This image is a play on the idea that everyone has a dark side whether they like it or not, and along with your good side together they make up your personality. If everyone was nice all the time and just went along with what everyone else said and did then the world would be a very boring place.
Maybe your darker side, or your demons, are the competitive, ruthless or creative side…
So now we are waving goodbye to another awful summer, creeping into autumn and looking forward to cold feet and not being able to afford to put our heating on this winter. So with all this optimism, I have produced this lovely illustration inspired by The Smiths song ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’. I’m sure the song conveys different emotions to different people, also depending on moments in life…
This is an idea I’ve had stored away for a while but hadn’t got round to it. It’s based on the lyrics to ‘I’m dying tomorrow’ by Alkaline Trio. It’s a simple song asking ones self about ones life if one has accomplished all the things one wanted to do near the end – one too many ones there one thinks. It sounds quite grim but has a positive spin on the subject…
This was an illustration as requested by my lovely wife Laura, inspired by the lyrics from one of her favourite songs ‘Mailbox Arson’ by Alexisonfire. I originally had two versions of this image, both shown below, but went with the fire-globe idea…
At the moment there are loads of spiders hanging around my house and they have all come from one of those fluffy cotton wool looking spider eggs that I found in my garden about a week ago. Its a fantastic sight to see them all hatching and setting off on their little adventures, their webs catching in the breeze, not know where they are going to end up or whether they will make it further…
Jason Smith aka armadilloboy has set up a fantastic community project in which 20 artists were asked to produce an outline illustration to be included in a charity colouring book for The Great Ormond Street Childrens Hospital. Jason explains on the Oh Gosh Project website http://www.ohgoshproject.com his story behind why he set up the project and gives information on all the artists involved…
Among other various things, I’ve been working on an idea for a logo to use on any illustrations or promotional material. I wanted it to be fairly illustrative looking with an element of my own style in there. Also as my style has changed from gloomy gothic to more dark and playful, I wanted this to reflect in the logo too.
Once I had a font that I liked I started to play around with the letters individually, making sure they looked right and flowed into each other to look like a logo rather than a font. Extra curves and flicks were then added to give character to the lettering.
I’m starting to get excited about stickers and stuff now!!!!
Its been a while since I posted anything, not through laziness, but because I’ve been busy with a bunch of projects that I am super excited about but can’t post right now. So while I am in-between projects I thought I would post up these two little illustrations {Heart Of Skulls} and {Skull Of Hearts} just to keep my website looking a bit fresh.
They are quite simply a heart made of skulls and a skull made of hearts. No fancy deep meanings or hidden messages, just skulls and hearts. Maybe you could read I love skulls out of it but thats pretty obvious in all my illustrations.
Laters.
I have a double page feature in next months Digital Artist magazine, issue 15~ out on 30th December 2010. I am dead excited, can’t wait to see it all glossy and printed!! As an early treat I had a little image and mention in the ‘Next Issue’ section of the current issue (14). It felt like Christmas had come early and I had opened up that Tomy Super Cup football game that I always wanted!!
The brief for this t-shirt was to produce an image in 1 colour with no transparencies or gradients. Usually when working with 4 colour CMYK it is easy to make images stand out with different tints or stroked outlines, but with 1 colour it takes a little more thought. Everything has to be planned.
Edges of shapes that touch each other can become merged and everything starts to look like a blob of colour. In this case I used a stroked line around each section which was then subtracted from the main image to show the background through thus acting as an extra colour, but not an actual colour if you see what I mean?
Also Shading to show darker or lighter areas and gradients can’t be used, so in this image I used half-toning in a starburst shape around the edge of the main image focus to add a gradient look. This tricks the eye into thinking it is fading out at the edges when really its just smaller ink drops. Simple but effective.
The brief for this t-shirt was to produce an image in 1 colour with no transparencies or gradients. Usually when working with 4 colour CMYK it is easy to make images stand out with different tints or stroked outlines, but with 1 colour it takes a little more thought. Everything has to be planned.
Edges of shapes that touch each other can become merged and everything starts to look like a blob of colour. In this case I used a stroked line around each section which was then subtracted from the main image to show the background through thus acting as an extra colour, but not an actual colour if you see what I mean?
Also Shading to show darker or lighter areas and gradients can’t be used, so in this image I used half-toning in a starburst shape around the edge of the main image focus to add a gradient look. This tricks the eye into thinking it is fading out at the edges when really its just smaller ink drops. Simple but effective.
