Yeah but no but yeah but no but...

I was recently asked to do an illustration for Amelia's Magazine to accompany a review of the book CHAVS: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones. After reading through the review, I picked up on the references to both the media and politicians presenting so-called Chavs as "the bogeymen of Britain"...



You can read the full review online over at the Amelia's Magazine website.

Stupid, stupid rat creatures!

Yesterday morning I noticed on Twitter that Amelia's Magazine were producing an article about the naked mole rat – a freaky little critter affectionately referred to as the "sabre-toothed sausage" – and wanted some illustrations to accompany the text.

Unable to resist the chance to draw this slightly hideous creature, I decided to create an image based on B-movie horror posters...



You can read the full article here. And remember, a naked mole rat is for life, not just for Christmas...!

Amelia's Magazine - 123 Bethnal Green Road

Now this was a lot of fun!

I was asked to produce an illustration to accompany an Amelia's Magazine article on the opening of the Sustainable Fashion Concept Store at 123 Bethnal Green Road. I was sent reference photos of some of the weird and wonderful fashionistas in attendance and set to work.

First thing I did was produce some sketches of some of my favourite people in the photos (the guy in the middle especially reminded me of the bit where the Statue Of Liberty starts walking through the city in Ghostbusters 2...).



This sketch gave me an idea for the finished illustration, based on the poster for the film Trainspotting. As with my recent Latitude illustrations, I was a bit concerned about all the different clashing colours creating a bit of a jumble when presented together, so I quite liked the idea to present the images in black and white which balanced the image and prevented certain characters from dominating the scene...



However, there was also something I liked about the crazy mish-mash of styles of these colourful characters, so I also created a colour version of each individual, but after a few attempts, decided that they worked best in isolation, as opposed to interacting with one another.


Fortunately Matt Bramford at Amelia's Magazine liked them enough to include all my illustrations alongside his article. It also made me interested in drawing more portraits and likenesses of people, which feeds in to my next blog post...

Amelia's Magazine - Latitude Festival

During my absence from the blogosphere (...does anyone actually use the word "blogosphere"??) I was asked to produce some illustrations for Amelia's Magazine to accompany a couple of articles reviewing this year's Latitude festival.

The first of these was a round-up of the Thursday evening and included a scene-setting illustration of the Latitude crowds. I got sent some photos that Amelia Gregory had taken on-site, and produced a combination of characters from these photos with some background extras.



Because it was a very busy scene with a lot going on, I decided not to over-complicate it by using too many colours, and opted to use a very limited colour scheme of yellow and blue to represent the brilliant weather that weekend. Of course, whenever there's a crowd the question has to be asked: Where's Wally?

...There he is!


The second illustration I produced was for a review of Friday at the Festival, and a performance by Turner Prize winner Martin Creed accompanied by his all-female band, a ballet dancer, and projections of bums and willies. Again I received some photos for reference from Amelia of various parts of the performance and selected various elements to create my illustration. The performance used a lot of red and blue lighting, and I decided to treat the colouring in a similar way to my previous Latitude illustration.

Amelia's Magazine - David Mach's Silver Streak

Amelia's Magazine has reviewed the Royal Academy of Art's Summer Exhibition, featuring my illustration of David Mach's Silver Streak an imposing sculpture of a gorilla that is made entirely from coat hangers...



This was quite a challenge to draw, but I enjoyed the process and am happy with the final image. If you're in the London area, I'd recommend popping along to the Royal Academy and checking out the exhibition which is on until the 22 August...

Amelia's Magazine - Zandra Rhodes

Here's an illustration of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, I produced for Amelia's Magazine to accompany an article about the Graduate Fashion Week Gala Show.



The pattern in the background is based on one of Rhodes' textile patterns from her Spring/Summer 2010 collection.

Elephants on Parade!

So I've been a bit obsessed with the Elephant Parade London 2010. Raising awareness of the urgent crisis faced by the endangered Asian elephant, it is an outdoor art event featuring 258 fibreglass elephants decorated by an assortment of creative artists and designers, scattered across London. I have been fascinated with seeing the elephants positioned within the city, and also observing the way in which the public reacts to them. I've been out trying to photograph all of the elephants, and posting the results over on Facebook. There's still a fair number left for me to capture, but I'm enjoying the photographic hunt.

Anyway, all of which leads me to some rather exciting drawing news! Yesterday I was informed that Amelia's Magazine had been asking on Twitter whether anyone had any photographs or illustrations of the Elephant Parade, so I sent them an email with a link to my photo album, plus informing them that I was an illustrator who was very interested in the Elephant Parade and would really like to produce an illustration. A few emails later, and I was hard at work producing an illustration to send to them by first thing this morning. One slightly sleepless night later, and I came up with an image featuring a group of elephants from the Parade riding around in one of the many rickshaws that zip around Central London...



You can read the full article (which also includes some of my photographs) over at Amelia's Magazine, and also sign the petition to save the Asian elephant at the Elephant Parade London website.