When one show closes, another one opens...

The University of Lincoln degree show went off without a hitch. It was really fun seeing all my classmates' work in one place...so many talented people! 

The show closed last week, leaving us all to panic about dealing with adult life. However, when one door closes, another opens, and as it happens this door leads to a new show!

This exhibition takes place in my home town of Barnard Castle, oop North in County Durham. I'm sharing a brand new gallery space showcasing young local artists, courtesy of the very generous Alan Jenkins, who is responsible for donating and organising the space. It's a little local thing, but if by any chance you're in the area you should go check it out!

Blumfeld stage plan // Photoshop // ~30 hours

London Stories

London Stories // gouache on mountboard // ~100 hours

It took seven months to get this finished but AHA! Started this for a design competition with the theme 'London Stories', but it sort of got out of hand and I ended up filling an A1-height space with all the London-related stories and landmarks I could think of.

Editorials

Noise Pollution // Photoshop // ~5 hours

Scientists Able To Read People's Minds // gouache on mountboard //~2 hours

In situ

Sun, Sea, Sand and Sniffles // Photoshop // ~6 hours

And in situ again

What A Carve Up

What A Carve Up cover // gouache and digital // ~30 hours

A cover design for the Penguin edition of the Jonathan Coe novel What A Carve Up, which is not the sort of book I'd usually pick up but I actually really liked it. Anyway, I picked up on the themes of obsession, interconnectivity and the media for this setup. The type is not the best it could be but the paintings came out great.

XL Recordings work [EPILEPSY WARNING: FLASHING GIF]

Passion From Birth poster//Photoshop//~7 hours

This is really my first foray into the more graphic-y end of the illustration spectrum. The brief was to create a poster and an internet illustration depicting one of a list of scenes from music history, for the record company XL. I chose to show rapper MIA's performance at the Grammys whilst 9 months pregnant. MIA is someone I admire a lot, musically, politically and artistically (her glitched Myspace-y graphic style is totally unlike mine but really cool), so I had a lot of fun with this one, plus I made my first animated gif!

Passion From Birth gif // Photoshop // ~3 hours

Some T-shirt graphics!

Some t-shirts, themed around the idea of deep space, for Topman (sort of). Original artwork under the cut.

The first inklings of my final major project :D

These sketches represent the first steps in an ongoing quest to find a full cast's worth of good character designs before the end of the month. These are the protagonists for 2/4 of the short stories I'll be doing; I still have to do Dionysus and whoever's going to be the focus of the final story, probably the Pleiades.

23

23//gouache on mountboard//~8 hours
Death of Caesar//mixed media (gouache on mountboard, copic, and digital)//~35 hours

My spread for our graduation book. We were each given a number to work with. Obviously mine was 23. I seized almost immediately on two things: there are 23 chromosomes in the human body and Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times. That gave me the chance for one big, dramatic scene (though size and time constraints cut it down a bit) to show off my painting and character work, and one page that was a bit more graphic-y, which I think turned out pretty well. Also, typography.

Nino and Nina finished foldout spread

Foldout page for Nino And Nina//gouache on mountboard//4 days

So I guess I forgot to upload this before, because I left the scan on the university mac instead of on my pen drive. Oh well.

I had no idea how this would turn out, and this is nothing like the (very vague) image I had in my head, which was going to go from realism to scratchy ink drawings, but I think this works better to depict a fever dream. The idea of making the deep dark woods graffiti crawl out of the walls was a) a turning point in figuring out how to get a smooth transition and b) a great opportunity to play with graffiti-style painting, which as the New Scientist piece proved, is REALLY FUN.

By the way, the owls over the door are copied from a delightfully glaring design that my classmate Luke did in first year, and the mushrooms are adapted from an Infected Mushroom album cover. Everything else is entirely my own (including the horrific tree...yeah.)

Heart of Darkness illustrations

I've just wrapped up work on four illustrations for the Folio Society/House of Illustration competition, the brief for which was three interior illustrations and a cover design. They still need some tweaking and cropping, but BEHOLD!

Cover//gouache on coloured mountboard//~10 hours

"He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of his hands outwards, resembled an idol"//gouache on coloured mountboard//~25 hours

"A black figure stood, strode on long black legs, waving long black arms, across the glow."// gouache on coloured mountboard // ~10 hours

"Only the barbarous and superb woman did not flinch, and stretched tragically her bare arms after us over the sombre and glittering river.” // gouache on coloured mountboard // ~50 hours

 So these are winging their merry way to the Folio Society tomorrow. Wish me luck!