Dear Mr Potter...

This is a piece I did based on an earlier lino print. It shows a Hogwarts owl with a special letter for Harry Potter. After a long period away from digital illustration I am enjoying a return, and I'm looking forward to developing my work further.

The Cat That Walked By Himself - re-do

Having abandoned digital illustration for a while, I was tidying up my files today and in the process I discovered how much I enjoyed doing it. I found this piece from my (still ongoing and stalled due to time constraints) A-Z in literature project. It's the C entry, The Cat That Walked By Himself by Rudyard Kipling. I re-did the woman as she was getting on my nerves, and made some tweaks with texture, colour and the position of the cat's head. You can see the original here.

Illustration Friday: The Sea

Studying a PGCE leaves little time for my own artwork which is sad, but now I have a little time off I have got back into the swing, with a watercolour piece for Illustration Friday. This week's theme: The Sea.

Inked up

A while back I wrote about a design I submitted for a fan art competition - a series of portraits of the original 80s transformers. Well, it didn't win, and some of the designs in there were just amazing. But I was still pleased with my effort. A few friends on Facebook expressed their desire to have the design on a T shirt so I duly obliged. Here is the finished result. I am going to put this in my Etsy shop at some point.

For those of you in the UK and curious, I used Total Clothing. There was a screen print charge of £20 and each subsequent T shirt cost £5, so pretty reasonable. Its made me want to do more designs in this style (I will add it to my growing pile of unfinished or not-yet-started projects), maybe a Tardis, as the new Doctor is now gracing our screens?

I also completed a comic, Two for Joy, though I am not quite happy with it yet. I have found this project really daunting - getting the pacing right for a little graphic story is hard, and I always think my artwork could be better. But at least I finished it!

And finally, remember this illustration I did of Dirk and Christopher?

They are characters from a book series called Dark Lord by Jamie Thomson, I just love them. I recently found out a third book has been released so I must get my hands on that. I can't get these characters out of my head. I think I should expand them some more!

Educational...

Currently I teach classes on perspective drawing at a college near me. The students need to learn how to use Illustrator and produce a final piece demonstrating grasp of the software, as well as understanding of perspective and how to apply it. This is a piece of artwork I produced to show them how useful the Effects - 3D - Rotate command when creating artwork. Two things I learned in advance whilst doing this: One - Plan in advance! This is an amazing tool but my how fiddly. I didnt think it lent itself well to tinkering. Two - colour in advance! It was a nightmare colouring the individual bits as once the effect is applied, the paths stay, invisible, in their original place. I had to keep switching the screen to view in Outlines just to get anything coloured. Anyway! I hope this will show them the possibilities of such a tool. Here's hoping!

Vote and help me (roll) out!

Hi all, I have entered a competition over at welovefine.com. To celebrate 30 years of Transformers, they are calling for fan art submissions, and the winner ends up on a T shirt. There is a voting system, please do visit and vote for my design if you have time!

I used a brush and ink to draw each transformer's head, then scanned them into Illustrator to tidy them up and make them all the same size. From top left: Megatron, Ratchet, Soundwave, Grimlock, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Arcee, Frenzy, Jazz, Thundercracker, Bumblebee.

This was a LOT of fun to do!

Please vote now! (voting closes 9th April, winner announced on the 22nd April) Thanks!

S is for Santiago

So, this is the next instalment for my literary alphabet, and in a break from tradition, its not G... its S. S for Santiago from The Old Man And The Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. Its not yet finished and though I like it, there are still tweaks and experiments I want to try. I still really hate my F entry, Fagin, so that will need re-visiting at some point.

I have been working on an ink and brush comic which I should be putting up soon, I have nothing but respect for comic strip writers, laying a story out on a page is hard work!