Happy Birthdays!

My Brother and my future Sister-In-Law have their birthdays just a few days apart. Here's a couple of cards I made for them both:

My Brother has quite a few Funko Pop toys, so I drew this card with him as a Funko toy. By a strange coincidence, his fiancée bought him a custom Funko toy that she got made to look like him. I had no idea!


My brother's fiancée is a big fan of Disney, so I drew her this card featuring Stitch from Lilo and Stitch...

Happy Birthday Tadhg!

My friend Tadhg turned 30 today. Here's a card I made for him!

Happy Birthday Will!

While catching up with blogging about all the illustrations I drew in 2017, I also want to try to keep on top of posting about 2018. So here's a birthday card I drew for my cousin Will, who turned 15 today and got a guitar as a present. He's also obsessed with London Transport, so I decided to draw him trying his hand at busking on the Underground...

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. He's 72 years old. Here's a card I lovingly made for him...

Blog Catch-Up: Cards and Commissions

Another blog post, another apology for the lack of consistent updates! *sigh* Unbelievably, I've been running this blog for 8 years now, since 2008 and until last year my annual number of blog posts was consistently in triple figures. Last year I managed 33 blog posts all year, and so far this year I've only managed half that amount. There are various reasons for this: it takes time to do these posts - resizing images, checking the formatting, writing this nonsense etc. – and in recent years, I've just had less time. Partly because I've been busy working on interesting projects that I don't always get to tell people about because Reasons, partly because of having to work elsewhere in order to earn money to exist, partly because of Life. I could spend more time saying how I'll be posting more from now on, but in all honesty, that's probably not likely. I will still post here when I can, but if you want to keep more up-to-date with what I'm up to, you can always Like my Facebook page or follow me on Instagram.

In the past, I've made a LOT of Birthday cards for friends and family, it's something I enjoy doing and part of the challenge is coming up with new ideas every year. For various reasons (similar to the reasons why my blog posting has been greatly reduced), this year I have had to reduce the number of cards that I make, but I've still managed to make a couple and have also this year have also received a few commissions to make cards for other people.

My friend Anne asked me to draw a portrait of her and her husband Kurt for their Wedding Anniversary. She sent me a photo for refernce...


She aslo commissioned me to do a picture for her friend's birthday, with her and her friend. Again she sent me a photo for a reference...


Here's another commissioned card to welcome the birth of a new baby. For his one I was sent a bunch of reference photos of the couple but came up with the poses and composition, and also had to imagine the baby as it hadn't been born yet! It's quite surreal drawing a card for somebody that you don't know...


The same person that I drew the previous card for also asked me to draw a card for their uncle's 60th birthday. They sent me a couple of photos for reference, and wanted to have him fishing and catching a fish...


This was a fun one, to draw a birthday card for someone's nephew(?). His favourite show is Andy's Dinosaur Adventures and they asked for a drawing of the Birthday Boy off on a Dinosaur Adventure with Andy. I had to look up the show on YouTube, but they also sent me a lot of reference images, as well as some cute photos of their nephew dressed up as Andy...



Finally, it's not all commission requests. And I did manage to find time to make a couple of personal card too! This one was for my friend Chantel's birthday. I don't see her so often (hardly at all, sadly!) since she moved to Hull, and now Leeds, for work, but I do know that she loves Pokémon, so I made her this Game Boy-style card...


It was also my mum's 69th birthday, although she preferred to refer to herself as being 68+...


My University friend Rishi got married to Deepa last month. I was invited along to the wedding, but didn't have time to make them a card for the actual day, but drew this one afterwards using the photos people had taken for reference, and sent it to them for when they got back from their honeymoon...


And finally, another University friend, Francine got married the other week in Las Vegas and had a Live Stream of the ceremony that Guests could watch online from home. While I did this (at 1am in the morning, because of time differences), I did a few sketches and shortly afterwards sent them this drawing...

Happy Birthday Bro!

It's my brother's birthday today and here's a card I made for him...

Happy Birthday Anett and Anne!

As well as sharing the first two letters of their name, my friends Anne and Anett also share the same birthday. Last year I made them both individual cards that joined up to make a larger image. This year, I decided to go for more of a mutual thematic response.

After Anett posted a photo on Instagram of herself standing next to The Wilton Diptych, I came up with the idea of drawing a card of her in a similarly angelic style...



Anne also recently posted a photo of herself and a fluffy cat belonging to her in-laws, and I took that as inspiration for drawing a card for Anne based loosely on Leonardo Da Vinci's Lady With An Ermine...

Happy Birthday RIchy!

I still have a couple more 2015 catch-up blogs to run, but in the meantime I'm going to take a quick trip back to the future, and post a couple of recent things I've drawn...

My friend Richy started off 2016 by celebrating a pretty monumental birthday. And as we share a mutual love for Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip, I made him this Peanuts-inspired card, featuring his beloved cat, Suki Kabuki...

