Sunday 26 October 2014

Happy 70th Birthday Dad!

My Dad celebrated his 70th Birthday on Friday! And here's a card I made for him...

Happy Birth Day Kai!

My friend Shirlene gave birth to her second child and first son, Kai, at the start of September. And slightly belatedly, I got around to drawing a card to celebrate the occasion...

Congratulations Rianne and Adam!

My friend Jenny commissioned me to draw a portrait of her friends Rianne and Adam as a wedding present. She told me that Adam had wanted to get married wearing a Stromtrooper outfit, so thought it'd be a nice idea to make his dream a reality. I got some photo references from Facebook and after drawing a rough sketch, which Jenny approved, I drew the final portrait...



Jenny bought a frame for the picture and when they got back from their honeymoon this week she gave it to them...



I think they liked it! :)

Sunday 19 October 2014

London Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt #BigDraw

Last night I joined a group of people taking part in the London Sketchbook Scavenger Hunt, a Big Draw event organised by Jenny and June from the StoryHands Illustration collective.

The theme for this year's Big Draw is "It's Our World" and Jenny and June interpreted this theme as a call to notice and appreciate what we see around us in the city, and in particular the city of London. Once everyone had arrived and been issued with their unique hand-made and responsibly sourced sketchbook (made from donated materials at the Children's Scrap Project charity) we set off...



The walk took in various locations around the city, some of which were familiar and others that I hadn't been to before. At each location we were given a list of things to draw, both from observation and imagination and a set amount of time in which to draw as many of the items as we could (usually between 10–15 minutes).


Image courtesy of StoryHands Collective

Jenny and June were great hosts and provided a bit of background information about the area at each stop before assigning us our drawing challenges. In keeping with the unknown nature of the evening, I'm not going to specifically mention where we went, and have removed the names from my photos below...











The evening was a lot of fun, and I found it good to only have a limited time to draw at each location, as it made me more instinctive with my drawing, working quickly to capture the essence of what I was seeing. And that quick drawing was taken to the extreme at the end of the night, after everyone had added up their scores for the evening, there was a Draw Off where we had to draw as many identifiable London Landmarks as we could in 60 Seconds...



I even ended up with a prize at the end!



Jenny and June will be running the event again on the 1 November and there's a Facebook Event page here: http://www.facebook.com/events/1487342084846994/. I'd definitely recommend it!

Thursday 16 October 2014

Hitachi Data Systems at VMworld

I was recently commissioned to produce 5 single panel comic illustrations for Hitachi Data Systems, as part of an online promotion for their participation in VMworld 2014 Europe, "the global conference for virtualization and cloud computing", which was being held in Barcelona. I was sent the script and scenarios for the five comics, which I was very pleased about, because my first thought when I heard they wanted some IT-based comics was "How many jokes can I get out of turning it off and on again"?!? After working up some draft sketches, the dialogue was tightened up and some of the ideas reworked slightly, before I went on to produce the finished images. I'm very pleased with the final result, and happily, so was the client!









Monday 13 October 2014

COMICS!

Next month, I'm going to have a table at the Comica Comiket in London (1 November) and the Thought Bubbles Comic Art Festival in Leeds (15–16 November), selling my comics. I'll be blogging more about that nearer the time...

I'm currently busy putting together a new comic collecting various comic strips and one page comics that I've drawn in recent years, plus a couple of longer works. I've just finished an illustration for the cover, and really wanted to share it because I was so pleased with how it turned out (I'm allowed to blow my own trumpet every once in a while, right?)...



And for a quick bit of Process, here's the rough sketch I jotted down on my break at work on Friday evening, when I suddenly came up with the idea for the cover...