Come back soon Ayano and Ikuno!

My friends Ayano and Ikuno are both moving back to Japan at the end of this week, and I drew them each a card...




And because they have been in London together and are leaving at the same time, I also made it so the cards join together to make a single image...



Hope I'll see you both again soon, either in Japan or London! :)

Anita & Rishi - Just Married

Well, they were "Just Married" when I drew this, but it's been over a month now! So my friend Anita was getting married and having a party on board a boat that was sailing down the Thames. She commissioned me to draw an illustration for the front of the illustration and sent me details of what the bride and groom would be wearing, as well as some photos of her husband-to-be (as I hadn't actually met him). I worked on a few sketches and after a few emails back and forth between myself and Anita, we agreed that a portrait design would work best.

The drawing took a little while to get right – it was tricky drawing a likeness of someone from photographs alone, and my first attempts weren't entirely to the groom's liking, but after receiving some better photos for reference I was able to produce something we were both happy with. I also enjoyed working on the lettering, and particularly the ampersand (which incidentally is possibly my favourite word).



I was very pleased with the final result, as were the happy couple. I did show this illustration to a friend of mine who replied "Oh, it's just like Titanic!". Thankfully there aren't any icebergs in the Thames...

I Love London

It's been a while since my last blog post, and that's because I've been busy working on a series of images for a book project I'm working on with a group of people from my illustration course. The idea was for each of us to choose a different area of London and then produce a short narrative across two spreads. The images should feature animal characters.

For my submission, I decided to focus on the West End of London, specifically Charing Cross train station, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden market and Big Ben. My story follows the adventures of a small penguin visiting the city for the day...

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I came to London on the train, when I arrived it began to rain...


I hurried towards Trafalgar Square, the lion statue gave me a scare!


To Covent Garden next, I popped. Fortunately, the rain had stopped.


Before I left, I saw Big Ben. I cannot wait to come to London again!!


Finally, here is a spot illustration I created for the index page...


I've really enjoyed drawing the buildings in these images, and coming up with different animal characters to populate the scenes. It's also been fun adding little details like the animal-based advertisements on the buses...