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...

Sketches from my sketchbook

I've been trying to do more sketching while I'm out recently, and carrying a small sketchbook around with me in my pocket. Here are a couple of sketches I drew on the train, as well as a few from The Chorus Festival Weekend at the Southbank Centre today...

Drawing in a coffee shop...

I went and got a coffee the other day and did a quick bit of sketching while I drank my latte...

Isle of Wight sketchbook drawings

Last week I went away for a couple of days to the Isle of Wight. While I was there I did some sketching.

Some people on the Island Liner train from Ryde to Sandown...

The view from the beach and bones and fossils from Dinosaur Isle...


People in the cafe at Carisbrooke Castle...

Yayoi Kusama

Yesterday I went along to the Tate Modern with some friends to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. A Japanese artist and writer, Kusama's work encompasses painting, sculpture, drawing and collage as well as large-scale intallations, and explores colour, repetition and patterns.

I really enjoyed the exhibition and afterwards drew a quick sketch of Kusama...

The exhibition continues at Tate Modern until the 5 June.

Chamone!

Michael Jackson R.I.P. (1958–2009)
He may have been a bit loopy, but he made some damn good music!

Portfolio Maybe

Here's my latest illustration of singers/bands that I like, bonkers Icelandic songstress Bjork, wearing the mental swan dress she wore to the Oscars in 2001. Shhhh! It's oh so quiet...

"O Portfolio, Portfolio! Wherefore art thou Portfolio?"

Okay, so I'm back to my original idea for this series of drawings, illustrations of singers and bands that I like (as opposed to just drawing female singers that I fancy!). Here is Thom Yorke from Radiohead, acting rather nervous while wearing a homemade robot costume... what a "Paranoid Android" he is... *groan!*



Incidentally, if anyone has a spare day ticket for this year's Reading Festival on the Sunday, then let me know. Radiohead are headlining and I really want to go...

"I have no portfolio/And I only show where there's free alcohol"

My mini portfolio project to draw illustrations of some of my favourite singers and bands has somehow started to turn into drawing female singers that I fancy!

Here is my latest drawing of Lovefoxxx, the lead singer from Brazilian indie-electro band, CSS – Cansei de Ser Sexy.

As you can see, she really does love foxes. Although the fox doesn't seem too happy about it...

All we hear is Portfolio Ga Ga...

It's a funny time at the moment! This is the last week of my MA course before hanging our work for the Final Show and submitting all my work from the year. I've got my work printed and framed ready to hang, and have sorted out my portfolio (to an extent). I need to sort out my sketchbooks and drawings from the year, and am also working on a few last minute pieces to add to my portfolio.

I was thinking of something Jonny Hannah said to us when he came in to give a talk earlier in the year, about how it is good to incorporate your personal interests into your illustration work, so I thought I'd do a series of comic portraits of some of my favourite bands and singers, as I really enjoy music, going to gigs, and listening to my iPod when I'm doing my work.

Here's the first one, of my future wife Natasha Khan, Bat For Lashes, complete with cricket bat and batman t-shirt...

Illustration course part 4

Day 2, and I was going around the college making drawings and collecting ideas for a piece based around the course itself. As it was the Easter holiday, the college was pretty deserted, so I wandered around the empty rooms and hallways making quick sketches of interesting shapes and angles I discovered...

I also found this stained-glass window in one of the stairwells, which was a bit spooky-looking (and reminded me of the haunted painting from the film Ghostbusters 2). I also liked how it was in complete contrast with it's surroundings, so I made a quick record of it using crayons to try to capture the colours...

Next I decided on a slight change of tact, and had a wander around some of the studio spaces upstairs. Again these were completely deserted, but students had left all their work out in the process of putting together an exhibition. Walking around I discovered a mirror that someone had left placed on an easel. I decided to do a self portrait of myself in the studio...

...I was really pleased with how this came out. I went straight in with a blue roller ball pen, rather than making any pencil sketches first. Another thing that differed from my normal drawing style was the fact that I was standing up resting my sketchbook in my arm, rather than sat at a flat surface. I really like the spontaneity and expressiveness that this gives to the line work. It also made me see that although perhaps technically some of the drawing isn't "correct", it definitely captures a moment and has a definite feel to the drawing.

Getting back to the class before we reviewed the work we'd done that morning, I felt boosted by this new style to my drawing and as we were still waiting for a few people to come back, I used the time to make quick 3-minute sketches of some of my classmates while they were drawing. Taking what I'd discovered from drawing my self-portrait, I worked straight in with a black roller ball pen, and sat with my sketchbook resting in my hand...

I was really finding drawing straight in pen to be a liberating experience in terms of my line work, and being bolder with my drawing. When I made mistakes, rather than reaching for the rubber, I just reworked the image to get the shape or angle, and felt that my work was better for that. After lunch, I decided to carry on exploring this approach and drew the rest of my classmates as they went around the college drawing...

I want to work all these elements into some kind of finished piece. I discussed my ideas with our teacher during the course, and have a few ideas that I am going to work on developing further.

Illustration course part 3

Taking one of my previous drawings, I played around on the photocopier to reduce and enlarge it and see what interesting accidents I could stumble across. Then I looked at applying colour to my work.

For this piece, I reduced my original image by 75% which created a really fine line from my original pencil drawing. I then applied a monochrome colour palette to the face, placing different surfaces behind the paper to create different textures.


Next I super-sized my meal, and enlarged my original image by 200% and then enlarged that copy by 200%, which really thickened up my line work and made it look like I'd drawn the picture in charcoal. It also resulted in a really cool (albeit completely accidental) crop to my image on the page. I then used a limited palette to pick up the highlights and shadows in the face.

Illustration course part 2

Next up was drawing from life. We took it in turns to model for our fellow classmates and started off with a 15-minute pose (which feels like an absolute eternity when you're the model)...



This next one was an extended 30-minute pose, which meant I was able to work in a lot more detail...