an eagle looks for lunch or no stone left unturned...

It's eagle for this months creature submission on A Little Bit Bunny so here once again is a sneak peek of my efforts. I have to admit to going a smidge overboard on this one as far as planning goes. I certainly got into the eagle sketching zone by the end of things. For me that's a fringe benefit of submitting creatures to ALBB each month... I've filled the dreaded "first blank page"... and have my design thoughts on eagles underway should they be needed again. With every month of ALBB I get another creature for the sketchbook 'ark'.

Given how obsessive I got over the planning stages I decided to make a conscious effort to loosen up with the linework and colour treatment on the final piece (just a detail below) and, all things considered, I'm happy with the results... although, looking at all the sketches I'm sure I could take another crack at the tortoise, hhmmm, maybe the eagle's face too... and perhaps the tail feathers... ... enough!

I'd waffle a little more but scanning all this in took much longer than expected, I'm starving and need to go and "turn over stones" in the kitchen to find myself a meal! Pop on over to ALBB if you fancy seeing the final pic.

He's gawn... swept away. R.I.P. Uncle Monty

Condolences to Richard Griffiths family and friends. It's a sad day for all lovers of Withnail and I... Though I suppose Marwood needn't put the chair against his door tonight.

"the rather interesting octopus" or ... nothing I could draw would make it any more bizarre than it already is !

The challenge with doing illustrations for my other [group] blog "A Little Bit Bunny" is to make the chosen creature of the month a little bit quirky... a wry sideways glance... or just downright odd. This month it's the octopus, a particular favourite of mine.

I started out with weird doodles that amped up the fact it has a beak (something easy to forget, being buried as it is beneath those 8 arms ... we're not to call 'em tentacles by the way...), then I played about with stylising the anatomy, but no matter what I did, nothing was as downright bizarre as the actual facts about this remarkable creature. So that's what I went with... cold hard facts and a picture of an octopus... simple and to the point I hope.  Here are just a few sneaky peeks of my final illustion. As always the final picture is over on ALBB.

If cephalopods (or indeed natural history in all it's many and varied forms...) interest you I can recommend a glorious collection of 19th century scientific plates from the voyage of the H.M.S Challenger (and here too) that I found while researching all this. Just a closing thought... I do feel guilty that I ate some of the best calamari I've ever had while sketching for this illustration... It did taste great though! Maybe that's another fact to add to my illustration, "squid and octopus taste very nice"...?

Butterfly...eye...eye...eye...

Some fool went and chopped off the end of February...?! Who ever heard of a month with 28 days in it... That's why my a little bit bunny submission this (ahem... last...) month is running late. The creature is butterfly, here's a sneak peek. Pop onto ALBB for the full thing.

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis book cover design...

Well here is why I needed to sketch upside down Volkswagen Beetle cars in my last but one post. The notion for this cover is a little bit tongue in cheek (for those who haven't read the short story it's about a chap who wakes up transformed into a giant beetle) but something about the idea appealed to me. Perhaps it's the mix of the iconic story and the iconic car... maybe the surreal nature of the plot is amped up that little bit more by seeing a car in bed...? Whatever it is there was also the challenge to show the cover without resorting to the usual  design treatment showing images of an actual insect. All the cover and spine text is hand cut from card or paper for that more disjointed, slightly insectish feel. I hadn't planned on the 'headlamp' O's for the title or the tyre tread pattern for the book's spine but they were spur of the moment choices that just seemed like the right thing to do to help with legibility of the title, tie the front and back covers together and also lay on the VW beetle theme a little bit thicker.

Ceci n'est pas un pope

On hearing the news that the pope was off this idea floated into my head and I had to do it... (apologies to Magritte... and any french speakers). Incidentally, with those red shoes, it seems to me that the Pope would make a cracking alternative to Dorothy in the Wizard Of Oz.... following the yellow brick road to the Emerald Vatican City... clicking his heels together saying "there's no place like Rome"... That's me dammed for eternity now I suppose...

upside down VW beetles...

I needed to sketch a VW beetle but it has to be upside down for the illustration I have in mind. Rather than draw the car the right way up then invert it I thought, why not draw the thing upside down to begin with (rotating and flipping the reference in photoshop) and see what happens...? I found it a very useful exercise in quick observational drawing. Very much looking at something familiar in a fresh new way. I also like the slightly disjointed feel it gives to the car (stand on your head to see what I mean)... as luck would have it that should fit in nicely with what I have planned for the bug... ...

Now what else can I draw upside down...

fishbowl ennui...

fire and clouds... and back beside the seaside...

I've a big stack of low grade cardboard by my desk that just seems to love thick nib sharpie marker pen. For whatever reason my mind turned to cloud doodles today then, perhaps by way of elemental balance some flames also flared up. A quick bit of photoshop and nothing goes to waste on this blog. Next time I need to fill a sky or set something alight (in an illustration that is) I've some designs to choose from.

In fact I might well make use of my clouds sooner rather than later as I've started to tackle the seaside screen print scene I put to one side before christmas. I'm sure it was limiting myself to just a single colour print that caused me problems before. The design just wasn't feeling right. I've decided to whack a couple of colours in there, loosen up and see what happens. Here's a very rough in progress post for the present. Still planning the colour and composition. I don't know how obsessive I'm going to go with line and detail but I must admit that I'm quite liking the rough energy that this has so far. Don't over work things...!

a tiger for self promotion...

By way of a little self promotion I illustrated this banner design recently for a UK deign company called Tigerprint. They sent out a shout for creatively minded folks to design a website banner using their company name as the initial hook... I already had a tiger design which I was sure would fit the bill... long story short, hello tiger! It was a nice opportunity to work upon the foundations I'd layed with the first screen print design, rejig some design decisions I'd made, play with appropriate hand lettering and push the character's personality that bit further (I think I just about got away with slightly unhinged expression verses lazy eyed...!? ;-).