Some Work In Print

It has been too long since I last updated anything here. I've got round to photographic a few illustrations that I have in various magazines, it's always nice to see work in context.

From the Guardian Weekend magazine, published in March.

A lifestyle magazine called Only Magazine, designed by a nice agency in Germany. This is a map of the Istrian coastal peninsula of Croatia.

A couple of images in BA Highlife magazine's May issue. One is a short piece written by Agynses Deyn the other a map of the forthcoming Tour De France routes in Yorkshire.

Estate agents KFH's magazine Completely London. I drew a typographic poster that was then photographed for the magazine.

Finally some portraits for Town Magazine, winter 2014.

Independent New Review - Lloyd Cole

I while ago I was asked to produce a full page illustration for the Independent newspaper's Sunday magazine. The editorial was a piece written by musician Lloyd Cole. It was a brief history of his musical career offering an insight to his writing techniques and how these have developed over time. The art director was keen that the illustration conveyed a sense of time and narrative and wanted the image to be sectioned, almost like a comic. I began by breaking the story down into 3 or 4 small chronological sections. It was important to include a portait of Lloyd as many readers may not be familiar with what he looks like. An alternative idea that I had was to show a pile of his records, top-down perspective. I quite liked this idea as it was a little more subtle and possibly for me at least a nicer drawing to make. The consensus however was to stick to the original plan.

As the job progressed the significant passages to illustrate from the article became clear, and alongside portraits of Lloyd and Paul Weller, helped create the narrative that was required.

The final drawing was done on one piece of A3 paper. Mocked up from a variety of separate drawings and photographs on the computer first. I was fairly pleased with how it turned out. Perhaps it seems a little cluttered but the flow of the narrative hopefully is conveyed well. The turnaround for this job was 3 days.

Guardian editorial

Here are a few roughs and developmental drawings for an editorial piece that I did for the guardian last year. The illustration was a half page image for the front cover of the 'Work' supplement in the Saturday edition.

The article was looking at the choice that workers were being made to make between opting out of a new mandatory pension scheme contribution 'Auto-Enrolment' and how this would affect their take-home pay. The initial idea for the illustration was very simple and direct  - A supermarket worker faced with a choice between a secure future or a pay cut.

The art director and myself settled on the idea of a shelf-stacker considering their options, these were represented by two stacks of boxes 'Pension' and 'Paycut'.

Once this was decided I gathered the reference material and then worked up the final image. The main issue was to make sure the person could be identified as a worker and not a customer.

This job was a two and a half day turn-around.

Tweet A Brief

Last year I created a poster for Handsome Frank's 'Tweet-A-Brief' exhibition. I chose the quote "it never gets easier, you just go faster" which was uttered by three time Tour De France winner Greg LeMond. Here's my final poster and a first draft..

Portraits

Here are some portraits recently commissioned by design studio Enjoythis.

Untitled Magazine

I recently did some work for a Canadian Magazine. The article that I illustrated was six pages long about how to encourage people to thrive in their jobs.

There were a couple of interesting real world examples, notably a pilot whom takes photos of pets in the hold to keep the owners happy, buys passengers fruit, and generally does nice things. Unfortunately the magazine has been pulled by the publisher and it seems unlikely that it will be in print again. I was really happy with this series of drawings. The style was purposely very relaxed and pretty much straight out of the sketchbook.

There is very little difference between my roughs and the final pieces, with only a few tweaks and bit of colour added.

Museum Drawing

I've recently been drawing at the British Museum. I find drawing the busts and statues really useful in getting in some good practice for drawing figures and portraits. There's always a fairly quiet spot to be found despite how busy the museum gets. Here are a few scans.

Posters

Here is a quick look at a poster which should be available from Magma books shortly. It's from a set of three posters, this one is of 20 iconic cycling jerseys, there's one of iconic bikes, and the final one is of pencils - i'm not sure how this fits in with the other two.

Plus, my cycling journal is now out and can be seen here on Magma site here.

Drawing Project - Travel Book

A few months back I began working from lots of reference photos and notes with an eye to produce some kind of rough travel journal. This process had to be put on hold due to an unhealthy amount of work that i've had on. I'm hoping that writing about it now will mean i'm able to jump straight back into it once my deadlines for commissions and met.

So just to reiterate, I wanted to look into making a series of A5 sized travel guides/journals that are fully illustrated and have a minimal amount of written information. I didn't want to (and wouldn't be able to) produce anything that would act as a comprehensive guide, just being written from my own experiences. Ultimately they would be printed on copy paper, black and white, and importantly would be printed locally and distributed at the destination.

At this early stage I wanted to focus the project on one particular place that I visited; keep it fairly simple and informal with the illustrations being the main focus as opposed to being information driven. The prototype I have worked on is for Phu Quoc island in Vietnam. There are a few things that I need to look at again such as the relevance of having photos alongside the drawings. Here are a few images.

I think at the moment it's going to take a lot more trips away and information gathering to turn this into something other than a personal project.

Shortlist Magazine

I was asked by fashion designer Oliver Spencer to help create a collaged image of his British design influences. The image included referenes to Victorian spy prints, abstract artist Ben Nicholson, an angle poise lamp, Lucien Freud, the original Mini Cooper, and an iconic photograph of Paul Weller. This was used on the cover of Shortlist magazine which is distributed free across the UK.

Creative Review

Here's a illustration that I did recently for Creative Review's June issue.

photo is from creative review blog

New York Times Magazine

Over the past few months I've worked with the NY Times Magazine on some illustrated fictional comedic film scripts.These are really fun jobs to do with the illustrations acting as annotations for the scripts. The art direction is always great and with a quick 2 day turn-around it's a challenge to get the images and notations woking well with the text.

Here are some roughs, larger images and final layouts for some of the scripts...

... Mitt Romney has to decide who his Vice President candidate will be.

Another Mitt Romney script, this time featuring Newt Gingrich before he pulled out of the Republican candidacy race.

 This is the most recent script featuring the gatecrashing of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's wedding by Tiger Woods, Donald Trump, Mel Gibson, Brett Favre, Bill Clinton, Bono, and a Saudi Prince! All of whom are trying to get Mark to sign a prenuptial.