September is for sketching

Just a collection of some of the quick character sketches, a revived drawing and my new profile avatar from recent weeks.  September is for sketching.  It's fantastic to get back into the swing of character design by just drawing the first characters that pop into your head.  I haven't used any reference for these, so I thank my years of life drawing classes and people-watching for being able to coax out a reasonable degree of character movement and posture!

Someone asked me recently what on earth was up with the dude tying his shoelaces - I think we'd all understand: his little sister has just spent all his credit on rubbish in-app purchases, and he really can't deal with doing the washing up right now, Mum. "Ugh, I'm going to the park with Phil!". Cheer up little guy!

15 for 15 award finalist

Exciting news, guys! I've been selected as one of the finalists in the 15 for 15 award for self-employed businesses.  

I wrote from the heart about the dizzying heights and the real struggles of working as a lone-wolf freelance illustrator, and I'm absolutely chuffed to have been chosen.  

I find that often freelancers and self-employed people are overlooked in business.  I know that I personally have struggled with getting support as I was starting out, and I have written many (ignored) letters to my local council about the benefits of supporting freelancers alongside the multitude of '3 employees +' grants and guidance programs they offer. 

Freelancers, in the creative sectors and further afield, are important - we're those people who know it will be hard, but are passionate enough to follow our dreams.  I'm so impressed that the 15 for 15 award (supported by ipse) is recognising that, and I'm so humbled to have been chosen to represent one of the 15 'brightest and best self-employed people' working in the UK now.

Here's a quick statement from the 15 for 15 team, and their ethos behind the awards-

'Enterprising individuals right across Britain are starting brand new businesses every day.

Most of them aren’t well connected entrepreneurs launching trendy startups and boasting millionaire backers. They are independent, enterprising people making the brave choice to go it alone because they want control of their own destiny.

There are now almost five million self-employed people working in the UK and that number is growing all the time. They are some of the brightest and most independent minds in business and 15 for 15 aims to give the most promising among them a little helping hand.

That’s why we are looking for the independent professionals who are set for big things in 2015. We want to find fifteen independent minds who truly represent the diversity, enterprise and bravery of Britain’s self-employed.'

I'll be heading down to London's LSO St Luke's for the awards ceremony on 19th November, where the fifteen finalists will be guests of honour (eep!) and one overall winner will be chosen.  It's all a bit exciting.  

Wish me luck, buddies!

Festival No 6 // Portmeirion

Following a very busy few months, I ended my Summer of travels at Festival No. 6 at the gorgeous Portmeirion in Wales. I've visited Portmeirion a few times over the years, it's a really unique place - designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of a quirky Italian village. You might recognise it from the famous surreal show The Prisoner, where Portmeirion was used as "the village". Great place for a festival!

The festival itself was really inspiring on a number of levels. The atmosphere was magical (very much helped by the setting!): people in fancy dress, pop-up performances, delicious food, paddle-boarding and a lot of dancing. It was great to just sit out and absorb it all; a good place for people-watching and building up story ideas.

I've definitely got post-festival blues, so I threw myself into capturing the spirit of the festival in the illustration at the top of this post.  It was a good kick-start to get back into work after the break as well. I had been thinking that this illustration was in a slightly different style than my usual work - but I've just been used to illustrating with ink whilst I've been away, as I've not had much of a chance to work fully digitally. It's definitely one of my more colourful pieces, but that does really reflect the environment and what it felt like to be there. It's certainly been one of the illustrations I've enjoyed working on the most.

I managed to steal a few moments from the music to sit and sketch.  It's often quite a shock at how much more you notice when you spend some time just looking at where you are.  I made a point of remembering some of the people I saw around the festival to sketch later as characters (I'll keep you updated!) - there were just too many interesting festival-goers around to draw them all at the time.



So now, for the first time in months - I have no travel plans, but a Summerful of great memories. It really did get to the point where I was feeling frustrated at not having the time to work (is that bad?), so I'm feeling content at having the foreseeable future to focus back down on my career, and use all that inspiration I've been storing up. I'll keep you posted!

Summer // Cornwall

So this summer I decided to go back to my homestead and stay with my family in Cornwall for a few months.  Sometimes a change of pace and scenery is exactly the remedy to kick-start your inspiration and motivation, especially just after finishing a big book project.  Cornwall holds a big piece of my heart, and being able to spend most of my days by the roaring sea, or at least outside rather than basking in computer glow was refreshing.

