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!!!!
While on a trip to Paris last year I stumbled upon a small toy shop along a small backstreet. Living amongst the fantastic collection of all kinds of old and new toys I found a selection of horror inspired wind up toys. I picked up the Dracula and Skeleton guys and handed them to the friendly Parisian toymaster. Aswell as finding these gems in this little shop, I also managed to have a small but 100% French conversation with the shop keeper. Très bon.
So this is my illustration inspired by these rather snappily dressed little wind up guys. Enjoy, mercy beaucoup.
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.
Over at the Illustration Rally website Natsuki Otani, who is originally from Tokyo, has set up a new community project to spread awareness of the Japan Tsunami Appeal, and promote positive thinking. The project is open for anyone to submit illustrations that convey hope unity and love, in an effort to help and show Japan how much the world is thinking of all the people affected by the terrible disaster.
Here are the links to the Illustration Rally website and charities involved:
http://illustrationrally.blogspot.com
British Red Cross
American Red Cross
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Yahoo Japan! Charity
Also and Lady Gaga designed charity band for Japan, you can buy it here for $5
Above is my illustration contribution to the project. ~ Thanks for reading.
Burst Magazine is an online based magazine featuring artwork from up and coming creatives giving their art exposure to a wide audience. The current issue is based around the theme of ‘Love‘ and was aptly released on 14th February.
The magazine features a range of work from 21 creatives with a good range of different illustration styles, including my illustration “The things we do for love” depicting a cat bring you a gift of a dead bird to show its love for you.
There are a selection of these online style magazines around which offer artists trying to get their work about a chance of exposure. Check it out at http://www.burstmagazine.co.uk and download or view the magazine for FREE!
Clowns, some people like them, most people hate them. Although the intentions of clowns are to entertain and make people laugh by ‘clowning’ around with balloons, water and custard pies, there is a more sinister side to clowning. Maybe it’s quite innocent and it’s just because you can’t tell who’s behind all that smiley but very creepy make-up, or maybe they are failed bitter entertainers who want to release their anger and frustration by scaring the crap out of kids.
I don’t have ‘coulrophobia’ – the fear of clowns, yes it’s an authentic medical condition. I just think they look stupid and I don’t get any pleasure out of watching someone in mental make-up blowing up odd shaped balloons or jumping about in massive shoes while i’m trying to eat a hamburger and side of chicken nuggets. But they do make brilliant bad guys in films.
The worst for me is ‘Punch & Judy‘. I know it’s an English seaside tradition, but just hearing the horrible noise of Mr Punch shouting “That’s the way to do it!” from half a mile away down the beach is enough to send me fleeing in the opposite direction to the nearest crappy souvenir shop to buy a stick of rock and t-shirt about how I hate seagulls.
Online translators are strange little things, sometimes useful and sometimes just pure comedy. They never seem to get it completely right, so I thought for the title of this illustration ‘Amphibiens de mort’ which what I was trying to translate into French from ‘Amphibians of death’, I would try a few different ones and pick the most common. Nope. I ended up with different translations for each one I tried! So I appologise to any French people that may stumble across this as the title may not make sense, but then again the illustration probably doesn’t either.
One way of passing a few hours is typing phrase into a translator, converting it to a language you have never even heard of, then translate your result back in to English and see how close it matches. Most of the time you get some kind of bizarre phrase that will surely invoke some kind of fog-horn laugh.
So go hunt one down and have fun!
Wouldn’t it be great if for just one day giant spiders or ants ran riot on the earth. If all the little things people are afraid of suddenly got massive and chased everyone about like in movies. Maybe the dinosaurs could come back for a daytrip and cause chaos everywhere, raptors could chase people about, terradactyls could swoop down and carry people about for a bit, then just drop them in a river somewhere or something. It would be great, just a day of movie like mayhem – then at the end of the day everything disappears and everyone wakes up the next day thinking, “wow, that was cool”.
If not scary things, what about giant grasshoppers, or even ladybirds or something? Those things that are a harmless but a little unpredictable? They are fun to watch but as soon as they jump or start flying, then you get a little unsettled and make that involuntary weird noise that sounds a bit like ‘iiiiieeeeghh’. Just one day, then everything is fine? Nobody has to get hurt, just freaked out for 24 hours?
Massive moths?
Due to the flu, miserable weather, the shock of my bank balance and the christmas chocolate I’ve had to get through, it’s been a slow start to the new year. But now I’ve pretty much kicked the sniffles into touch and wrapped the excess chocolate up for peoples gifts for next christmas, so now I can get back to some illustrations.
This image was inspired by my cat Tilly, who is sat on my lap as I type making it a bit awkward and causing me to hit the keys like a robot. It is called “For Love” – using the idea that cats like leaving dead thing in your house when you return to show their love for you. A gift you could say, but a dead gift. Luckily Tilly has not brought us any dead items yet, just had the odd spider casualty. She does make a mental chimp sound when she getting ready to chase birds and squirrels though, that’s always entertaining!
I was recently lucky to be asked to submit some artwork for a feature in the Digital Artist Magazine. The issue was released just in time for the new year so its a great start for 2011 for me. The feature is about how my work has progressed to its current style, from simple vector images to a more detailed illustration style. I hope to further develop this style this year and see where it takes me.
Its a great motivational boost for me as there are so many artists/illustrators out there, its nice to see some people actually liking and taking an interest in my work. Many thanks to April Madden at Digital Artist for the great opportunity.
Happy New Year everyone!!!
I’ve been hit with this christmas flu bug virus thingy like most of the country, so this image speaks for itself really. Like everyone else I thought it would be nice to relax a bit over christmas, enjoy a few drinks with friends and family, then be nice and refreshed for the new year. But no. I’ve spent as much money on christmas presents as I have on cough medicines and paracetamols.
Only four more days until new years eve. fingers crossed I can shift this pesky bug by then, happy flu-ing people!!!
