April 2013
1 post
Sorry, I was napping. For 4 months...
Well, another rather long period of silence on this blog - apologies! But that’s the internet.
I’ve been getting back into illustration recently and have a couple of exciting projects that will keep me busy for the next few months, but thought I’d pop up a couple of doodles I did today, after the hashtag #FantasyWorldProblems popped into my head. Oh, and a little warm-up sketch...
December 2012
1 post
The year of the snake
Here’s my latest effort for the Proper English Academy in Osaka - a design for a New Year’s Card, 2013 being the year of the Snake.
October 2012
1 post
There's nothing like an Autumn onsen
Here’s a little Autumn-themed illustration I’ve been working on - click for a bigger version.
Autumn is definitely my favourite time of the year, and I wish I was in Japan enjoying an onsen right now!
Oh, click here if you’d like to see a bigger version :)
August 2012
1 post
Summer Peas - round 2
Here are a couple of illustrations for the Proper English Academy in Osaka for a couple of popular Summer activities - festivals (or Masturi) and water fights.
June 2012
3 posts
Colouring-in a gorilla
I’ve had some time to work on my first children’s picture book recently, and although there are some bits I can’t really show you *just* yet, I have been doing some more colouring tests, trying to establish the right look-and-feel, which I can share.
These are still work-in-progress and aren’t finished by a long shot (for example, the face is still rough), but I’m...
Summer Peas
Another season is upon us and that means some more P.E.A. illustrations! This time it’s all things summer, hope you like them! These are the first set, another will be coming in a few weeks time.
I'm still here!
I know there’s been quite a gap between now and my last update, but I took on a freelance design contract that just kept getting extended, and aside from the obvious financial incentive, it was actually quite good fun!
I was working as a ‘Reactive Designer’ for Lynx (the bodyspray brand) and essentially creating content for their Facebook page. It involved quite a bit of...
March 2012
1 post
Springtime Peas
Another quick update (still freelancing, need more time to draw but have to pay those bills!), here’s a little seasonal scene I did for the Proper English Academy in Osaka - two peas enjoying hanami. It was a bit of a rush job and I wish I could have spent a bit more time on it, but that’s life sometimes!
February 2012
1 post
Valentines peas
A little Valentines-themed illustration I did for the Proper English Academy. I’ll put up a few more loved-up peas soon :)
***UPDATE*** Added a couple more designs, some are a bit crap (the chocolate peas in particular) but I like to show the rubbish stuff sometimes, not everything turns out how you planned!
January 2012
4 posts
Setsubun peas
Once again I’ve been busy with advertising freelance so haven’t had as much time as I’d like for illustration - that said, I’ve been working on some more seasonally-themed characters for the Proper English Academy, the latest being for the festival ‘Setsubun’.
Enjoy :)
A look at the process
I’ve just finished a nice little freelance project for Clothes Aid, designing a new Wizard mascot for a new schools project their planning. I’ve already featured some of the early concepts for the character on an earlier post, but as well as creating the character a key illustration was needed to show that donated clothing turns into equipment for the schools - below are some of the...
Starting as I mean to go on
As well as doing some more development work for Clothes Aid (images coming in the new few weeks) I spent today on this little illustration, just testing out some colouring texturing techniques;
I’m quite happy with it :) Hope you like it too!
Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2012 - the year where *hopefully* it’s all going to happen :)
I type this as I sit in a lovely shared office space I’ve got myself (as I found working from home too distracting), and I’m feeling really positive about the next 12 months. When I’m not freelancing to pay the bills I’ll be here working on my children’s books (and any other illustration...
December 2011
1 post
Clothes Aid - Wizard designs
I’ve been doing some character designs for the charity clothing collection company Clothes Aid -here are some initial rough options for the wizard.
November 2011
3 posts
Year of the Dragon
My second attempt for a PEA New Year card.
Another pea
Talking of New Year peas, here’s a generic one I created. For those of you who have ever spent New Years in Japan will hopefully appreciate this!
On a side-note; I know there’s been a lot of pea-related posts recently, and some are asking about my books - well I’ve actually been doing a bit more writing and thankfully worked out a good narrative for one of my favourite character...
A work-in-progress (that'll never be finished)
Hello all, thought I’d quickly show you a rough of another pea illustration, this time for New Year. 2012 will be the ‘Year of the Dragon’, so the Proper English Academy asked me to create a pea for their New Years stationary.
He is my first attempt (far from completion), but I realised while doing that the pea itself is quite obscured, which obviously isn’t ideal. PEA...
October 2011
1 post
Time flies...
