Sketchbook Pages So Far

These are the pages from my sketchbook so far; most of them are ideas at the moment as I like to plan out all my illustrations before I start them.

Inspiration for Major Project

The last time I went home for the weekend I found all my old books of word searches and puzzles that I had made when I was a child. I used to make these all the time and tried to make my brothers and sister do them! I think this has been the main catalyst for the project as I realised then, how much I enjoy making things for other peoples to do. As well as this I have been looking at Anorak magazine; I love the variety of illustrators they use to create it, as well as the content, colouring and the page layouts. I also found a book that I absolutely loved when I was a child (Simple things to make and do); I think I must have made everything in it. I still look through it all the time and it has given me so many ideas for this project.

Page Layouts for Magazine

I have stuck my page layouts on my wall to help me visualise the layout of the magazine better. Doing this has really helped me hone my ideas; I stick up post it notes of my ideas as well as all my work as I do it. In time I will make a proper layout on InDesign but for now this has helped get the ball rolling.

Major Project Initial Idea

For my Major Project I will be making an educational activity magazine for children which is primarily illustration based. The magazine's main themes are concerned with nature, places, animals and birds etc, whilst incorporating lots of fun activities including wordsearches, mazes, colouring in, making activities and stories, as well as many more. I would love to make more than one issue but due to the time scale I'm not sure if this will be feasible. However, after lots of deliberating I have decided on using the theme of 'animals' for this issue (whether or not I make more), as children love them, and I love drawing them.

I have done a fair bit of research into kids magazines around at the moment, finding that most of them are television or film based, eg. CBeebies, Toy Story, Ben 10 etc. They tend to be printed on glossy paper, and don't seem to include many illustrations, there main delivery method being photography and graphic based work. There is also a lot of emphasis on the free gift! The price range seems to vary between about 2 and 3 pounds.

After looking at the number of pages in magazines, I have decided to start with 32, and if I have time I will increase it to 48. The number of pages needs to be divisible between 8 and 16 for printing. As for paper, I want to use a thick paper, a bit like the paper used in Anorak magazine. It has a lovely feel to it, perfect for colouring as it won't rip easily. Although it will cost more to produce, the overall aesthetic will be a lot nicer.

Violet

This is a painting I have just been commissioned to do. I was given a small photo of a granddaughter wearing swimming goggles and a hat, and asked to paint her. It was a challenge to do, as I always have difficulty with faces and the skin tone could be better, but I think I am happy with the final piece, her Grandad is pleased with it!

Design A Character Competition

I entered a competition a few months ago to design a character. The competition was held by The Lightbox gallery in Woking, this was the picture I entered, and I found out yesterday that I won!! It was judged by John Huddy, who is co-founder of Illustration Cupboard, a gallery in London. I'm really pleased, so thought I would post up Stan for you all to see.

Silent Auction December 2010

To fundraise for our final year show in London we held a Silent Auction at Uni, and raised £1250!! These are my images I put into the auction and I'm pleased to say I sold them all :) The three christmas cards in the bottom left of the box are the ones I made. It was a huge success, so thanks to everyone that came and won!!

 

Church's Shoes

As well as illustrating the song for my Uni project, I also did some shoe illustrations for a girl on BA fashion to use in a magazine she made. I really enjoyed doing these, as it was something that I've never done before and was experimenting with pattern and watercolour. I'm really pleased with the outcomes, as soon as I get the layouts I will post them up so you can see them in context. 

Litte Yellow Spider Book

These are my final images for the song, they are all done in pen and watercolour and I've included all the lyrics in the images. They are all in order so should make sense but if you listen to the song at the same time it makes them better. For submitting them I made them into a book. Hope you like them!

Little Yellow Spider First Drawings

These are the first drawings I did for the Negotiated Practice Unit where I chose to illustrate a song called  'Little Yellow Spider' by Devendra Banhart. I have always loved the song, and when the D&AD brief came up, and the brief was to illustrate a song I thought it would be brilliant . Most of the verses are about animals, for example a dancing crab and a snapping turtle. I have been doing a lot of drawing with pattern lately, so here are the first lot of drawings.

A Recipe For . . .

For our final year at university we are fundraising for our end of year show which will be held in London, and to do this we are making a funky little magazine called A Recipe For . . .  in which lots of amazing illustrators on my course will be creating a recipe. We are hoping to sell lots of copies and raise lots of money! I have tied mine into the nautical nonsense brief (see below) as I can't get octopi out of my head. Here is my recipe . . . 

Nautical Nonsense

This is some work I have made for the This Is... competition which (if chosen) will be exhibited at Sixty Million Postcards in Bournemouth. The theme this month is Nautical Nonsense so for this I have been looking at seaside pop art, the bright colours of arcade games, candy floss, lolly pops, ice creams and flashing lights all mixed in with the traditional seaside stuff! The whole image is the landscape one, but as it has to be submitted portrait I've split it in two and made two illustrations!

Day trip to the Tank Museum

As we are now in the final year of uni I think it is time to get the regular updates going again! I've chosen to do my project on war again, so here are a few things I have done in the past week to get my creative juices flowing.

I went to the Tank Museum in Bovington on Thursday and drew all the symbols on the different tanks. I like the way they all seem to have their own identity, making them all different, not just ordinary tanks, and then I put them all into Photoshop to make one big tank!

My topic is still very broad at the moment but I like the idea of looking at the identity of soldiers, I'm hoping I will make or see something that will stimulate something amazing :)