Chamone!

Michael Jackson R.I.P. (1958–2009)
He may have been a bit loopy, but he made some damn good music!

Portfolio Maybe

Here's my latest illustration of singers/bands that I like, bonkers Icelandic songstress Bjork, wearing the mental swan dress she wore to the Oscars in 2001. Shhhh! It's oh so quiet...

"O Portfolio, Portfolio! Wherefore art thou Portfolio?"

Okay, so I'm back to my original idea for this series of drawings, illustrations of singers and bands that I like (as opposed to just drawing female singers that I fancy!). Here is Thom Yorke from Radiohead, acting rather nervous while wearing a homemade robot costume... what a "Paranoid Android" he is... *groan!*



Incidentally, if anyone has a spare day ticket for this year's Reading Festival on the Sunday, then let me know. Radiohead are headlining and I really want to go...

"I have no portfolio/And I only show where there's free alcohol"

My mini portfolio project to draw illustrations of some of my favourite singers and bands has somehow started to turn into drawing female singers that I fancy!

Here is my latest drawing of Lovefoxxx, the lead singer from Brazilian indie-electro band, CSS – Cansei de Ser Sexy.

As you can see, she really does love foxes. Although the fox doesn't seem too happy about it...

All we hear is Portfolio Ga Ga...

It's a funny time at the moment! This is the last week of my MA course before hanging our work for the Final Show and submitting all my work from the year. I've got my work printed and framed ready to hang, and have sorted out my portfolio (to an extent). I need to sort out my sketchbooks and drawings from the year, and am also working on a few last minute pieces to add to my portfolio.

I was thinking of something Jonny Hannah said to us when he came in to give a talk earlier in the year, about how it is good to incorporate your personal interests into your illustration work, so I thought I'd do a series of comic portraits of some of my favourite bands and singers, as I really enjoy music, going to gigs, and listening to my iPod when I'm doing my work.

Here's the first one, of my future wife Natasha Khan, Bat For Lashes, complete with cricket bat and batman t-shirt...

Mister Flintham's aMAZEing birthday!

Yesterday was my friend Thomas Flintham's birthday. Tom likes mazes. So I made him this card which opens out into a maze - Can you help Tom get through the maze and find his birthday present? After a few attempts, Tom managed to solve it. Well done, Tom!

(I didn't actually draw this maze, I found a website that generates mazes. But still, it's the thought that counts...)

Never Mind The Haiku...

So I've been busy organising things for my Final Show – sending work to print, ordering frames, getting postcards and business cards designed and printed... – which all takes time, and has meant I haven't spent much time actually drawing in the past week. But now that most of it is sorted out, I can get back to producing some new pieces for my portfolio.

The past two days I've been drawing new Haiku comics. Ordinarily I would post the results on here straight away, BUT...I was thinking that as I'm going to include some of them in my final show, I would hold off posting them until after the show is up, just so those of you that look at my blog won't have seen everything that I'm going to be showing before the show is up, and to hopefully entice some of you to come along and check it out.

In the meantime, here's a sample panel from one of my new Haiku comics:

New Adventures In Mark-Making!

I just discovered a dip pen and ink that I bought way back at the start of my course, and then promptly forgot all about and didn't use, in the back of the cupboard next to my desk, so decided to try it out... Wow! I love it! The variation in line-width adds an interesting element to my drawing and I like the added density of the ink. I played around with it for a while, scribbling and mark-making, and drew a quick self-portrait reflecting my recent mental state (brain-fried!).



I'm eager to experiment some more with this new (to me!) method of drawing!

The Apprentice

Here's a quick comic strip I've just done about The Apprentice, one of the few TV shows that I actually bother to watch...

Knock Knock. Haiku's there?

It's been an odd weekend. I really wanted to get on and create some more Haiku comics for my final show, but found it really hard to get going! I spent most of Saturday trying to work on some of my existing ideas that I'd already sketched out, but not being able to get them working to my liking. I decided to go back to the source material and sat and read through some of the Haiku anthologies I got out of the library. It seemed to be a good idea, as I discovered a number of Haiku that I had previously overlooked, but which presented some interesting visual ideas...

Haiku Do You Think You Are?

Here are my latest two Haiku comics. These two were a bit more of a challenge than some of the previous ones and took me longer to work out how best to illustrate them, but I am pleased with the final results.

Also today my friend Kazu sent me a digital scan of Japanese paper, which was exactly what I had been looking for to use for the background texture in these comics. Thanks again Kazu!

Have I Got Haikus For You