November 30th 2010: Windy Days And Down Turned Faces

It's really windy at the moment. This brings chills. 6 shades of grey brush pen & black ink with paintbrush.

Dogs For The Disabled: Hide And Seek

Brussels is hiding behind the curtain.

November 29th 2010: Roll Up! Roll Up! The Circus Is In Town

See the amazing square bottomed elephant, a juggling midget, a man with no knees, a squirrel faced woman and a bearded giraffe. All for just £6.50. Rollllll Up!

November 28th 2010: Parrot Lad

Quick draw of a parrot. Think I did the head/face really well cosidering how speedy I did it. Good work Polly.

Officer Down T-Shirt Edit

So sent the first version off. I knew it was a little bit dodgy and I shouldn't of sent it to be honest but I was trying to knock it out in one session. Some sections were inversed while others weren't and it was a bit scratchy still. So the issue came back about the scratchiness but I though I'd sort out the inversed colour parts as well because the eyes just looked wrong. So I used illustrator, layered the original image underneath the last one and then removed sections to get the right parts showing through, then added some more block colour in. For ecample the jacket is now solid rather than crosshatched most noticably. And the hair is now blocked with white details as well. I think this looks a whole lot better than the last version, and also makes more sense.

November 27th 2010: I'll Be Dead, But Never Dying

Quick smash up of a tattoo design, obviously not drawn equal sidedly, with colour, decent text or anything... but it's a rough idea of where things would be. Like it. Frank Turner Hardcore. Yeyah.

November 26th 2010: The Street Fighter

This guy's got a broken nose to go with his broken family and his broken set of dreams. What a tragic story. Speed draw. 15 minutes from blank page to writing the date underneath a finished draw.

November 25th 2010: Officer Down T-Shirt Commision

Got a commision for a T-shirt design for a punk band from Bristol called Officer Down. Who I have been familiar with for a while. Check them out. http://www.reverbnation.com/officerdown or www.myspace.com/officerdownuk . Good straight up punk rock. They wanted something reflecting the name, including a cop, in a two colour on black. Heres what I came up with.

Drawing Number One: Officer Down with badge held out. Made sure it was an English style badge and uniform.

Drawing Number Two: City Scape & Helmet for additional imagery to be added to the main section.

Final Design: Reversed out the imagery, added the band logo and some good, old-fashioned, blood splatter. Fini. Overall I'm pretty happy with that. On the screen it looks a little weird because of the detail being condensed, but when it's blown up to the actual size it would be printed out it looks good. I like the addition of the blood to the 'W' on the logo, helps to bring the whole piece together.

Dogs For The Disabled: Jump Through A Hoop

List Item Number Eight: Jump Through A Hoop

I really like this one, check out the dynamic leaping motion... I'm even more pleased with this as about 40% of this was done one handed whilst on the phone. Now considering I don't have a mouse attached to my laptop I feel that's quite an achievement. Stretching for curves & hot keys really gives the fingers a good work out. This is also the half way point in the set. It's all downhill from here.

November 24th 2010: Babar Luck

Only Love Can Save Us.

In These Dark, Dark Times.

Went to see Babar Luck last night; second (or maybe third) time I've seen him play. Despite the tragicly poor turn out he was still awesome and I had a good night. I really like this drawing (it looks better on paper though) I think I got most of it down, specifically the beard which took absolutely forever but was well worth the effort. I made the back of the head a fraction too big which is annoying me... so I'll just focus on the beard.

Dogs For The Disabled: Pick Up The Dog Bowl

List Item Number Seven: Pick Up The Dog Bowl.

Another one complete. That's two today. Crank it up. Nice.

Dogs For The Disabled: Commando Crawl

List Item Number Six: Commando Crawl

I'm running out of things to say about these dogs. This one was a bit more difficult to do because it's the first head on view of the dog, all the others have been looking slightly to the side, it's given him quite a wide face.

