Your creative ticket
Your creative ticket
AOB posts – so unique they just don’t fit and refuse to be categorised!
Art exhibition catalogue design When artist David Harkins prepared to open his new show The Small Hours at The Onion Garden in Victoria, London, he asked me to help design a print‑ready exhibition catalogue price list. There were simply too many lines to fit into a standard Word document while keeping the twelve works from …
Four prehistoric animals in coloured pencil A scientific beginning This childhood archive artwork features four prehistoric animals, including a dinosaur. The dinosaur is probably Tyrannosaurus rex, given the small forearms. The stripy tail may not (or may) be scientifically accurate. What is interesting and evidence of my great passion for dinosaurs is that this quartet …
Digital dinosaur illustration with skin texture experimentation This digital illustration piece evolved as a tangential work from another project, leading to experimentation with Photoshop texture brushes. The realistic skin rendering of this dinosaur was and enjoyable creative deviation. Initial sketch I had the idea for a wildly alternative nativity scene whilst working on the DinoBunny …
Digital watercolour jackdaw and tomato sketch This digital watercolour piece is a quick experiment with Photoshop brushes. I made a pencil sketch one lunchtime, when I dropped part of my meal—a cherry tomato. An inquisitive jackdaw took the opportunity to also grab a snack. Initial sketch I saw the jackdaw observing me, unfazed by my …
For children’s books Visiting Brighton’s Phoenix Art Space Open Studios this weekend (May 11th 2024) reminded me of the workshop I attended there in 2016, Drawing Fantastical Characters for Children’s Books with Chris Gilvan-Cartwright. The sessions explored ways of creating and developing characters in an experimental, playful and intuitive way. Consequences warm-up We warmed up …
A herd of regal real creatures This project was to create a set of unicorn characters to appeal to children with an emphasis on a degree of realism. These are what real unicorns look like. Children’s bedroom decorated in pink with three pink unicorn framed arworks, Snow, Pink and Candy Creative process I used Adobe …
Vector art for artists’ sake This piece was an assignment for my Digital Illustration Diploma. The challenge was “Vector art” using Adobe Illustrator software. Digital perspective I focussed on the implementation of perspective, revisiting my engineering and technical drawing background. Rather than creating from scratch I brought in some “off-the-shelf” art to hang in this …
The Red Max fan art
Traditional painting exercise I used traditional watercolour and brushes to brush up on the process that a child may use to draw their favourite characters. I selected a minor player in the Kitten Mews series of picture books that are in development. The elephant’s Gerald, who will have a sibling (also an elephant FYI, as …
If I’m immersed and emotionally engaged with the work, the results will have more chances of engaging the customer and the audience as well. If I’m just going through the motions, then the work itself will probably come across as dry and mechanical. And so the key that unlocks engagement always comes down to finding that vehicle which allows empathy to become passion and flow out as creativity and conversation.