Happy Birthday Dad!

It's been a while since I've added any new posts to my blog. That's not to say that I haven't been busy. In fact, it's because I've been busy that I haven't had time to do any new posts. But I'll hopefully be rectifying that situation very soon, so new content will be forthcoming!

Anyway, to make a start, here's a birthday card I drew for my Dad, who is 71 years old today! He recently bought himself a mobility scooter, so I decided to draw a picture of him zooming through the park on his new toy...

Happy Birthday Giacomo!

It was also my friend Giacomo's birthday over the weekend. He had an 1001 Nights-themed party, but sadly I was unable to attend. But I did draw him a suitably themed birthday card for the occasion...

Happy Birthday Sylvie!

My friend Sylvie's birthday and I drew her a card. She also recently completed a 10K Run to raise money for the Nepal Earthquake appeal and got a medal. If I got a medal for something, I'd be wearing it every day, so I included it in the picture I drew of her...

Happy Birthday Mum!

Today is my Mum's 68th birthday! She's started joining a walking group recently, doing weekly walks around London. So I drew a card with a picture of her walking and reaching 68 miles...

CARD-MAGEDDON!!!

Forgive me Internet, for I have sinned. It's been over a month since my last blog post! And while I try to get back up to date with my assorted scribblings, I've realised that I've got a bunch of birthday cards and card commissions that I have so far failed to upload, so if you'll indulge me for a moment, I'm going to stick them all up onto the World Wide Web in one voluminous post.

Here we go...!

Sometimes an idea just pops into head and the only way I can exercise it from my mind is to get it down on paper! So after a slightly hysterical conversation about the character Bane in the film The Dark Knight Rises with my friend Arianne (you had to be there!), and finding out that it was her birthday, I drew her this card. With a ghost. Because there's always a ghost!



My brother commissioned me to draw a birthday card for his friend Kate...



Well, actually he commissioned me to draw an engagement card for Kate and her boyfriend James first, but because I was particularly busy at the time, the birthday card ended up being done first. Still, I made the engagement card eventually...



Also, Arianne got a Full Time job and so was able to spend less time at the gallery, meaning she doesn't have to wear the uncomfortable tie so much...



Somewhere along the way, Keare and Nile got married. Congratulations! And I drew this portrait of them both in a card that Andy Oliver organised...



More recently, it was Julia Scheele's birthday, and I drew her this card, based on the cover she drew for Summer Camp's zine Drive Past My House, which they released to coincide with the launch of their album, Bad Love...



And I think that about brings us right back to the present. For now! I'll be posting some other stuff that I've neglected to shove onto the Internet very soon, and then I'll hopefully be able to maintain a more consistent schedule. At least that's the plan...

Happy Birthday Elizabeth!

It was my friend Elizabeth's birthday yesterday. Here's a card I made for her...

Happy Unbirthday!

Sometimes things don't go entirely to plan...

It was my friend Saul's birthday the other week and while his initial last minute drinks gathering didn't go quite according to plan, fortunately there was some hasty reorganisation and Birthday Drinks: Take Two was a much more successful endeavour. And I finally got to give him the card I drew for him, featuring Saul cosplaying as his favourite superhero*, Captain Marvel...



My friend Chantel had her birthday earlier this week, and recently relocated to Hull for a new and exciting job. A bunch of friends went up to Hull this past weekend for birthday celebrations and drunken Mario Kart, which I was particularly sad to have missed, but unfortunately I was working over the weekend. But to make up for my absence, I drew her a card which I posted to her new address as a surprise!



*I'm not 100% sure if she's actually his "favourite" superhero, and he'll definitely correct me if I've got that wrong, hence this small disclaimer! But definitely Top Five, for sure!

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...

Happy Birthday Tadhg!

It was my friend Tadhg's birthday last week and here's a card I drew for him...

Happy Birthday Anne and Anett!

My friends Anne and Anett share the same birthday and last night went out for drinks to celebrate together. We all work at The National Gallery and because they were celebrating together, I drew them each a card that joined up to form a larger image...

Happy Birthday Cathy!

It was my friend Cathy's birthday the other day and I drew her this picture based on a photo from her Facebook profile.

Happy Birthday Richy!

A New Year means New Birthdays...or at least the same birthdays as last year, but a year older! And my friend Richy K. Chandler kicked things off with a birthday on New Year's Day. I worked with Richy on a story for his Tempo Lush Tales anthology comic which he published last year, which he wrote and I drew.

Richy also has his own webcomic, Lucy The Octopus, which is updated weekly. The main character Lucy (who is an octopus) has a pet pufferfish called Puffy. Richy is also a big fan of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. These two things suddenly collided in my brain, and I drew Richy this picture with him coming up with the natural spin-off...



[EDIT] I was just clearing up the desktop on my computer and I found this initial sketch that I drew when I suddenly had the idea for Richy's card, so thought I'd share it here...