I continued to work whilst I was staying South, but allowed myself time out to explore and adventure.  I visited a lot of castles and cliff faces, and indulged in just watching the mood of the sky and sea change and shift. Cornwall's fantastic for that connection to heritage and wild nature, and that's been really inspiring a graphic novel I've started work on, as well as a new picture book story.  

A lot of these photos were quick snapshots of things which sparked ideas, or had the potential to be useful as reference or to re-visit for inspiration in the future.  That ancient, engraved church wall in Launceston was beautiful, the scene of multi-coloured swimmers racing into the sea was unusual, and the colours and patterns in those leaves burst out.  It's a collection of pre-ideas and captured shards of inspiration.

Often it seems like taking time out is wasted time when you're freelance.  I know I personally find it hard to switch off from work-mode a lot (in fact, it's 22:30 now and I really shouldn't be working!), but to generate great ideas your mind needs some space.  Going for a walk or a little adventure is perfect for riling up that inspiration - it's not slacking off, it's feeding your creativity.  Allow yourself some time off, freelancers!

The Lavender Blue Dress at Edinburgh Book Festival

On August 10th there was a brilliant event at Edinburgh International Book Festival for my new picture book with Aidan Moffat: The Lavender Blue Dress.  

The room was packed as Aidan performed the lyrical, rhyming story and spoke about the release of the book this October.  Aidan's a brilliant musician (famously from Arab Strap), so the crowd was a good mix of fans of his work as well as parents and kids excited about the picture book.

The Lavender Blue Dress story is about a young girl called Mabel, who wishes (but never expects) she could have a dress for the school Christmas ball.  There's a lot of focus on handmaking and creating as a family, so as a great touch to the book there's a design-your-own dress for Mabel hidden in the jacket-flap on the hardback editions.  We thought it would be great to have a taster for this at the event, so the kids could design their own dresses for Mabel and show Aidan!

These are some of my favourite dress designs.  There were some serious budding fashion designers around, I'd wear all of those! I always love seeing kids interact with my books or illustrations, so it's really wonderful and humbling to see so many people engaged with the project.  Hoping to see more when the book's out in the wild!


Thanks very much to Cargo and Aidan/Godsal for the photos.

Art Material Review - Derwent Inktense Pencils

I always love to experiment with new art materials, and this week Derwent Pencils were kind enough to offer me a set of their Inktense pencils to try out.  Exciting!



Yes, they do look like watercolour pencils - but honestly, there's a big difference.  The core of the Inktense pencils are, as the name suggests, ink; which means you get this gorgeous, bright quality to the tones when you use them with water.  One of the main benefits I found was that once they're 'activated' with water and left to dry they're permanent - which is brilliant for base colouring and ink linework over the top, no bleed whatsoever.

Stage by stage: Pencil, activated pencil and ink linework overlay.

Another massive benefit of this is that the permanence means that you can use the pencils with water to paint onto cotton or silk.  That opens up a whole wealth of uses, especially if you're a professional creative - I'm definitely going to look into creating some hand-painted silk scarves or illustrated tote bags to whip up with the sewing machine.

The pencils are easy to use for both professional finished work or quick sketches.  They'd also be great for adding a quick splash of colour to storyboards or concept designs.

Single Inktense pencil sketch and after activation with water and paintbrush.

There's a huge range of colours available, and I'd definitely like to try more than the starter pack I received; but they're easily blendable and with a little creativity there aren't many shades you can't produce.

Stage by stage: 2B pencil sketch, colouring with Inktense pencils, activation and Ink pen overlay.

To be honest I don't often find the time to use paintbrushes and water with my sketches - with tight deadlines I often opt for digital colouring, but I do think it adds something special to a sketch and you can end up with an image you didn't expect - which can be great for the ol' inspiration.  I'd say they're definitely worth choosing over watercolour pencils, if only for the permanence aspect - that's the thing that really impressed me, it's just such a practical quality if you're looking to use ink linework, overpainting or to experiment with textile uses.

If you'd like to grab yourself a pack, or have a look at the full range of Derwent products (the graphitint pencils and inktense blocks look really interesting!) head to www.pencils.co.uk 

Obviously this was only a test over a few days, so I'll keep this post updated as I use them in the future to comment on their durability, usability and any other elements that crop up with more frequent use! 

