1000 cranes

Here is an illustration I produced very quickly for a charity project called 1000 cranes to raise money and hope for the people of Japan who are facing what for much of the world can only be described as an unimaginable series of disasters.

For £2 you can download an illustration of your choice and create an origami crane from it using the included instructions. Why a crane? I'll let the guys from Anomaly (great name!) who's brainchild the project is explain -

'The Thousand Origami Cranes is an ancient Japanese legend which promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a crane, such as long life or recovery from illness or injury. The crane in Japan is one of the most holy creatures and is said to live for a thousand years. In Japan, it is commonly said that folding 1000 paper origami cranes makes a person's wish come true.'

The artworks on the site is growing so please do head over and have a look and get involved.

http://www.onethousandcranesforjapan.com/


Medium: pencil, acrylic, photoshop


Bye for now.

Chinese New Year

The year of the rabbit. I was surprised how many times the critters had hopped their way into my work.

Tut Tut

I'm one of those weirdos who texts using whole words, I don't know why, perhaps because I am not inclined to belive we can't spare the time. As a confirmed waffler (see previous posts) I whole heartedly refuse to abbreviate, I like words, I love to write (perhaps I will post a bit of what I write?) anyway, you get the gist I like the written word in it's fullest. Where was I going with this? oh yea 'tut' ... first time I was asked to 'do a tut' I did wonder what unnatural act was being requested of me, I'm up for most things but I thought I had best check out what I was agreeing to before I got in too deep. Turns out it's a tutorial (we apparently don't even have time to write the 'orial' bit ... wasted seconds!) I get quite a few requests for tuts now so perhaps I will produce something in the general area of a tut, bit more of a process rather than spoon-feeding you my techniques so I will post that at sometime in the future.

The main reason for this post is to point you in the direction of my spruced up websites. Both www.athomeinspace.com and www.darrenhopes.com have had a facelift by my friend and general web genius Jake, who manages to sprinkle his magic on my corner of the net whist working full time at Aardman (I may just be able to forgive abbreviations in his case) www.aardman.com ... so cool!

Well, everything looks a bit more integrated now with a common theme to tie the sites / blog and shop into one neat little package. Quite a few new images have been uploaded to the 'darren' site so I would love it if you had a peek.

The shop will probably be developed a bit further in the future but is operational, lots of stuff to upload though ... we are taking requests at http://peepshowshop.bigcartel.com/


Work has been busy. I mentioned last post an illustration which I finished last year is just about to see the light of day. I was amongst 30 artists chosen to illustrate a stamp for the 2012 Olympics. Having never worked on a stamp before it was very exiting. I was given Hockey and here's the result.
























Another image I finished recently was a test image for an opera. Sadly this one won't be used but I kind of liked it anyway.























After that rather somber image you might want a bit of cheering up and I heartily recommend a bit of dog judo to bring a smile back you your face www.dogjudo.com/

Well enough of my longwinded unabbreviated noodlings ... your busy people!

Bye 4 now c u l8r xx