cross the gorilla's arms...

One last tweak before dinner. Now I need to sleep on things, and by tomorrow everything will look terrible ;-)

simean screen print sketch

This is still a fairly rough wacom sketch (although I do like the loose shapes) but I think that I might finally have arrived at something I'm happy to attempt a screen print of. Flipping the gorilla so that he faced the other two apes created the trio relationship I think the picture needed.

I haven't drawn orangutans in quite a while but now I find they have very satisfying shoulder blades!

is this the thing screen prints are made of...?

While I'm posting, is this 'gag' worth the effort to screen print...? I was thinking of it in a limited 2 colour screen print...but now I'm not so sure the idea is strong enough. There's stuff I'm happy with though... decisions decisions... As always any honest opinions people are kind enough to give would be very gratefully received! Back to the drawing board I think.

Just some gorillas... just for the hell of it

I'm still trying to decide what to do for my first screen print so it's just a couple of doodles for now. I've had this notion, whenever I'm so inclined, to sketch various things in space suits...why you ask... because I like drawing space suits :-) First one up is a gorilla... why you ask... because I like drawing gorillas!

And to follow up is a doodle diversion from todays work, a gorilla on an Eames Lounge Chair... why that chair you ask... because I'd love one!!!

Book cover project...

I was lucky enough for a project to come my way recently to design a book cover (along with a poster and promo bookmark to boot). I really enjoy the challenge of doing a book cover design, translating the content of what's inside into something appropriate to both selling the book and enticing the potential reader. I won't go into specifics until it's printed but I'll admit that at first glance the brief had me really stumped.

The author summed up one aspect of the book as being able to take risks, not be anxious, playfulness... so I jumped on that lifeline and along came a daredevil high diver. As is often the case, don't you find, when you just doodle (and, for me, when I should really be doing something else instead of doodling...) you get little quirky gems which you want to keep right through to the end artwork. Well the little thumbnail sketch of the hunched diver with the stringy arms had something I couldn't put my finger on but just liked so he stayed as a layer in my photoshop document right till the very end. At first the diver was in swim shorts but it just didn't have that jokey something to bring the character to life. Then, when all else failed along came speedos and a daredevil was born!

So why the two covers...? I submitted both to the client with the suggestion that the poster and bookmark could have the tentative 'pre dive' chap... a teaser for the main event of the book cover where the bold fellow shakes off the shackles of gravity and takes to the air. Luckily the client agreed, woohoo!

finger painting on the iPod touch

Primary school infant that I am I've been finger painting this morning so here's something for my mum's fridge :-)

For the longest time I'd hankered after an iPod touch but just couldn't justify the outlay when my old iPod works just like new. Lucky chap that I am a good mate I'd not seen in far too long had just got an iPhone 4 and, sterling chap that he is (you know who your are sir!), gave me his old iPod Touch 3! Now it's never going to be photoshop and a wacom in your pocket but I stumped up the vast sum of 59p for the Sketch Book Mobile App and I have to say I quite impressed with how it works. Photoshop is a truly lovely place to work and you get institutionalized to how Adobe do things so using a different image editing software package is always a bit disconcerting (as I found when I bought Painter a few years back) but that aside I'd recommend sketchbook mobile if you want something for a quick yet creatively fairly flexible doodle when you're out and about. Unfortunately with an iPod Touch screen it's finger painting or a stubby ended stylus so, as you can imagine there's a lot of zooming in and out and changing of brush sizes but the interface doesn't get in the way too much. You can even email yourself the layered document as a psd. OK final output at 300dpi is an RGB file of 86.7mm x 57.7mm (FYI the image post is at max resolution) but if you think of it as a sketch book (what it calls itself after all) it's not at all bad. Tech review over... we now return you to our scheduled blog service (whatever that may be...?)

P.S. while I'm on the theme of Polar Bears the latest animal on "A lIttle Bit Bunny" the group blog I share is...you guessed it...

No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk

Here you go blog, something else to eat... fancy some refreshing milk and a juicy steak...?

I'm going to do a screen printing workshop next month so I have to think about what I'm going to print. The notion is to illustrate some phrase or saying that someone might ultimately want to put on their wall and since I had a thumbnail of this flipped bovine sitting in my sketchbook doing nothing I thought I'd see if I could make it work out... Still a work in progress... is a shower of milk the thing wall decorations are made of I wonder...?

the two faces of my blog...

My blog demands feeding, it's been too long between snacks and I don't want to be accused of blog neglect! I think "Burp" could survive a few more days but "rumble" is in dire need of a meal! What a beautiful solution, by showing this picture of my blog's inner voices I also give them a feed. More nibbles to follow guys...