Andrew Gardner's Digital Ramblings

Sorry, I was napping. For 4 months...

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:32:56 +0100

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 with a dragon :)

I’m tempted to flesh these out a little more, I am quite lazy when it comes to finishing off illustrations…

The year of the snake

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:52:00 +0000

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.

There's nothing like an Autumn onsen

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 23:47:00 +0100

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 :)

Summer Peas - round 2

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 00:24:00 +0100

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.

Colouring-in a gorilla

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:00:00 +0100

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 enjoying the process and am pretty chuffed with the style that’s developing - hope you feel the same!

Here’s a bit of a close up, again the mouth / ears / headband haven’t been worked on at all.

And here’s the original pencil sketch - everything starts as a paper-based doodle!

Summer Peas

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:50:31 +0100

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!

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:10:57 +0100

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 illustration here and there, and I got to make fun things like the image below!

Springtime Peas

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:43:50 +0100

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!

Valentines peas

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:16:00 +0000

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!

Setsubun peas

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:48:00 +0000

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

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:48:56 +0000

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 stages and ideas I went through before reaching the final vector illustration (the very last image);

As always this tumblr them isn’t ideal for wide images, but hopefully you can get the idea anyway :)

Starting as I mean to go on

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:56:00 +0000

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!

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:24:25 +0000

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 projects that come my way).

I should be posting here at least one every two weeks, hopefully they’ll be some lovely images for you to see soon!

Cheers, Andy.

Clothes Aid - Wizard designs

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:35:15 +0000

I’ve been doing some character designs for the charity clothing collection company Clothes Aid -here are some initial rough options for the wizard.

Year of the Dragon

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:43:27 +0000

My second attempt for a PEA New Year card.

Another pea

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:05:31 +0000

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 ideas, but I’d like to get the ‘Gorilla Project’ (see early blog posts for initial sketches etc) done first. And that’s what I’ve been slowly chipping away at this week :)

A work-in-progress (that'll never be finished)

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:00:23 +0000

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 suggested that maybe using a dragon kite would be better (which I’m working on at the moment) but wanted to post this anyway as it’s still quite fun :)

Time flies...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:43:07 +0100

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 and Christmas. Let me know what you think!

I'm still here

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:26:33 +0100

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

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 22:43:12 +0100

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.