Wear my stuff

Could've done to have trimmed this down a bit but ah well, the laptop I use to upload stuff doesn't have PS.

I'm going to try and hardest to get this printed on some t-shirts for my degree show. I'm tempted to give them out for free, just because I'll be chuffed as hell seeing people wear them :)

I'll get a set of prints loaded off too, and I'm currently thinking about customizing each one with acrylics or inks, just different colour and textures, nothing too much.

A Smile To Remember

Final-ish piece. I bet I make some changes before long, we'll see. But for now I'm happy with it. When placed with the "Chilled" piece the different tones in the type look hoooot.

Bukowski piece #2 (work in prog)

So yeah some more in progress bits of the second Bukowski piece...finished piece to follow.

12" coverrrrs

As another small side project for uni (and to boost that ever-important portfoleenio) I'm making a series of record covers. The decision for this is that I've recently got with this girl who's a fellow artist/illustrator (-extraordinare) and had a very cool couple of months with her, but she has this amazing record collection and looking through it made me realise how great old 12" vinyl covers actually were! From everything to the artwork to the print quality, it's all a bit good and I feel we're missing out with bog standard CD covers today. Kind of makes me wonder what's going to happen to album art when (and if) buying music takes a complete digital turn. I'm thinking flash animation album covers...that would be fucking sweet! But still, not as good as the old stuff ¬_¬

So yeah I'll primarily be looking at making artwork for Dubtep, DnB, Breaks and Jungle artists. The reason for this is that it's a scene I'm heavily into myself and it's also (looking mainly at Dubstep) one of the only contemporary music forms still using vinyl. Seems a good market to work into.

Bukowski - Chilled (revised)

Here's the first Bukowski piece again with a few minor changes. After a few cheeky critiques on facebook with a couple of other illustrators I swallowed my pride and realised they were right about a few things that could be changed. Mainly on the middle panel. Apparently I can't draw women too well, I sort of make them look a bit transvestite-ish. That could be a problem...

I also added a bit more grit. I'm a bit happier with it now, and it's too late to change anything else because I just submitted this version for one of my Northern Design Competition '10 pieces :O

Bukowski piece #2

Here's where the second Bukowski piece is at. Adding colour and textures to the stand-alone panels before I piece them all together.

I'm currently just adding the inks to the third panel now, so hopefully it'll all come together and I'll have the first version finished sometime tonight.

XYZ - It's back from the dead! :/

I apologise for the rhyme, it was awful...and if you didn't realise the rhyme, you didn't miss much.

Anyway, I've finally got back to work on the comic I started last Sept/Oct (and I mean hardcore back to work). It's my "final major project" for university which basically means it has to be big, bright and have a decent amount of effort and work put into it. It should be working out fine but OOOOOOOMMMMMGGGGGG I wish Irealsied how boring and time-consuming working in comics can be before I started. My own fault, I know, but I'm determined to see this project through and learn a lot from it.

I'm keeping it under wraps until it's complete, but for now here's a fun little process chart I pulled together just to show how I'm building my pages up. I wouldn't say comics/graphic novels are something I'd avoid or refuse to work in ever again, I just think that I've spent my time really really unwisely on this project and could've come up with a visual style I appreciated and just generally liked more. However, it's working to an extent so I just have to push it forward now and hope I can find fun breaks and alternatives in my other smallers projects.

Bukowski piece no.2 (work in progress)

This is the beginning of my second Bukowski poem. This one is for "A Smile To Remember", a pretty grim account of an abusive childhood and the things a child's mind absorbs and remembers when there are much darker things happening around them and how they translate. I'm still working on the third panel but I'm solid on these two. The third will be the middle planel.

So it's still in the pipes but I thought I'd show you some progress work to show my own (even though the exact same method is used by practically every artist and illustrator who uses pencils and inks) working method. More work proccess pics to come soon!

Bukowski piece no.1

One of my self-initiated degree projects was to continually work on short, one-off editorial images. This can include articles from magazines, blogs and newsprint - or can even be extracts from short-stories, poetry and/or written verse. I have already completed a few article pieces previously, but a few interesting thigns I'm working on now are 3 poems by Charles Bukowski.

If you're not familar with Bukowski's work I suggest you get educated - he's an alcoholic American who wrote a lot in the 60's/70's, and is infamous for his drink habits, womanizing and gritty face-value writing. You hate the guy, but you love the sophisticated imagery he creates by writing in a simple, almost journalistic manner.

So yeah, I started this months ago but only recently decided to alter the middle panel with a brand new image. I want to work using close-ups so to capture certain details and descriptive characteristics, this will be a running theme through all three poems I illustrate and hopefully I'll end up with a good looking short series of images to whap in the portfolio :)

Live Paaaiiint

Yeah I paint big things in front of people too. This is from the second Lightbox@Lamp event. I just like it :)

YCN Competition

So for this year's YCN competition I chose to work on the brief set by Bacardi. The basic aim was to "help bacardi flirt with their fans" fans being young 20-30something men. I couldn't decide which worked best, the B&W clean inks or the image with colours.

My original idea was to base the image on the idea of transformation, as people generally transform themselves when going for a night of boozing. So I did a few sketches which looked at hairstyles, clothing and make-up, but I liked the idea of using visuals of things which actually transformed when "flirting".

So aesthetically attractive things such as birds and flowers seemed a good idea, and they all transform at some point or another (flowers to attract inects, peacocks fan their feathers, etc.). The brief mentioned we may take into consideration using the shape of the Bacardi bottle, so the final idea came together and it's pretty obvious how.

The girls were a final touch, it brought an extra appeal to the target audience as well as referring back to some of my earlier ideas of "night out photos". I was happy to add them :)

I hope it all goes well (y)

Introduction v.2

It's about time I finally took action into sorting the blog out. The overall timeline got disrupted because there were months between posts and when there were posts it was several posts in one big chunk.

So, my solution to this was to literally scrap everything posted thus far, and to make a fresh start with my recent artwork and progress in the right order. And as mentioned before (if you saw it!) I've made a lot of big lifestyle changes since the start of 2010, and hopefully taking into account the idea of fresh starts this post is a milestone and will hopefully see a succession of regular posts and updates on what I'm up to.

So, sorting my head out - sorting my life out. Let's make an effin' blog! :D