Secret 7"

Earlier this year, I submitted a design for the 2016 Secret 7" show. The annual show has been running since 2012 and each year takes 7 tracks from 7 musicians/bands and press each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then accept submissions from creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style and 700 sleeve designs are selected and printed, to create 100 unique copies for each of the 7 tracks. These are exhibited and then sold for £50 apiece to raise money for a selected charity.

Of the 7 tracks available, I decided to create a design for Art School by The Jam. Sadly, my illustration did not get selected for the final exhibition, but that doesn't stop me sharing it here...

Graphic Shakespeare competition

I've been busy recently, working on a 4-page comic for a Graphic Shakespeare competition, part of the Elsinore Conference 2016 entitled Shakespeare: The Next 400 Years, which is being held in Kronborg Castle, Helsingor, Denmark in April. You could either adapt the scene of your choosing, or select one of five famous scenes designated by the organisers of the conference. One of the selected scenes was Act One, Scene 1 from Macbeth, which is one of my favourtie Shakespeare plays, so I decided to go with this one. I wanted to create a humourous take on the scene with the three witches that opens the play, and had the idea of one of the witches having to bring along her mobile phone obsessed neice: Three Witches And A Little Lady...

Recipe Comic

Hmm...I haven't posted anything for a while. I have been working, but not on anything that I can post...just yet! But one thing that I have done is draw a comic based on a recipe for a competition. I decided to draw a comic about how to cook okonomiyak, which is a Japanese savoury pancake. The results of the competition will be released at the beginning of July, but for now, here's my one page comic...

(click to enlarge)


[UPDATE]: My comic got selected for inclusion in the book, and is available here: http://centrala.org.uk/shop/comics-cookbook/

Little White Lies' Breaking Bad Creative Brief

Having had a couple of jobs cancelled in recent weeks, I found myself with a bit of time on my hands and, while surfing the internet, discovered that Little White Lies were running a Breaking Bad Creative Brief to design a piece of artwork based on your favourite scene from the series. The winner will receive a 55" TV and a complete set of the Ralph Steadman designed Steelbook Blu-rays of the series, which look lovely!

Anyway, having watched the whole series early last year I thought I'd give it a go, and created an image based on, possibly, my favourite episode of the series: Fly (series 3, episode 10)...

Baby Samus!

I drew this a while ago now for a competition to draw a Nintendo character as a baby. Although after I drew it, I realised that the closing date was the day before... Still, I was quite pleased with the picture, so here it is: Baby Samus from Metroid!

24 Hours to Go Broke

As part of the online promotion for their new show 24 Hours To Go Broke which started tonight, the TV channel Dave were running a Twitter competition today to create an advert for the show, with the chance to win cash prizes up to £50. As I had an hour to spare, I decided to give it a go and produced the following poster...



And I won 50 quid! :)

"Monsieur! Non!" T-Shirt

A few months back my illustration was selected as the winning entry for the South London Hardcore podcast's "MONSIEUR! NON!" T-shirt Competition to design a t-shirt to commemorate Lakisha's apocryphal story about Jack embarrassing himself whilst buying a crepe in Paris. You can listen to the original story here:



And this is my winning illustration...



And even more excitingly, you can now order my t-shirt online from http://southlondonhardcore.spreadshirt.co.uk/ along with other South London Hardcore t-shirts.



Spend £30 until the 8 May and get £5 off when you use the offer code MAY14.

Capcom Xmas Card Competition

Here's my submission for Capcom UK's Christmas Card Competiton featuring a variety of characters from Capcom games looking forward to Christmas dinner together...



Sadly, I didn't win – the first prize was a PS4! – but I was happy to be included among some really great entries!

Official Nintendo Magazine cover competition

The Official Nintendo Magazine ran a competition a few months ago to draw a cover image for the magazine. The issue featured a blank space on the cover (left) to draw your own cover image as part of a feature on Nintendo Letter Box, which is a free download for the Nintendo 3DS that lets you send and receive virtual letters with other 3DS owners.

The winning entry would win a bunch of 3DS titles, plus £50 credit to spend on the Nintendo eShop. So I thought I'd sharpen my pencils and have a go and came up with a drawing of Nikki, the character from Nintendo Letter Box, delivering letters to Mario, Yoshi and the rest of the Mushroom Kingdom...

And... I WON!!!
Here's my cover featured in the latest issue along with a rather nice quote!

Secret 7" competiton

Phew! That was a busy few hours of drawing!!

A while ago, I saw a competition on the Talenthouse website to design artwork for the band CSS. I've been a fan of CSS for ages, and have seen them play Live a few times, so this sounded like something I'd like to do! And then I forgot all about it. Until I noticed a couple of tweets and facebook posts from friends saying that they had entered the competition. I still wanted to take part, but was busy with a few other things, and so time passed...

Today was the deadline for entries, and I was working at the gallery during the day so when I got home, I FINALLY got around to working on my entry for the competition, and hurried to get it done before the deadline...

Fortunately, on the bus to work this morning I was listening to the selected song – City Grrrl by CSS – on my iPod and came up with an idea, so I was good to go! Listening to the lyrics of the song, I kept coming back to the idea of transformation and the desire to "live the life I didn't have yet" in New York City, and the iconic symbol of freedom: the Statue of Liberty (I had also watched Ghostbusters 2 recently...).

The band themselves will be picking the winning designs to be printed on a Secret 7" vinyl sleeve and exhibited in East London for Record Store Day on the 21 April, but if you like my design, you can also vote for my entry over on the Talenthouse website. Voting starts tomorrow (20 January) until the 26 January, and you can view my entry on their site and cast your vote here:
http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/a025b5d123838fcb866e34472764626d/379