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...

Congratulations Kyoko and Teppei

My friend Kyoko recently got married in Japan, where she lives. I sent her this card, based on some of the photos she posted online...

Congratualtions Tom and Beth!

I went to a lot of weddings during the last week of May! Well, two. But that still seems to be quite a lot for one week... Anyway, my friends Tom and Beth got married on the beach in Newquay, which my friend Ainé referred to as "a Home And Away wedding"! Fortunately the weather was amazing that day and afterwards I drew a card with Tom and Beth enjoying the sunshine on the beach...

Congratulations Kavita and Gus!

How time flies! Over a month ago, I went to the wedding of my friends Kavita and Gus. I had previously designed the invitation for their wedding with an illustration of them both on the front. Gus use to be in the Royal Air Force and Kavita works as a GP...



At the wedding Kavita's friend Jenny had made the (delicious!) wedding cake, and she told me that she'd had the idea to create the figures on the top of the cake after seeing my invitation...



And so when it came to making a card for Kavita and Gus, I thought I'd take some inspiration from Jenny's cake, and draw Kavita and Gus on top of a cake!

Congratulations Karen & Hannah

My friends Karen and Hannah got married on Valentine's Day. Here's a card I made for them...

"No More Moustaches!" Blog Update #2: Congratulations Rachel and Rob!

Also way back in September, my friend Rachel got married in Oxford. I'd ran out of time to make a card before the Big Day, but got round to drawing one slightly after the fact and posting it out to the new Mr & Mrs...

Save The Date card

I was contacted by Andy and Nicola who wanted me to draw them a Save The Date card for their wedding, with the idea of having them both walking across Abbey Road like the famous Beatles album cover.

This was a fun project, although always a bit worrying to get a good likeness of someone that I've never actually met. Still, luckily they were both happy with the results...

Happy Birthday Kazu!

Today was my friend Kazu's birthday. And she also recently got married. So I decided to combine the two and draw her a multi-tasking birthday/wedding card...



It cuts down on paper waste, so I'm being environmentally friendly!

(Belated) Congratulations Lynsay & Matt!

My friend Lynsay got married at the beginning of last month. It was a really nice day and miraculously the sun was shining! I had planned to draw them a wedding card featuring the happy couple, but then I realised that I'd only briefly met her husband-to-be once before, a few years ago now, and couldn't really remember what he looked like to draw him...!

My options were:
a) Not to include him on the card (but that might have seemed a little weird).
b) To draw a generic male figure (but that might have seemed even weirder).
c) To draw the card, but leave a blank space where his face would be and finish the drawing during the wedding.
d) To go along to the wedding minus a card, make sure I took some photos which included the groom, then use them for reference to draw the card when I got home and give it to them later.

In the end I decided to go for the last option, and today met up with Lynsay and gave her the card, so I can finally blog about it without ruining the surprise!



You can check out some great photos of the wedding by photographer Emma Case over at her blog, which also includes a rather amusing photograph of me!

Attack The Blog: Congratulations Joe & Yu-Hsuan

Yesterday my friends Joe and Yu-Hsuan got married in Blackheath. I made them a card, but unfortunately the weather didn't turn out to be as nice as in my picture... Still it was a good day!

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...

It's a nice day for a white wedding!

So yesterday was my friend Laura's wedding, and was a beautifully sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky! Here is the wedding card I drew for her and her new husband Callum, also featuring their absolutely adorable dog Pippa, who was not at the wedding, but this is my idea of what it might have been like if she was there...



I spent quite a while trying to come up with an idea, before finally reaching a Eureka! moment and doing a quick thumbnail sketch...

...then I drew up a pencil rough to size...

It then struck me that although in my head I was sure that Laura had mentioned that Callum would be wearing a kilt to the wedding, the more I thought about it, the less certain I became. I sent a quick email to Laura to check (which probably sounded very strange: "Hi. Yeah, I was just wondering...is your future husband planning on wearing a kilt to the wedding? Bye!"), and she replied slightly curious, to say that he had been planning it, but then decided against it! Good job I checked so I was able to change my drawing before I finalised it.

I then used a dip pen and black Indian ink to draw the final version onto card...

...before adding colour by hand using marker pens and using a metallic silver Sharpie pen on the lettering for a bit of razzmatazz...


I was torn for a while over whether to leave it like this, or to add a background to make it more complete. I sort of liked the white space, but also felt it was maybe a bit too empty. As you can see from the final version at the top of the page, I eventually decided to add a quite minimal background just to give the image more a semblance of space and setting. I drew this using a fine liner pen rather than ink to make it visually move back from the main image.