IF"sour"

This weeks Illustration Friday was a good excuse for just playing around with shapes, colours and texture. No very deep interpretation or wordplay I'm afraid, just having fun and working up a few ideas as quickly as possible. The sallow chap with the puckered pus was my first thought and I'm satisfied with him as an interpretation for the topic. I don't know if a theme is establishing itself with these but if you take the 'baby' and the 'worry' from previous IF posts and mix them up a bit you pretty much get this 'sour'...hhmmmm... can a worried baby be sour sometimes...?

Zimbabwe vote 2

Here's another attempt at the topic, getting quicker, this was 30 odd minutes during my lunch break. I didn't have access to a Wacom but I'm content enough with the rough and ready results. These are by no means finished pieces. I just want to practice and, I hope, get my eye in.

Zimbabwe elections

I've wanted to try and develop some editorial style illustrations for my portfolio, the kind of thing you might expect to find in newspapers and magazines. Any illustrations that I do need to be quick to try and hone my short deadline reactions! This one was around the hour after fiddling... I want quicker! I'm not especially political in my habits but who can fail to be aware of the sham that is Mugabe and the Zimbabwe elections. So this post is nothing if not topical.

sprung cleaned my website

It's been a whole year since I uploaded my website and it sorely needed an update of new work. As with any old piece of work you revisit I just couldn't resist tweeking things here and there.....so.....to a fanfare (of kazoos).....ladies and jellyspoons, may I humbly present www.matt-dawson.co.uk in it's 2008 look. If you remember the old site things aren't that different. I've just 'run the duster over things' here and there. Hope you like what you see.

IF (Mr.) Punchline

Short and sweet for this weeks IF post, that's the way to do it!

I've been working on a spring clean of my website for the last few days, hence the lack of posts. I hope normal blogging service (whatever that may be) will be resumed ASAP.

just one more book logo illustration

This is illustration for the justonemorebook.com request for logos for their site redesign. It was a fun quick brief to do and it's nice to help out interesting sites when you can. Pop over and check out all of their childrens book reviews if that's your kinda thing! It doesn't really show up very well but that's scanned text from a novel (Mobey Dick in fact...) to create the texture on the book loving octopus/alien type thing's skin. I liked the idea of words from the books manifest in the characters look... not that visable as I said, but I know it's there at least :)


Just dawned on me I seem to have had quite a run on hour glass shaped heads, octopi and orange things... have to go in a new direction or I'll get boring!

PS. many thanks to onemorebook.com for posting my illustration and a link.

IF "Baby"

Not having kids myself this is very much the stereotypical view... so Pete and Helen, have I got it right ?

more worries...

I wanted another stab at this... not because I was unhappy with version 1... I've just enjoyed playing around with the graphic and narrative elements. I don't know what it says about my personality but this subject has been good fun to work with.

IF "Worry" or WHY worry...?

I've gotten out of the illustration friday habit and must admit that I have missed it. This weeks topic is "worry"... who cannot relate to that one! This chap has his concerns pressing in from all sides. I think I enjoyed doing the illustration more than he did!

Ten images for Ithaca "Dream"

Not far off a month since my last post... very much time to fire up the blog before it atrophies! I've been busy on something which I'm just not allowed to talk about... the plot thickens. I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you.

Something I've squeezed in which I can blog about is a submission for the Ten images for Ithaca competition. The Greek island of Ithaca has an annual themed poster design competition. The 10 best submissions get printed into 2 metre high banners and displayed on the Ithaca's promenade for the summer. Plus the three winners get a cash prize. This years theme is "dream". It's a really open ended brief, well worth a try... though the closing date is May 31st so get a move on! Hope you like my efforts. Who doesn't want to swim like a fish or fly like a bird...? (Thanks for the tip on the competition Kev, looking forward to seeing your poster...)

Louis B still hasn't made it across the channel yet, I must get on and give him a hand!