Images 33 Exhibition.

Last night was the Private View for the Association of Illustrators launch of Images 33: The Best of British Illustration. Link. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, but I hope to be able to get to show before its run ends - fingers crossed on that! I was delighted to get two pieces excepted into the exhibition itself and also a third in the annual as well: Scorpion attacks which is all about bullying in the workplace. Poker Robot which explores a robot designed specifically to always win at Poker. Factory Relocation, an image about relocation of manufacturing for cheaper labour costs. If I get to the show itself, I'll post photo's of them in situ and also my fav artwork from the show.

A couple of the 741 Illustration crowd (Sarah Coleman, Jacquie O Neil, Jill Calder Ali Pellatt and Myles Talbot) are in the show was well. Sarah, Jill, Jacquie, Ali, Myles and I were the founding members of 741 illustration collective a few years ago. We are still very much in touch and support each other through the ups and downs of freelance life :-) Here are Sarah's (I challenge you to find a more gifted type artist!) pieces from the Images show...

Influences - Dan Dare

Anyone with a passion for sci-fi will know about Dan Dare! These playing cards were found in a friends attic and they kindly lent me them to scan in, there must be about thirty or so in good enough condition to repro. I have a few of the original Dan Dare annuals bought from junk shops when I was a kid. Prized studio posessions now!

Play!

When I left my teaching role at UCLAN last year, it was clearly obvious that a 'sense of play' had somehow disappeared from my illustration work. Probably as a result of trying to keep too many things going on at the same time. Play? Work just for fun? The what if approach? Material experimentation? Call it what you will, but I had just a couple of weeks where I raided my paints, collage drawer and some of the throw always the kids had been drawing and scribbling on and just let loose, scanned the results in and just played :-) No brief or theme to any of the images, just a reaction to the materials in their own right and then a tiny bit of computer manipulation. A couple of the images went on to become a finished images - usually semi abstract backgrounds with a central figurative theme. Just a few favs of the many that were done...

Footballing Heroes

This project developed about a month ago. I was invited to contribute to the Footballing Heroes project, now in its third incarnation: http://www.footballheroes.org/

I don't often get to do portraits, so this was a really fun, challenging project to undertake. I started in usual way by doodling in a sketch book and copying photographic reference, but expanded this once the likeness was more or less there. I used both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to build these two images, starting out by blocking in colours in Illustrator and then by adding paint (scanned and digital) in Photoshop. I ended up playing with different versions of each character, mainly tonal changes, but enough to make a noticeable if subtle difference.

Images of the printed versions will follow in due course.

Diego Maradonna

Ademir Menezes...

Introduction...

Hello! This is the first entry into my shiny new blog. I work as an illustrator, based in the North West of the UK and I'm planning on using this blog space as an extension of my own web site. Expanding on some of the illustration work in detail, showing sketches, layouts, experiments, some golden oldies perhaps and of course the inevitable cock ups that go hand in hand with the creative process. I guess the first thing to do is publish a couple of photo's of my studio and some of the kit therein...