God lord, sorry for no posting is such a long time - the freelance contract I was working on kept being extended and it would have been slightly mad of me to refuse more money, so I haven’t really had a lot of time to do any personal creative stuff of late.
That said, at the start of this week I created some more seasonal pea characters for the Proper English Academy - this time for Winter...
September 2011
16 posts
I'm still here
Apologies for no new update but the past few days have been pretty hectic, and have now got myself some freelance design work for the rest of the week (got to pay those bills). With any luck I’ll be able to upload some sketches again soon :)
Fall of the Great Ape
Sadly this tumblr theme isn’t very friendly to wide images, so the detail is kind of lost on this, but thought I’d pop it up here all the same.
Action beaver
I haven’t had the most productive couple of days sadly, partly as I’ve been preparing for freelance design work in a few weeks (got to pay those bills!), but I’ve also found myself a little distracted for some reason. That said, I’ve still be working on colouring and a bit of writing; feeling like tomorrow is going to be a good day though :)
Colour Tests
Spent most of the day playing around with different colouring techniques - Photoshop brush-based on the left, Illustrator vector on the right. To be completely honest I can decide which I prefer, will continue to dabble and see what happens…
A day of drawing
I had a good Friday - it was essentially me and my pencil, doodling away, while NHK World provided the soundtrack (I quite enjoy the over-saccharine documentaries with incredibly patronising American presenters).
Here are some of my efforts;
Sketches
I realised that before rushing full-steam ahead into working on the page compositions, I really needed to flesh out the main characters first, so my afternoon was spent doodling and sketching some initial designs - good fun :)
That said I wasn’t as productive as I could have been today as I popped to the new Westfield Stratford this morning to have a look around - it is just done the road....
A man with a plan.
Today I finished a rough page plan for the first book I’m going to illustrate, and the exercise proved really quite useful. Even though I was only working on very small thumbnail images of each page spread, it allowed me to think about how each composition will work with the copy for that particular section, and also to consider what parts of the illustration are key (and not too put...
Ha-Pea Halloween
Yesterday I actually got down to sketching out some pages for one of my books, which was really rather exciting, although it wasn’t quite the book I wanted to start with. Basically, my preferred story is too complex and long-winded for a picture book - this was quite a tough realisation, but an important one, so I’ve stuck to a sweet and simple narrative for the time-being.
Anyway,...
Illustrator Testing
Will hopefully be working on some rough page layouts this week (so lots of sketchpad work!) but thought I’d share a quick test illustration using vectors in Illustrator, probably the way I’ll be creating the base visual elements for the books (will probably add texture and such in Photoshop.
Colouring on the Wacom
Although I prefer using Illustrator for initial colouring, I thought a nice way to loosen up was to have a play with my Wacom tablet and try some different colouring methods. The second one here is pretty rubbish to be honest, but it’s good just to try these things!
Busting out the sketchbook
I’ll admit a fair amount of my time has been taken up over the past 2 days arguing with Amazon about missing deliveries (order a selection of top-selling children’s books for reference), and getting my scanner and tablet working properly on Windows 7. Sitting in front of the computer was starting to drive me a bit crazy, so I switched it off, grabbed some sketchpad and doodled - it was...
First day
I’ll admit working from hard isn’t *quite* as easy as I anticipated, although my procrastination has for the most part been somewhat work-related.
Initially I thought I’d pick up a pencil and just doodle away, for the first week at least, but I felt the urge to at least think ahead a little, so I have some sort of goal to work in my first few months.
A key piece of advice...
Some recent-ish life drawing
I’ve spent a lot of today planning and preparing content for the first of my children’s book, so I haven’t actually put pen/pencil to paper, which is really what I wanted to do. That said, as I’m managing myself throughout this entire process, I thought it best to sort out the structure & contents of the book before I throw myself into the illustration itself.
So, I...
2012 is a noisy neighbour
The soundtrack to my first *official* day of work has unfortunately been roadworks. As I live about a 20 minute walk from the Olympic site, the whole area is undergoing some kind of renovation - in Leytonstone’s case, we’re having new pavements installed. HOO-RAH! The pics show the view from the flat; hasn’t been the most welcome distraction, although thankfully the drilling...
A beginning (of sorts)
Hello you - welcome to my little blog, and it’s first tentative post. Now, I’ll be blunt - things aren’t going as planned already. I was going to upload some nice pictures of my working space where I’ll be (hopefully) beavering away on various illustration projects, but unfortunately in the process of turning the spare room in an office, I’ve lost my memory card...
