Holiday!

Really nice to get away for a few days over the Easter hols to the wilds of Northumberland. A stunning part of the UK where big deserted (almost) beaches expand into endless skies. Great to explore and enjoy with the kids. A few coastal landscape shots - but due to my inferior camera skills the sheer scale and breadth of the gorgeous beaches are rather lacking in these images.

Website revamp

As you may have noticed the Blog has had a little makeover today. All to coincide with an imminent (small) website makeover intended to freshen up the design a little. Main changes were to make the overall site a little cleaner in design and add new links to this here Blog and to test out a small store page. Both examples of the the new and old versions of the homepage posted for comparison. New website to go live in the next few days :-)

Perfume Cash in.

An interesting brief - to explore the subject of celebrity product endorsements, specifically the vast amounts paid for perfume / scent / fragrance cash ins. Fun doing something much more decorative than usual too, and I'm also quite fond of my grinning celebrity on a stick!

Terry Thomas - CadTastic!

Writing the previous entry reminded of me of one of my favoutite actors when I was growing up, a one Mr Terry Thomas. If I ever saw his name amongst the credits of any film scheduled to be on the TV, I'd always tune in and watch avidly. Even including the really poor movies as I knew his on screen presence as the typically upper class caddish persona he mostly portrayed would lift even the most tawdry of plots.

For the uninitiated (shame on you!), there's a detailed profile and write up at the Terry Thomas fellowship... http://www.terry-thomas.info/. He appeared in many British films, a couple that stick in the memory were 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' which is probably one of his most well known but he seemed to get a little less screen time (than I'd have liked) due to the sprawling cast. One of his movies I particularly like is 'School For Scoundrels' starring the equally talented Ian Carmichael and Alistair Sim. A superb biting satire exploring social position and 'advancement' in life by any means necessary, all studied at the fictional School of One Upmanship. Terry Thomas plays the cad with great aplomb and Ian Carmichael the hapless student who learns to 'out cad' the great Terry Thomas, all under Alistair Sim's guidance. Still makes me smile.

Doctrine

An quick experimental image that came about after playing with a series of one word themes.

Ronald Searle at 90

Just a few drawings, but how do you choose just a few!

One of the artists I admired as a student, encountering his work firstly as a child (unknowingly) when watching the credits of the movie 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines' and being more fascinated by the credit drawings themselves rather than the film itself - except when Terry Thomas was on screen. Then later as a student at Brighton, where I discovered the sheer variety of work, from the very powerful prisoner of war drawings to the satirical editorial work. At that same time I was also inspired by Ralph Steadman and Gerald's Scarfes work. All you have to do is look at their early drawings to see the debt owed to Mr Searle while they were finding their own drawing language at the beginning of their careers. You can see more at the Ronald Searle tribute blog, at the Chris Beetle Gallery and there's also a Channel 4 News interview with the man himself over at Youtube. Fantastic to see the video of him raising a glass, in good health and still passionate about work.

Spark.

This image proved a challenge. Exploring the origin of ideas and which ones stand out as having greater potential over others. Started with the barest glimmer of a sketch as a very loose framework - all in the sprit of the subject being explored. After digging around for some appropriate reference I started to render my own version of an old NGK spark plug in quite tight detail but also exaggerating and simplifying elements as needed - hence the obvious choice of Adobe Illustrator for this as it offers an immediacy and directness I sometimes find lacking in photoshop, brilliant though it is.

Originally there were six versions of the image, narrowing down to these three 'finished' pieces. Two exploring the human link by using a figure base, as per the original sketch; the third taking it into another direction by putting the plug in a landscape with other 'dead' ideas. Taking it over into photoshop allowed some of the painted textures to be added and integrated with the plug. A similar green / brown pallet was used throughout. In the end I re-work the winged version, altering the tonal balance to make it a little warmer. A digital glaze perhaps? This is probably the most successful of the three, but I kind of like the slight ambiguity of the other two.

When working in this way its good not to have all the answers. Taking risks as I went along meant the old cliche of the 'happy' accident comes into play and allows for unexpected results. The unfortunate point being that you have to work through all of the poor variations to move forward. Just like when generating ideas, some creative happy accidents are worth embracing and can be used in future images, others go to the creative graveyard and become the ghosts failures past!

Bomb!

To anyone tuning in - a belated happy New Year! Its been a little busy here with one thing and another so no time for blog entries - woeful I know! I've just restarted a couple of experimental pieces that were lurking away in the background, finally making a concerted effort to get them finished. I played around quite a lot with colour on this illustration. It still amazes me how much the effect of colour and specifically the tone of colour has on the atmosphere of an image. I preferred the green and the orange versions and opted to push the orange one to finished artwork. The theme is based on a lighthearted article I found on 'military paranoia' where the patients in question have no reason to be afraid, but still have an irrational fear of military persecution! As this is an experimental image it may get some tweaking to push it further.

Radio Times Christmas livery pages.

Above are close ups to show detail and how much bleed area was rendered. Below show the illustrations in situ...

The Christmas Edition of the Radio Times is just hitting the news stands around now. Along with a couple of other artists I was invited to submit sketches for the Christmas Eve page livery. Numerous pencil drawings and a 'finished' colour rough test piece were submitted and I'm delighted to say that I got the job to illustrate the rest: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day and Radio In Your Area spreads. The space for the artwork is pretty limited - approximately a 17mm deep strip across the top of the double page spread. The illustration has to accommodate text and of course the central gutter. The first temptation is to ram the design with as much content as possible, using the top and bottom edges to frame and crop objects close up and run content down either side strip, but this years brief requested a clean simple set of images with just one theme for each, but still using traditional iconography and keeping the side colour more or less intact for simpler 'colour day page' magazine navigation. It took quite a few roughs to get the designs and ideas simple enough to work as a set. The deadline was fairly tight with around a week to take all the images to print once the sketches were approved. A few late nights with the odd necessary correction where needed and the job was done! Following the line work, the finished images were rendered mainly on the Mac with some acrylic painting here and there. I'm really pleased with the set and if I had to pick a favorite it would probably be New Years Day. I always really like Radio Times commissions as the projects are fun to do and they are lovely people to work with as well, which is a definite bonus.

Christmas Cards.

At long last I've finally created some of my own Christmas cards, something I've never got around to doing before. A couple of playful ideas to be used on cards for personal use, not a client mailer or anything on that scale - that said a few clients may get one in the post! Somehow I've never done a Christmas 'work' mailer as yet, despite the obvious promotional opportunity with all of those cards crossing the globe to their respective personal and commercial destinations. Will do one at some point!

The images were done pretty quickly using elements of recent work. The 'ghosts of illustrations past' as it were! We three kings (robin X 3) is a play on the three wise men, combined with a reference to a set of decorative wall mounted ceramic ducks from a childhood memory of them being on an aunts wall. Space baubles X2, one with a background and one without - these B movie references will just not go away.!!! I also wanted to try out a new printer who I've not used before (Moo clicky). A very user friendly site, but limited scope to play with the overall card design. Will report back on the quality when they thud onto the doorstep.