Night of the Senses 2012

Once again it's Night of the Senses time. This is the fourth year I have happily provided the artwork for the charity event. You can read a bit about last year here

http://athomeinspace.blogspot.com/2010/11/night-of-senses-2011_26.html

Four the previous years we have used an existing image from my Muse series but this year I created a bespoke photo-illustration. The brief was pretty open but needed a horse theme and here it is.

Kemistry gallery charity exhibition

Studio 8 and Shop magazine are holding a charity exhibition with print sales from illustrations produced for the magazine. Proceeds will be donated to Kids Company so if you would like to pick up a print or just browse the work head on over to the Kemistry Gallery.

Bentley

I was one of a handful of artists asked to illustrate an element of the new Bentley Continental GTC. Six artists with six elements and a diverse range of styles.

I was given sensuous and the concept of the hand crafted cabin. That was it, the brief was very open and I was left to tackle the subject as I saw fit (my favoured kind of brief) so open in fact that I could go either way and execute the image in my more mixed media, painterly style or my more photographic approach.

After formulating a concept which relied heavily on the textures of the interior I decided this was a Spiral job, the walnut and leather textures needed to be fore and the painterly textures in my mixed media I thought would overpower them.

So here is what I did and below my original pencil sketch and a few roughs with different compositional possibilities.

You can see the other images at the Bentley site, fascinating and contrasting illustrations from Jimi Crayon, Paul wearing, David Holmes, Tim Marrs and Lesley Buckingham.

http://www.bentleymotors.com/models/new_continental_gtc/inspired_by_the_gtc/

New Scientist

Here is an illustration I did recently for New Scientist. The subject was Borderline Personality Disorder and what can be done to help those who suffer from it.



I made three digital roughs, sometimes I will do pencil roughs, sometimes digital depending on the commission. The digital roughs take a bit longer but give a pretty good idea of what the final image will look like and often work well for me.

Russell Morgan and Steel Tiger

I was recently contacted by a singer songwriter called Russell Morgan who had heard of me through my work with Steel Tiger records. I am always happy to work with musicians, music is close to my heart and I have a very diverse taste. He sent me this track titled 'Follow' and wow! he's a talent, the song blew me away, absolutely beautiful, musically, lyrically and vocally. You can hear a demo here

http://soundcloud.com/russellmorgan/follow-demo

We used an existing illustration which just seemed to work with the title 'Surrender' it's out next month and will make your life better if you buy it.


So a good opportunity to pull out a few older images and give a shout to the good people at Steel Tiger.

http://www.steeltiger.co.uk/

much respect guys! you make the world sound good.

Bubbles

A quick update because, well, it's been a while. I am busy working on three book covers at the moment and trying to find time to keep at the personal work. In the meantime here is an advertising banner I created for my agent here in the UK, the lovely guy and girls at Central Illustration Agency. It's a banner ad, bit of an awkward shape I felt something needed to travel across it, so I went for bubbles, everyone loves bubbles.

Shop magazine and experiments

Here is the full set of Shop magazine covers as I mentioned in an earlier post.







And here are a few sketches I produced. Nothing finished just time to play with Painter and ArtRage which are quite new to me, still includes some hand rendered acrylic but also dropping the photographic elements to see where that leads.




An interesting possibility of a personal piece in my more photographic / spiral studio stylee, more on that soon. I'm working on two book covers and two editorials at the moment, devil cities, super hero business men, midwifery and the American depression ... a diverse bunch of subjects!

Bye for now

flood

Flood

Stem the flood.
It flows like blood,
from an open wound.
Cut by fingers and tongues,
like knives and guns.

Stem the flood.
It flows like blood,
from my veins.
crimson, ruptured, open, gaping,
bits of me escaping.

Stem the flood.
The flow like blood,
fill the breach.
Dam it up with heart and soul,
cap the bloody flowing hole.

Stem the flood.
Dry up the blood,
fade the scar remaining.
Wipe away the crimson stain,
make the deluge calm again.



New personal work.

More soon.

Bye for now

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.