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.