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!

UPside exhibition UPdate

Okay, so over the past few days I've been scribbling away working for the group exhibition that I'll be taking part in next month. You can read more about it here and here...


These are the first portraits of some of my friends that I've completed. I started working alphabetically through my list of friends, but quickly decided it would be more fun to work in a more haphazard approach and just draw people at random depending on my mood...

When I've completed all the portraits, I'll review the positioning of each portrait in relation to one another.

I'm enjoying the challenge of this project, to capture a good likeness of my friends and drawing a range of expressions, face shapes and hair styles. It's also quite interesting to concentrate solely on drawing a face with no added background details or elements.

The exhibition will be on from the 13 September until the 7 November at the Medcalf Gallery 40 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QE.