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 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...

Blog-Me-Do Part 2: House of Cards

Another thing that I don't get as much time to do as I once did, is making cards for friends and family for birthdays and other special occasions.

I still enjoy being able to do it, and it's always a fun challenge to come up with a new idea for a card for someone that I've known for a long time and already made a bunch of cards for, but it's also quite time consuming, so isn't always possible when I have other work demands and deadlines. But I did manage to still make more than a few cards in 2017. I've already blogged a few of them at the start of last year, but here are the others...

My Mum really enjoyed the all-female Ghostbusters reboot in 2016 (and so did I), so I drew her this card for Mother's Day:


My friend Saul is a big fan of My Little Pony, especially Pinky Pie, so I drew this card for his birthday:


I'm not sure I can really explain this card for my friend Jon. He loved it though!


This was a slightly odd commission that I received last year, where someone emailed me and asked me to recreate a Venice-themed birthday card that I drew for my friend Jess in 2013 that they'd seen online, but with their son in Jess's place...


My friends Anna and Paul got married last year, and here's a card I made for them:


My Dad loves cutting the hedge in the garden, and wants to do it most weekends, so I drew him this card for Father's Day...


My Mum was 70 last year! And here's a card I made for her:


This was a commission to draw a card for friends of my brother's fiancee, who were gettting married in Spain...


My friend Kate was 30 last year and enjoys playing the banjo, so here's a card I drew for her:


A birthday card for my Dad:


My parents celebrated their 40th Ruby Wedding Anniversary on New Year's Eve, so I drew this Red-hued card for them:


And finally, my Christmas card that I made for 2017:

3 Weddings and a Birthday

Back in October last year, my friends Arina and Chris got married. The day was fairly grey, but amazingly the sun came out exactly as Arina entered the chapel where they were getting married, shining right through the window onto the pair of them and lasted right up until they left the building! Who says miracles don't happen? Here's a card I made for them:



Also last year, my brother got engaged. Here's a card I made for them:



And at the other end of the spectrum, my parents recently celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary. Here's a (lovingly cheeky!) card I made for them:



And in non-marriage related news, it was my cousin William's 14th birthday last week. He's a transport nut, so I drew him this card of him driving an Underground train (and hopefully not striking!):

Happy Birthday Dad!

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

Card commission

I wanted to share a recent commission I worked on to draw a birthday/house-warming card. This was a fun job and the client was thankfully very clear in what they wanted, providing lots of photos for reference. I was pleased with the final result, and happily so were they!

Happy Birthday Bro!

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

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...

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 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 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 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...

Happy Birthday Inko!

So it's the start of a New Year and amazingly also eight years since I started this blog, back when I was first starting to think about developing my illustration work and enrolled in a short course at Camberwell College of Art. But before we fully embark into the year 2015, I just have something to catch up with from the dim and distant past of 2014...

It was my friend Inko's birthday during the tail end of the old year. And here's a portrait I drew for her...

Happy Birthday Tom Fog!

It was my mate Tom's birthday on Sunday and I drew him a card based on the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, also from the Eighties...

Birthdays: Triple Deluxe

On Saturday my friends Anna, Lauren and Jess had a joint party to celebrate their birthdays. Which meant that I had three cards to draw!

I met Lauren through various events at Gosh! Comics and one of her favourite comics is the current run of Hawkeye from Marvel Comics, written by Matt Fraction with art by David Aja and Annie Wu. So I drew a picture of Lauren reading the first volume of Hawkeye...



For my friend Anna, I drew her as a 50ft woman stepping on a lizard. Because reasons...



And last, but not least, for Jess I continued the theme of the card I made for her last year, by re-creating another Hanson album cover, this time "Snowed In"...





Before I met Jess, I didn't realise that Hanson had more than one song, let alone multiple albums, but it seems that now I have consigned myself to drawing her a Hanson-themed birthday card year after year... Sometimes I really shouldn't start something in the first place!

Birthday Card Catch-Up

Here are a couple of birthday cards that I've drawn recently...

Emmy The Great recently teased the announcement of her upcoming EP and UK tour with a photoshoot including this image...

...which I used as my inspiration for this card for her birthday...


Here's a drawing I did for my friend Ayano's birthday recently. I scanned some patterned papers for the background and her shirt...


Here's a card I drew for my friend Sarah's birthday...


And finally (for now!) here's a card I drew for my friend Maria's birthday, based on one of her photos...

Happy 70th Birthday Dad!

My Dad celebrated his 70th Birthday on Friday! And here's a card I made for him...