November 23rd 2010: Too Busy

I am far too busy to even consider talking to any of you. Now leave my office and never return. I have an urgent conference call to make to a man in San Francisco about a new Business Deal involving some very boring details. This took an unreasonably long time to draw considering. I like it though. It's got a good ratio of black to white in the imagery I think, maybe it would of been better to tie the other elements in a bit more but there you go. Inspired by (and ideas partially stolen from) Matthew green.

November 22nd 2010: Drop The Anchor

A mix up of all different kinds of interesting things and that. Like it. Piece an image together slowly out of individual silly bits of drawing and I enjoy it. More to come.

November 21st 2010: Jiggy Print

One.

 Two.

Three.

Four. 

Five. 

Six.

Another print block. I tried to make this one a bit more finely detailed. It didn't work out so well but I kind of like how you can still see the main image in a splodgy way. Again, red works better than black for some reason.

Dogs For The Disabled: Roll Over

List Item Number Five: Roll Over. Now that I've had hand in I can finally get on with doing this project, it's been really difficuly to balance both but I'm going to crack on with it now.

November 20th 2010: Face Print

So I had a hand in the other day and mounted my work on some foam board, as did other people. So there's all these offcuts of foam board floating around in the studio, so I thought rather than throw it all in the bin I'd take some of the bigger pieces with me to make some print blocks.

Stage One: Draw your design on the print board.

Stage Two: Use a scalpel to remove all the areas that are white (or a sharp pencil if they are really small).

Stage Three: Apply ink and then print. This first one I turned the block upside down onto the paper and then put a book on it and pressed down. It didn't work so well.

This one I put the paper on top, then a book then pressed down. As you can see that worked a fair deal better. But not well enough. Keep trying.

This one is just paper on top and pushed down with a finger to make sure it gets all the sections printed. Worked much better. It might be the technique or just the fact that the inks now layered up thick and not soaking into the board, but either way.

Same technique as before but using deep red ink. The blacks come through from before but I really like the mix that its made. Printing. Done. This was really fun to make and I love the outcome. Definitely going to do a few more of these on the other offcuts i've got.

The board after printing. Looks pretty good on it's own.

November 19th 2010: Squwarker

This is my little bird friend who visits me on hand in days. I'm pretty sure that's not the traditional spelling of squwark. But I like it. It looks more interesting. I quite like this draw as well with the fat lines & thin line details. It looks better on paper though.

November 18th 2010: Don't Wait For Death

Or he will come for you. In some kind of ripped t-shirt apparently...

Graphic Systems Finalisation

Presentation Board layout for my book covers. Seeing them like this, all together for the first time, makes me like them more as you can clearly see how consistent the system is through, especially with the addition of the spine set to the end of the line. All in all I am thoroughly pleased with the work on this project, and even more pleased that I actually enjoyed working on it. Overall I think that the set works really well as a whole unit, each one is obviously slightly different to the last as they are all hand made but the titles fall in the same place and the layout of the pages underneath are all similar. And the back pages are all pretty much exactly the same, save for a few different nudges in layout, but they all manage to retain individuality through the hand made feel & the colour scheme. The illustration I feel are strong, some more than others, such as the pigs head is perhaps a little weak, but as a set of illustrations I think they work brilliantly to capture the feel of the books & the style of the author and compliment both each other, and the colour scheme really well. I'm also pleased with the calligraphy type. Each one is really individual due to leaks & splatter in different places and the shapes of letters but due to style and positioning they look quite uniform with each other.

Graphic Systems mock ups

Part of the hand in criteria is to produce at least two fully mocked up books complete with your covers. So here they are, shot very professionally...in my kitchen... I went for my two favourite covers of the set, Walk in the woods & Down under.

Backs of both books.

Backs & Spines 

Backs & paper sides. For the paper sides I just used a flat tab that I drew vertical lines down, I think it works pretty well as an illusion.

Front covers

Front & paper sides, illusion in full working mode.

Fronts & spines.

Overall I'm really pleased with how well these have turned out, they look like real book covers & are effective both individually and together which is pretty much what I was aiming for so that's good.

Business Identity Finalisation

Presenation board layout for business identity project. Got the business card there on the left, then the compliment slip in the centre, and the letter head on the right. Over all I think that's looking pretty good. I had a bit of trouble with the awkward shape of the necklace but I think it's working now.

