Surprise Dad!

As my Dad doesn't read this blog it's safe to show you all these beer mats I designed as a surprise for his birthday party next week, this lovely ebay shop is printing them for me. I can't wait to scatter them about and surprise my dad! These were made in Adobe Illustrator. I aged the photo using this excellent tutorial you can find here, to achieve a 'real ale' sort of traditional look.

Not dead

Teacher training really scuppered my blogging for a while. Here I am once more, with a just-completed oil painting of a drinks can. I'm pleased with the top of the can and the ring pull, and the lettering isn't bad. Hopefully the time I have this month will let me get some more paintings done, and I can finally realise my goal to enter something into an exhibition.

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!