New Year, New Birthdays!

Hello 2017! Last weekend, my friends Anne and Anett celebrated their birthdays together. The problem with drawing cards for my friends' birthdays is that sometimes I find it really hard to come up with a new idea that is better than the last year, and (not to sound too big-headed about it) I think that I really excelled myself with both of their cards last year! Anyway, accepting the fact that I probably couldn't better myself, I decided to go for a fairly simple approach and draw a portrait of each of them enjoying some ramen (as we often meet up to go for ramen together):





The same weekend, it was also my friend Tadgh's birthday. Tadgh has been doing some excellent screen printing work recently, so I drew a picture of him producing a screen print of a birthday cake...

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!):

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...

Blogs Of Future Past (Part 1: Birthdays)

I got a bit lapsed with updating my blog in 2015 and only managed a paltry Thirty-three posts last year. Part of this was due to the good news that I was pretty busy with commissioned work, particular in the second half of the year, but regardless, I want to ensure that I'm more active with my blog posts in 2016! Before I get into the New Year though, I thought I'd better catch up with a bunch of stuff I never got around to posting last year. So these next bunch of posts will be a bit of a retrospective look back at 2015.

Surprising nobody, I made quite a few cards last year. And in no particular order, here are some I never got around to posting...

A birthday card for my friend Ivy...



A birthday card for my friend Janice. Who likes Star Wars and goes to Pole Dancing classes...


For the last few years I have been making Jess a birthday card based on a different Hanson album cover each year. Because she is a massive Hanson fan, not because I hate her! And as if that isn't enough, this year she commissioned me to draw a Hanson card for her friend Clare. So once again, I traweled through Google Images to find yet another Hanson album cover to use as inspiration for her birthday card and ended up going with the cover to (what Wikipedia tells me is) their third album Underneath...




Here's a card I made for my friend Anna...


And here's a card I made for another friend of mine called Anna. She told me a story about waking up to find a cat in her bedroom, which reminded me of The Cat Came Back...


This is a video game inspired card I made for my friend Richard...


And here's a card I made for my parent's wedding anniversary which is on the 31 December. When I was telling my mum about seeing a Full Moon in the sky during Christmas, she told me that the last time there was a Full Moon at Christmas was the same year that her and my dad got married in 1977. 38 years ago!

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...

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...

Birthday Catch Up...

I've been drawing quite a few birthday cards recently, and here are some of them...

First, Janice and Pikachu...


Next, here's Jo drawing...


And finally, Steve Walsh works in Gosh! Comics and also does the South London Hardcore podcast, which recently featured an episode about the Horniman Musuem, famous for it's stuffed walrus...