Thank You! Finalisation

So hand in for the first unit is tommorow so I'm just getting everything ready. This meant doing a few bits here and there, mostly presentational stuff. Heres the final illustration for the 'Thank You' project. I went with quite a loose illustration style because, to be honest, i'm not great at drawing cars, so I thought i'd leave out the detail in this situation. Got the skid marks in there which were missing from the previous plan.

Presentation board layout with additional pieces for clarity.

November 17th 2010: Baby I'm The Only One Howling

A selection of lovely animals that I drew. Childish styles are the best. See the bear from the walk in the woods cover. Yeah. Nice.

Graphic Systems: Spineset

My spine set, as it would appear if all six books were lined up next to each other. (The yellow book has been edited since the version shown was created and now the black swan is the same as the others) I think this works really well, the colours are good, and I think they work particularly well as each backing colour appears again as the outline around the authors name, except for the white, but thats used in the name anyway. I also like how the titles have worked out, each one individual with its own splatter patterns but set in the same place. This really looks like an actual set which is obviously what it's meant to do so i'm happy with it.

Graphic Systems: Neither her nor there Compeleted

The book cover for the sixth and final book in the series, Neither here nor there. I like the pink on the blue, it's working really well I feel, and overall looking back through the colour schemes of all 6 they fit together well as a series. The smaller illustration here is of a piece of swiss cheese, as mentioned in the book & the main illustration is of a pigs head with an apple in it's mouth, also mentioned in the book. This illustration is a little darker than the others in terms of content but they vary from book to book so I don't think this is too much of a drastic problem. I like the layout on the front a lot, again it is differnet from the others but the themes stay consistent throughout. As a whole series i'm really pleased with the work, the colour schemes, layouts, illustration & type are all working well together as a system.

November 16th 2010: Big Hair & Crooked Smiles

Swift draw up of a girl in an advert in this months Juxtapoz. The face is nearly right, but it was too swift for the concentration to occur.

Graphic Systems: Down under completed

The fifth book cover is complete. This one is for Down under, a book about Australia which is why I've gone with this colour scheme. I have already used yellow, which would of been first choice, so I had to go with this light brown which is as close as I could get and think it works well to reflect the country. It also works well with the green on top and the bright orange really stands out. The small illustration is of a boomarang for obvious reasons. The large illustration is of a Nothomyrmecia Macrops which I find really interesting. It is a species of ant that was thought to have died out 100 million years ago but has been found living in colonies in the Australian outback. It is a species left from when wasps were evolving into ants (which in itself I find fascinating, although the shape of them is a give away if you think about it). On the back cover I've gone with the same kind of format that I used on the first book, with an illustration down one side and then the quotes on the other. In this case I think that this has worked particularly well and has created an effective layout. Overall I'm really pleased with this one, I think that the layout, illustration & colour scheme & I think they are all working really well together to give a representation of Australia and the trip.

November 15th 2010: Big Hair & Eye Shadow

Old time movie star styley.

Graphic Systems: The lost continent Completed

Continuing my speedy work on this project I give you; The lost continent. Here, obviously, we have again a similar layout to the ones designed previously. Today's illustration is of a portable gas stove (as mentioned in the book), I did a little bit of research into it and this is the sort of style that was around in the time that Bryson is taking about. I like the knobs on it, I think they work really well with the white set against the coloured backing. Continued is the type as well. The additional illustration above the authors name is of a corn cob, a reference to small town America & also mentioned in the opening of the book. The colour scheme is staying basic, one main colour, white, and smaller pieces of additional colour. The box on the back on two of the covers has a black circle around on the inside, the other two don't. This is because two of the covers have a lot more written on the back, I'm going to split it three to three to keep it even. The layout on the fronts also been changed around again but this is acceptable as the system allows the movement as long as it's fairly similar.

November 14th 2010: The Librarian Squad

Any of you who have ever read any Discworld novels will know that the librarian at the Unseen University is an Orangutan. Orange.