Hello Ted!

My very good friends Kev and Vicky have signed off 2011 and signed into 2012 in grand style with the arrival of their wee bundle of fun, little Edward! It's at times like these that you want the right sentiment to go to those dear to you and not give money to the greetings card companies and post something generic. Well done you two and hello little Ted!

A Little Bit Bunny... doggy decorations & a "sausage role"

Just in the nick of time before the silly season is upon us all I've got my dachshund entries up on a little bit bunny. One is all festive (you're invited over to look at 'Banger's christmas decorations' ) while the other is my usual cringeworthy word play on sausage dog... sometimes the idea in your head has to be exorcised onto the screen no matter what the cost :-) Breaking the bunny rules (forgive me fellow bunnies) I'm posting this last, revised somewhat, here on my blog too as I couldn't resist some small tweaks to 'improve' things. Y'know when you just cannot leave well enough alone!

Merry Christmas one and all!

Secular seasons greetings to all, and to all a happy new year!

Here's my virtual card... to explain. When I read Robin Ince and Brian Cox's "O Come All Ye Sceptics" piece in the Guardian last week I just had to do a 'Newtonmas' card when I found out Isaac Newton was born on December 25th (unlike other individuals supposed to share that birthdate...?!). To quickly digress, I highly recommend Robin Ince and Brian Cox's other joint effort, The Infinite Monkey Cage podcasts and Robin's other podcasts with Josie Long, Utter Shambles. Now back to the card...

Well OK... so it isn't as straight forward as all that. Now I preface the following by saying I've only dipped into the (sometimes factually murky) pool that is wikipedia to find out more, so a pinch of salt might be necessary...? Depending upon which calendar and religion you prescribed to way back in the 17th century you would say Isaac Newton was either born on December 25th 1642 (if you were a Protestant following the Julian calendar) or January 4th 1643 (if you happened to be a Roman Catholic using the Gregorian calendar). Religion making something straightforward more complicated... well I never. Still, it makes for an educational illustration... there will be a test! For the purposes of this card, and a cheap gag, I choose Julian!

Have a Very Merry Isaac Newton's Birthday and my very best wishes for the new year!

go with your first idea...

Went to Chris Haughton's excellent "Digital Handmade" show at So Far The Future Gallery last night with my good bud Phil ... well, to be honest we ended up gate crashing the private view, but everyone was very nice about it all. Chris even let us drink his beer and bend his ear when he no doubt had more important things to do.

The digital illustrations translated perfectly into the fair trade crafted rugs, lamps and soft toys and, the icing on the cake, there were advanced copies and artwork for Chris' new book "Oh No George!" which manages to pull off superbly that difficult trick of being as good as his applauded first book A Bit Lost. Another book for my groaning shelves come March next year!

While there I got the opportunity to look over the rug design competition entries and I'm kicking myself on two counts. My choice of colours didn't print out at all well so my 3 illustrations didn't really look much at all when viewed off the screen and up on the wall, and there was also an excellent cert sure fire winner, a flattened 'bear skin rug' design. I should have gone with my gut and worked up my initial sketch idea for a tiger skin rug design (and I also had a notion for a polar bear too believe it or not...) instead of / as well as my other 3. Hey ho, a lesson learned. It was just a lot of fun plotting pixels and taking part.

In conclusion what have we learned today... your first idea might be your strongest and, if you're free between now and Dec 7th go and see Chris Haughton's Digital Handmade exhibition!

Rug designs

I really do like the wonderful graphic approach the illustrator Chris Haughton has to his work, especially in his childrens book A Bit Lost , so when I heard that he has a show coming up at the So Far The Future gallery in London from 2nd to 7th December I pencilled it straight into the diary. Then I found out there was also a design a rug competition running as part of the show, so I just had to have a crack at it. Just got in before tomorrows deadline! The winner, as voted by punters at the show, gets their rug design made by fairtrade craft-makers in Nepal! A worthy industry to champion.

The submission requirements were for a 6 colour max rug design at 560x480 pixels and 72dpi, so these have to be some of the lowest resolution illustrations I've ever done. Curiously it was quite therapeutic and liberating, drawing pixel by pixel with the pen tool in photoshop. A great degree of the design choices are out of your control so I did find myself working in a freer way. A really enjoyable process.

Past viewers of my blog might recognise the Dodo design from a few months back as a screen print (my dodo is far from extinct and keeps popping up all over the place. The design was quite time consuming to convert to low res hard edged pixels though...) and the fish have appeared in a slightly different guise too, swimming with a polar bear. That design came together pretty fast once I had the notion that there's 'always a bigger fish'... The autumn leaves are a newbie for this competition. A bit busy as a design maybe but I just wanted a stab at an illustration that was decorative without a strong narrative, made sense being on the floor and also being viewed from any direction.

So if you have the weekend free why not check out Chris' show. Great digital artwork translated into great handcrafted products and a very worthy endeavour, promoting fair trade and the talented crafts people of Nepal.

my updated website

It's always a chore to plough through the multitude of repetitive tasks involved, but really satisfying once it's set up. www.matt-dawson.co.uk  V3 (ish) is up and running (I hope it still is...). There are still some glitches I'm trying to iron out (apologies if anyone is irritated by the flashing white screen between pages, if all else fails just try and blink in time with it...) but at least its 99.9% OK. Not a million miles from my last site. I just wanted to update work and simplify. As always any feedback would be prized beyond measure.

They Draw & Cook book is now out!

Well the TDAC recipe book has been out for quite a while but I've only now just got round to posting about it (sorry Salli & Nate). It's been a great honour to be included in the book and I couldn't be more impressed with the print and binding quality. With the silly season just around the corner this would make a great present for foody and illustration aficionados!

one of those days...

Ever have one of those days...? Still all you need is 5 minutes graphics tablet therapy and things don't seem quite so bad after all :-)

badger peek...

Two posts in one day... phew! It's a little bit bunny time again, and this months creature is the humble old badger. I was sorely tempted to do my interpretation of the old curmudgeon from Wind In The Willows to go alongside my Toad in his motor car illustration (previously on ALBB). Maybe I'll try that out now I've worked out some badger designs I like as a starting point. To my way of thinking I kept seeing glimpses of polar bear in a badgers anatomy...?! I had to reign myself in from heading down a 'polar bear Dick Turpin' route... Well here's my sketch work and a peek of the final piece which is over on ALBB.

3 bears, now in colour...

I've been meaning to post this for a few days. It's the rough colour study for the three bears painting I have to do. Mixing and matching paint is always a challenge for me, but I do find it very handy to work things out first in photoshop. Not only do I work out my colour choices, I can also get my head around the sequence I'll aim to paint the thing in, especially as the same colours crop up in different areas of the painting. An aim with this study (and the sketches for it) was to maintain the 'same world feel' on this painting as the last one I did for the same client. Well, they liked the way I'm headed with it so next step will be flinging paint at paper.