautiful calligraphy and the whale stamps that they used to depict their haul (you can see my reference to that in the sea in my image). Moby Dick and his perceived evil barbarism is infact entirely projected by the Captain Ahab. A creation of mind and word and since Moby Dick is also a rare albino whale he is shown in my image with bright white lettering. It is a complex and rewarding story of adventure. Well worth a read!

Here is my finished version:

I got out my random selection of letterpress letters and my lino tools. It was messy and great fun.  I made lino cut outs of whale shapes (some of which you can see in the sea section of the image). As I was washing off my ink i did a print of the ink running down the plate and that became the sea texture you can see in the image!  You never know what will be useful in a picture!

Here is another version I did and liked but it didn't have quite the right balance. There are already quite alot of covers out there with huge whales bursting from the sea:

Here is a picture of me at work, printing in my kitchen!