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.