Prioritising.

One of the key skills of successful freelance illustrator is the ability to prioritise, to be able to use one’s time wisely and effectively. After all, time is money.

Which makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing up at this time in the morning after having spent the last four hours or so creating the three pieces of artwork you see below, which are intended for my little sister to take into school tomorrow and give away to her friends (for free!(apparently eight year-olds don’t have money)). Still, I’ve been getting a little rusty at the traditional painting what with having been using Photoshop for long, and it felt nice to have a break from the computer in favour of drawing inks and foul smelling masking fluid.

I’m rather pleased with how the barn owl turned out actually. 🙂

Airships of Oberon

I recently completed some work for a lovely chap who’s putting together a new Steampunk-themed board game called “Airships of Oberon”.

I was originally commissioned to complete the above six card illustrations, which each represent an individual element in the game, from left to right: Autumn, Animal, Wind, Water, Metal and Grass.

After that, I was given the job of producing the box cover art for the game, based on a pretty complex brief. It had to include:

  • A happy couple in a steampunk Edwardian street
  • Airships flying overhead.
  • A steam-powered car or two
  • Clockwork dragons circling a tower in the distance.
  • Bright, happy colours. 

I’m still getting to grips with the best way to compose these complicated fantasy images with so much stuff going on, but myself and the client were both happy with how it turned out. Now, back to the last stretch of university work.

Site Redesign Complete!… for now.

Well, it took a wee bit longer than I anticipated but I’m rather pleased to say that my website redesign is (at least for the moment) complete!

I’m not entirely sure on the success of the graphic design but I am at least pleased that the site is now pretty damn consistent. I’ve also stripped away the old chaff that google analytics informed me nobody ever visited, so goodbye to the tutorials, links and downloads sections of the site.

In their place is a shiny new sketchbook section of the site, which features  lot of sketches (mainly faces and airships as it happens) that have never been on public display before! Go check it out here, I mean come on, if you’re on this site at all you have time to spare don’t you.

I’ve also been adding a few things to the shop section, since I have student loans to pay off. I’ve got a few more bits to do yet but I’ll have even more stuff available soon.

In other news, I’ve been busy working on my new kid’s book: Norman’s Rocket. Here’s some rocket based sketches from that to have a look at:

Norman’s Head.

Thought I’d share this, it’s Norman mark 2. With the intention of him having less creepy eyes. This image is actually pages 19 and 20 from the book I’m working on.

Also, those who’ve been to this blog before may notice that it’s changed slightly. There’s more orange involved for starters. Well, that’s part of a bigger redesign of my entire site which I plan to have finished in the next few days. I’m excited! Someone has to be.

Norman’s Rocket

I’ve almost finished Uni. what a terrifying thought. Apparently I have ten weeks left to prepare myself and my portfolio for the big bad real world, which is… nice.

So having just finished the penultimate university project of life I think now is perhaps a good time to show you the stuff I’ve spent the last few weeks on:

These are all illustrations from my latest creative endeavour a children’s picture book entitled “Norman’s Rocket”. The title was inspired by the story of Noah’s Ark, though the story itself has very little in common with its inspiration. It’s essentially very stupid and involves vegetables. Also, it rhymes.

“Prince Norman was a beastly child
loud and rude and very wild.
In fact dear reader I can bet,
a more spoilt child you’ve never met”…

More stuff coming up soon.

Adios Semester 1!

The time has come for me to wave a worried goodbye to the fist half of my final year of higher education. The big bad world looms. To distract myself from the impending end I shall write blog posts and draw pictures.

The end of year exhibition was frantic to set up, and lots of fun to view. I was somewhat less organised than almost everyone else, which you can see if you look at the images in this blog post from comrade Matt McKinley. it was great to see everyone’s work together presented so well, I can only regret that I lowered the tone of the exhibition with a display that kept falling off the wall. Alas, next time I hall refrain from using double sided tape.

Blog posts with no pictures are boring. Here’s a picture I did:

It’s one of my final illustrations for this recently deceased semester, being a scene from David Mitchell’s (not that one, the writer) novel cloud Atlas. I don’t want to give too much away, since I suggest everyone read the book, which is excellent, preferably before you watch the film due out next year.

More pictures and couple of walk-throughs to come soon!