Spartathlon

Here's one of two illustrations I recently produced for the Telegraph. Another interesting piece which I was again left to interpret in my own way, thank-you Telegraph!

The copy was an exert from a book and really was fascinating. The Spartathlon is a gruelling 152 mile run. It was beautifully written (I was lucky enough to get the unedited copy) and delved into why people take on such huge physical tasks but most interesting for me was the description of the mental aspect of the run, especially during the night.

I was commissioned to do one illustration but after rough stage it was decided to use both ideas. The fist aimed to capture how small the runner was in the face of such an undertaking and to capture the feeling of loneliness and solitude described in parts especially at night facing a mountain run, I used the mountains magnitude as an analogy for the enormity of the task as a whole . The other was to include the statue of king Leonidas, the runners kiss his feet at the end of the race (if you make it that far, not many do) and I wanted to show how this run can crush the runner with the statue looming over him.

In a nice addition to the commission the author who wrote the book from which the copy was an extract got in touch and bought a print of one of the illustrations from me!

Medium - Photography, pencil, acrylic, photoshop.

I'll post a couple more of the shop magazine covers soon and a illustration I have just done for the Radio Times.

Bye for now.

Riga and Lithuania

Well, before I abandon my studio for the weekend here are a couple more of the shop magazine covers. Riga and Lithuania. The pattern on the dress and necklace meet to create a statue from a very distinctive art art nouveau building in Riga and the monument at the centre of Europe forms a bracelet for Lithuania.

More to come.

Bye for now.

Beautiful Tango

I have been working on a slow burner for the lovely guys at Studio 8. Over the past three months we have been creating a series of covers for Shop magazine. The project involved five illustrators working on around 40 covers, from what I have seen they have been creating some great work. I was initially commissioned seven covers which increased to nine.

The general premise was to take an iconic element of the given city or area and combine it to become a product ie a dress, a ring, a shoe ect

Here is the first of my nine solutions. This was Buenos Aires, I came up with a few ideas and produced two roughs form the list and this one was chosen to take to final, we took the cultural reference of the tango and the shadows of the dancers became the distinctive architecture of the city.

More to come soon

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.

Wasp Head

More experiments with pages scanned from my sketchbook, continuing to explore what happens when I omit any photographic elements from my approach. I have included the original sketches. It's a voyage of discovery and at the moment true to my mixed media origins I am chucking all sorts into the process to see what feels right. I prefer pencil and paper for drawing to the Wacom so that's where I start aside form that there is acrylic, watercolour a bit of digital painting and photoshop.

I don't intend to drop the photographic elements but I do want to really push the drawn stuff this year ... there's a big canvas sat in my studio ... who knows!


More soon, 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.

2011

Goodbye and good riddance 2010 you will go down as one of the worst years of my life. I'm not superstitious but that year seemed truly cursed with one bad thing just leading into another and it seems i am not the only one who had a bad time.

So it is with some happiness that I say hello to 2011 and wish everyone a great year.

Commissioned work allowing I hope for a fair bit of development in my personal work this year and I'll post the results of my labour as it happens. I am working on a commissioned project at the moment and I will post that when I can.

bye for now.