#Meet The Artist

There's been a meme doing the rounds online and showing up on my Facebook newsfeed called #MeetTheArtist where artists draw a picture of themselves, list their Likes and Dislikes and the contents of their bag. I don't really know the origins of this, but I thought I'd take part. So here's mine:

Chinese New Year: Year Of The Rooster

It was the start of Chinese New Year over the weekend, and with this year being the Year Of The Rooster, I did a drawing to celebrate...

Draw The Line

Shortly after Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States of America, I joined a group on Facebook called Draw The Line, set up with the aim of making comics and illustrations that provide positive actions that anyone can take when faced with a prevailing political landscape they do not like. These will be published on a website in early 2017, and in a print volume thereafter. A book about how to take action against inequality, unfairness, poverty, hate, and discrimination, no matter where or how it arises.

After the initial housekeeping and administration was complete, a list of universal, non-partisan actions was drawn up, – ranging from small and easy actions to those that take more effort, or require a little or a lot of money – distributed among the artists taking part and a deadline established to create a time frame for the project.

My action was:

If your car is only good for scrap or your phone is due for an upgrade, there are services which will take them off your hands and donate any proceeds to the charity of your choice.

After giving it a bit of thought, I decided to produce an illustration for my action, which hopefully gets across the message in a humorous way:



I'll try to update this post with more news about the project as it happens, so watch this space!

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...

Cards Of Christmas Past

I was contacted by Pascale in November last year to draw a few Christmas cards for members of her family. She already had quite clear ideas of the design for each of the cards, so it was a fairly straightforward process.

First up was a card for her nephew(?), who I had previously been commissioned to draw a birthday card for earlier in the year:



Then there was a card for her boyfriend's two nieces:



And finally a card for her boyfriend, featuring the pair of them:



I also took part in The House Of Illustration's Illustrators' Christmas Fair in December (more of which, later!) and designed my own Xmas cards to sell at the event and to send out to friends and family afterwards:

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!):

Hitachi Data Systems

A couple of years ago, I was commissioned to draw a series of single panel cartoons for Hitachi Data Systems, to be featured online in the run up to their attendance of VM World, a global conference for virtualization and cloud computing (whatever that means!).

And this year, I was commissioned to draw something new for them, a 6-panel comic to be featured online on their blog, ahead of this year's VM World...


[click to enlarge]

It's an interesting experience to be drawing something based around a subject that you don't really understand, but I'm fairly happy with the end result and thankfully, so was the client!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad's birthday. He's 72 years old. Here's a card I lovingly made for him...

Comics In The Kitchen exhibition

Way back in June, I took part in the "Comics In The Kitchen" exhibiton at Orbital Comics, London, alongside a bunch of other food-loving cartoonists and illustrators creating illustrated recipes.

I decided to revisit two characters from a recipe comic that I created last year, featured in the Comics Cookbook, published by Centrala, but come up with a new recipe to illustrate. After giving it some thought, I decided to do a cake recipe, because I enjoy baking cakes. I looked up some recipes online and decided to go with a chocolate and beetroot cake, which I did try baking before deciding if it was the right recipe to use for my comic.

The exhibition was great and there was a really strong mixture of different styles and recipes. Obviously, it's long since been taken down, but here's my piece from the show [click to enlarge]...

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...