What Katy Did cover illustration for Egmont

Back in November I was asked to illustrate the cover of Egmont's new Heritage edition of What Katy Did.
It was one of those dream commissions which just flows so easily from sketch, to approval, to final artwork.  It was a real joy to work on, and I'm so pleased with how it's turned out.



I focused on the iconic swing scene from the book, so there's that instant communication of who and what the story's about.  We chose to stick with sketch 3, but take the house and windmill from sketch four - which worked well compositionally and had a really nice depth to it.

I chose a warm colour scheme, evoking one of those hazy Summer days.  The binding of the book looks absolutely gorgeous with the colours of the illustration, so I'm chuffed. I love the gold on the binding!

Egmont were brilliant to work with, and hopefully I'll get to collaborate with them again at some point!  The book looks lovely, and I was really impressed with the quality of the production.  Definitely keep an eye out for these and the rest of the Heritage series in shops soon.  

What Katy Did is officially released October 9th! I'll give you a shout when it's available!

New Norwegian Wood Prints

New in! These Norwegian Wood posters have just arrived in my online shop here.

I illustrated this for the release of the film adaptation of Murakami's Norwegian Wood, and ended up as a finalist in the poster competition.  Had a great little exhibition at the Curzon cinema (and I danced next to Tony Leung at the premiere party, what?!). This illustration has had a surge of re-popularity after being featured on the Murakami facebook page recently.  Pretty chuffed, I love Murakami's work (although The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is my favourite so far!).

These lovely prints arrived today!

These yummy prints arrived today!  They're available in my online shop here.  I'm really happy with the prints, the colours are gorgeous and the paper is lovely (200gsm and slightly textured!). Nice, nice, nice.

Dive!

 It's Summer! Yes! I've been really getting back into my illustration work for pleasure after tying up the last loose ends from 'The Lavender Blue Dress' book project (which was a long and brilliant commission!). Spending Summer by the sea has definitely been inspiring, and having a week off can really help reset the ol' creativity.  I wanted to have fun creating a simple illustration, and to really focus on movement - and with the hot, humid weather we've been having lately an illustration of a cooling dive into the ocean seemed perfect.

I started with a loose pencil sketch (very, very loose!) and jumped straight into working with ink brush pen and traditional ink and paintbrush to create the fluid looking linework.  I then scanned the artwork at a high resolution and worked up the colouring on Photoshop with custom brushes and watercolour textures.  It's one of my favourite ways to work quickly as there's so much potential to switch colours around and make easy adjustments.

I'm considering making a small print run of these available (and potentially have the original artwork up for grabs in my shop), so give me a shout if you'd be interested!

Shingeki no Kyojin - Attack on Titan illustration

Hi guys!

This is actually a bit of an oldie, but I've just realised I didn't upload it when I finished it way back in March.  
A few of you have probably heard of Attack on Titan, and boy did I get hooked on the show - mysterious walls, giant loopy-faced titans that eat people, secret keys and gravity defying battles? - Oh yeah.

I haven't read the manga, and I'll admit that I'm veeery picky when it comes to manga art styles - but I'm trying to not let that put me off some really great stories, so if you've got any recommendations go ahead.

I'm not usually one to do fan art (aside from a couple of X-files ones, Twin Peaks and an Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon one which has been in production for a while...), but I had a spare few days and thought this would be really good to try out in my downtime as it's full of dynamic movement and I could play my own style take on the characters.

I spent some time looking at photos of aerial acrobatics to get the mid-air movement looking right in the sketches and worked it up from there in Photoshop.  As you can see the titans started out with some very silly sketched faces (well, they do look pretty silly anyway), and in general the whole piece edged towards a much happier version than the super-gore and violence of the show.  I like to think of it as one of those brief moments where everything was sort of okay...

Summer escape

 So I took the leap to spend Summertime by the seaside and really re-boot my creativity after a very long (but brilliant) book project working on The Lavender Blue Dress.
Sometimes it really helps just to force yourself to take a break and reasess your portfolio, goals and general working practice.  I'll hopefully have a far more succinct and meatier portfolio by the end of it, that's the plan anyway - you can never stop pushing your work and sometimes you just have to be ruthless!

Above is just a quick Summertime sketch to get me back into the swing of things - it's certainly been that sort of a week! I'll be back up to speed with my blogging soon, so keep an eye out for more new work!