Secret 7" submissions

I submitted a couple of designs for this year's Secret 7" show. The annual show has been running since 2012 and each year takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and press each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then accept submissions from creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style and 700 sleeve designs are selected and printed, to create 100 unique copies for each of the 7 tracks. These are exhibited and then sold for £50 apiece to raise money for a selected charity.

Sadly none of my designs were selected to go into the exhibition this year, but with over 4,500 sleeve designs submitted and only 700 sleeves in the final exhibition, there was a lot of competition.

Still, I was pleased with the designs I produced, so at least I can share them here. However, in the spirit of Secret 7", I'm not going to tell you exactly which track they were for, although I will give you the list of the 2015 track selection so you can hopefully work them out for yourselves...

Let Forever Be by The Chemical Brothers
Reflections by Diana Ross & The Supremes
Go by The Maccabees
Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones
Digital Witness by St Vincent
Born Slippy by Underworld



The Secret 7" exhibition will be on at Somerset House from 10 April – 3 May, and the 700 copies will go on sale on the 4 May.

Happy Birthday Clare!

My friend Jess commissioned me to draw a card for her friend Clare's birthday. The last couple of years, I have made Jess a birthday card based on the covers of Hanson albums, because she loves Hanson. And it turns out (surprisingly!) that she's not the only one, and her friend's Tash and Clare are also fans of Hanson. And so Jess wanted me to draw a card for Clare, also including her and Tash, and based on the cover to the band's Shout It Out album...

Who Let The Dogs Out?

A few weeks ago, I was contacted about doing a pet portrait of a dog called Pirate. I was sent some reference photos of the dog and they asked if I could use all of the poses in the picture. I did a rough sketch, and once this was approved I went ahead and drew the final piece using a Zebra Fude brush pen. I then coloured it using Photoshop and added a grass texture before also adding some ink washes that I scanned, to give a bit more form to the dog.

Blind as a Batman...

Earlier today I saw an article online about a comic convention a few years ago where various comic creators were asked to pick up a marker, close their eyes and draw Batman. The results varied from the impressive to the hilarious, and I thought I'd give it a try myself...



Not too shabby!

Portrait commission

My mum recently commissioned me to draw a portrait of her friends, Chris and John, for their 40th Wedding Anniversary. As they spend a lot of time gardening, I used a photo of them together in their garden, which their daughter Karen sent to me.

15 Minute Comic

On Tuesday night I went along to Karrie Fransman's Guardian Masterclass: "How to create successful comics and graphic novels". I was hoping for a bit of a creative kick up the backside and get some advice on how to approach publishers. Hearing Karrie speak about comics is always inspiring, and she has such a genuine love for the medium. I picked up lots of helpful advice, as well as reaffirming some things that I was already considering by myself. As well as going through the process of how she put together the pitch for her two graphic novels, The House That Groaned and Death Of The Artist, Karrie also set us some practical tasks throughout the evening, including drawing a 15 minute comic using different prompts that she called out as we went along – "Draw an angry character!", "And they choose a fancy dress outfit!", "Now they're going to a party" etc. It was certainly challenging, but fun to have to draw something quickly, without overthinking it too much.

Here's my (very scribbly!) finished comic! [click on the image to enlarge]

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is Mother's Day in the UK and here's a card I drew for my mum, who says she often feels like an octopus doing multiple things at once...

Webcomic Artist Swap Project 2015: Wasp's Week

Last week saw the third annual Webcomic Artist Swap Project (WASP) take place where a selection of webcomic artists swap art duties amongst their respective strips and work from each others’ scripts. While I don't have my own webcomic (Yet!), last year I was asked to contribute for art duties and drew Rachael Smith's One Good Thing comic. This year, myself and Lauren Murphy were asked to come up with a special comic that could be featured each day alongside the other WASP comics.

Lauren wrote the script for our story, which I then drew, and our strip was published over the seven days of WASP Week.















The whole page was then published on the final day of WASP for those that might have missed part of the story during the week...



I also contributed artwork for the WASP banner which contributers could include when they posted their artwork online:



And as a final bonus behind-the-scenes Process preview, here's my initial thumbnail layouts for our comic after my first read through of Lauren's script...