Happy Birthday Alyana!

So it's Alyana's birthday tomorrow, but due to the fact that she lives in Melbourne where it is already the future (or maybe I'm just not quite understanding the concept of International time zones...) I thought I'd post this now. Plus I know that she already opened her card early! Tsk tsk!

Alyana likes counting, and paintings with grapes in, so here she is combining the two and counting grapes...

Happy Birthday Kavita!

It's my friend Kavita's birthday today. She's been studying to become a doctor for as long as I've known her (it's a long process!), so I can't imagine a more enjoyable way for her to spend her birthday than by playing a game of Operation...



This idea was actually adapted from a drawing I did last year. And just for an added treat, here's the TV advert for the game from the '80s...

Oliver Jeffers in conversation with Martin Salisbury

Yesterday I went to hear Oliver Jeffers in conversation with Martin Salisbury. It was a really interesting talk, with Oliver Jeffers talking about how he got started with producing illustrated children's books, the way he works, his influences and techniques. I found it very inspiring.

But for me, the biggest surprise was how Oliver Jeffers actually looked! You know when you have a picture of someone in your head, and then you meet them and you want to say to them "But, you don't look like that!"...

Here's a quick drawing I did in my sketchbook during the talk. That's Oliver Jeffers on the right, sporting the most amazing moustache, and facially resembling a circus strongman!



(...and I'm aware of the fact that I keep calling him Oliver Jeffers. It just somehow seems odd to refer to him as just Oliver, or Mr Jeffers...)

Happy Birthday Rishi and Geetika, and Bon Voyage Martin!

So I was busy making cards thrice this week. First up was Rishi's 30th birthday on Friday...


Also on Friday , I saw my friend Martin who is about to go off to Cameroon for 6 months to carry out some botanical research in the rain forests, collecting specimens, and (at least in my imagination) probably going completely insane and running around the woods like Rambo, which I decided to illustrate for a leaving card...


Finally, yesterday it was Geetika's birthday. Coincidentally, her housemate Aine bought her a butterfly necklace for her birthday, and I'd drawn a butterfly hairclip on her card...


The ink in my printer has run out at the moment, so I've been colouring all these cards by hand using marker pens. It's quite nice not to be using Photoshop for a bit (especially as I've been spending quite a bit of time on my laptop working on my website recently), but it means that I have to work with a more limited range of colours.

I haven't stopped drawing...honest!

I haven't updated my blog in a while. This was partly due to being sick for what seemed like forever (but was really only about two weeks), and also because I've been gradually working on a couple of other projects. The first of these is a return to the book project I started with a group of friends from my MA Illustration course. There are only a few more things that we need to work on to have this completed, and are currently focusing on getting it all wrapped up. Below is my self-portrait for my artist's profile, showing me happily sitting in a cafe doodling...



I've also been getting to grips with my website again, and hope to have an update on that very soon. I've also been drawing some more birthday cards for people and will post those up here after the respective birthdays have passed (...don't want to spoil the surprise now, do I?!).

Hopefully, I'll have some more new posts very soon...

Happy Birthday Zarina!

Today was my friend Zarina's birthday! I made a card featuring her comic character Le Mime wishing a "Happy. Birth-day. To (two). Zarina." in his own silent style!

Happy Birthday Kyoko & Carolina!

Sometimes birthdays are like buses...you wait ages and two come along at once! Today two of my friend's had birthdays: Kyoko and Carolina. I made a card for each of them...



I'm feeling quite a bit better now, after being sick the past week, so hope to have more new drawings up soon...

Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Tomorrow is the start of the Chinese New Year of the Tiger. Grrrrr!!! Happy New Year to all my Chinese friends...

Little White Lies Creative Brief

To tie in with the release of Matthew Vaughn’s movie, Kick-Ass, based on Mark Millar’s comic-book series of the same name, Little White Lies set a competition to take the film of your choice and re-imagine it in the form of a comic, within a single six-panel page.

After wracking my brains trying to decide what film to use, I finally decided (for reasons I can't quite explain) on David Fincher's Fight Club.

All entries had to be black and white, and also had to fit within the set panel template, which was an interesting limitation to be faced with. It was also a challenge to condense the essence of the film into just 6 panels, and as a result I ditched some of the less relevant sub-plots and characters. As Edward Norton's character in the film provides a constant narration to the events, I decided to avoid using speech bubbles, and instead use narration boxes to capture the tone of the movie...

I'm happy with the final result and enjoyed working on this project... The best selected entries will be included in a special digital edition of the magazine, and the winning entry will be printed in a full-page of the next issue of Little White Lies...Fingers crossed!

Decade Drawn Out: Dazed & Confused competition

Here is my entry for Dazed & Confused magazine's Decade Drawn Out competition. The brief was to draw one of the ten selected best covers from the last decade, with the only restriction being that the cover had to be entirely illustrated.

After looking over the selected covers, I decided to do a version of this cover from 2003, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal. After sketching out some ideas, I decided to do something a bit different and have Jake wearing the Frank the Rabbit mask from the film Donnie Darko (which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, for those of you that don't know).

I'm really pleased with my final image, and it was nice change from all the comics I've been doing recently...