Egg

Yesterday was the launch of this years 'The Big Egg Hunt'

An event to raise money and awareness for the charity  Action For Children.

All The eggs are on display in covent garden  until the 17th of february before touring the country.

Check the dates here 

monthly update

Below are some posts of some of the work I have been up to over the last month. There will be a new website and blog coming soon but in the meantime I plan on just posting work up at the end/start of  every month. so have a good febraury and more soon.

The Royal London Hospital

Recently finished working on some artwork created with Spencer Wilson for the  The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. The work was commissioned by Vital Arts and the work was for the Childrens out patients area.

The idea was that on different walls  there would be parts of the same parade all heading to the main waiting areas. The characters would all be carrying letter forms that would come together to form a positive piece of typography in the waiting area.

Because of the nature of the hospital, how it is used etc the wallpaper is coated. The job was beautifully printed and installed by Omni. Better photos of the whole space will  be taken soon.

The Big Egg Hunt

I was asked by the charity Action for Children to paint an egg for this years Big Egg Hunt.

my Idea was a simple one to  cover the egg in explorers, looking , hunting for something.

The use of one colour, blue against the white was influenced by its use throughout history in the decorative arts from around the world.  The design also had to work technically. The egg will be place outside later this year in a UK city and therefore will be covered in a lacquer. This meant my usual choice of mediums, paper pencil where not suitable. It was a good exercise in translating my work onto an object via paint, whilst trying to keep in as crude and true to the edges made when I cut paper.

More on this project once the event launches around easter.

Food and Wine

Illustration for Food and Wine magazine. The article was about someone eating only italian food for 5 days straight in NewYork. My initial rough wasn't a strong concept but I just wanted to try and get the joy that was in the writing across- being surrounded by and enjoying all  the food that was on offer... 

                                             

After the feedback- something more conceptual was needed.The second drawing was trying to get the 5 day part in but felt very clunky and forced , hanging onto a drawing i liked but didn't work......

so this was abandoned for the simple , bold approach. My idea of a face made from pasta felt  like a bad joke,like  a pasta image when you are at play school, maybe not one of my better ideas but once rendered  it, it started to workout ok ......

But for the final  image using typography /spaghetti /days of the week was used.

This is pretty far out of my remit of work / visual language, but its always interesting where commissions take you

Telegraph

Job for The Telegraph about trying to get children ready for a winter walk and the importance of dressing them correctly

New York Times

I spent last week working on a nice job for the New York Times Sunday Review. The job was to illustrate 6 poems  based on the mayan calendars prediction for the end of the world ( This friday).

I had to cover all the poems but try to make them work as a whole. There was a print and web format to consider too. Below is the final spread for the paper and click here to see the online version.

The first two roughs were wrong- I thought the image would be a whole page without the type. I tried  to show six moments that would feel as though they were from the same story

.....and in this one I tried to combine all six poems into one illustration

Here are two more roughs once i found out that the image had to include the type.

I also tried a version that  worked more with the language of mayan pattern- using a diamond shape that represents the universe- as the central point for the image to grow out from.

The Loop

Two illustrations for 'The Loop' a  new quarterly publication aimed at 8-13 year olds

available to buy  here

Geo Wissen

4  new editorial illustrations for Geo Wissen Magazine on the theme of the menopause

Editorial

Heres a couple of recent editorial illustrations. They are more involved images than I would usually try to make for editorial but on both jobs, this multi narrative aspect was needed rather than a simple solution. The top one is for a great piece written by Robert Andrew Powell for Harpers. It's about  Seattle Library and what he witnessed, became part of whilst spending some time there trying to write. 

I tried to get various scenarios, characters mentoned in the copy and a sense of the architecture, moving through the different floors.

The bottom illustration is for HBR magazine. the article is about the flexibility within a bartering system compared to a fixed price, It uses a market in Turkey as a case study. It was important for this image to have a busy feel but i'm not sure this completely works. Its a fine line between it feeling busy and clumsy/confused in its construction. 

Animation Pitch

I did these still images for an animation pitch for a cancer charity. The three images depict three parts in the script- the moment of someone dying, a fun run, and the city landscape.They are too heavy on the print texture for my liking but that was part of the clients reference. Unfortunately  I didnt get the job

we are all doomed

Heres a quick drawing in honour of todays news that a 'song' by will.i.am  is the first to be broadcast from Mars. A thoroughly depressing feat by mankind

Todays New York Times

Illustration in todays  New York Times

New York Times

Just finished a quick turn around job for  The New York Times. It will be in this sundays dialogue section. I'll post the whole image then but in the meantime heres a taster.

Employee benefits magazine

Heres a recent illustration for employee benefits magazine.

The fact i often draw the back of figures , often looking off into some horizon has been mentioned before.

But with this job I wanted to pick up on an indirect link  to an earlier observation drawing of a man looking out of a  hospital window....

and then the following woodcut ( which is still in progress).

At the moment  it feels like my drawing and printmaking is  aesthetically moving further away from my illustration work, but through this job is was nice to see how it still informs it. Whilst obvious, its good to validate that play, making work for ones self can still feed the commisioned work.

Portfolio update

My portfolio has been updated by my agent Heart
you can check it out here.

Characters

Heres some character designs that i recently did for a project that i cant talk about for legal reasons. However these characters didnt end up being used

Recent Editorials

Heres a recent selection of editorials from the last couple of months. I was lucky enough to work on a few  narrative pieces for the excellent Prospect Magazine. The one here was called 'Another Russian Tale ' by Roberto Bolano

Heres another recent editorial piece, this time for Institional Investor

The following two where for St Kids Magazine . The piece was on the history, and modern day use of The Museum of Childhood by its local community

Water animation montage

Earlier this year I worked on an animation project. My artwork was beautifully animated by Layla  over at Trunk . i cant say  much  more than that fro now as its not out until september.
Unitl then here is a montage

New York Times

Its been a while since any blog posts so over the next week ill try to do a few catch up posts, showing the recent work I have been up to.
Here is the most recent, an editorial piece which appeared in last sundays New York Times for fathers day.