Couple of illustrations done for The Guardian

Hi all, above is an illustration that was done for the Guardian which was featured on Monday's G2 supplement. the article was fro the Digested Read Column which was featuring the Book 'Voodoo Histories' by David Aaronovitch.

In short the book in question's subject matter was that of conspiracy theories. Because the column itself is more quips on the book in general, there was a lot of different and interesting subject matter written for me to work my magic on.

The General idea was to make the image in the same vain as a james bond/spy type of thing with different references to parts of the article such as aliens, secret cults and mystic orders, the all seeing eye, WMD's deaths and mob connections all thrown into one image.

I really enjoyed working on this one, its always good on getting something interesting to illustrate and with a bit of the bizarre thrown in for good measures.

here a Second illustration done for the Guardian featured in last Friday's G2, as part of the Anti-natal Column. this time is was an article based on subtexts form within children's books.

for this one it was a combination of theories based on the children's stories mentioned mixed with a more suitable children's book type of illustration, innocent in part and dark in others.

Again, this was another one that I enjoyed creating, this one s already up on my newly designed site and will be adding the other one soon.

Out with the old...

And in with the new website filled with new work and with new visuals around the whole site.

About last week I was thinking about putting up a screen grab of a part of the new design to show that it was near the finishing stage as a sort of preview but thought it would be best to post about the new site when its live.

One thing to note is that i have decided not to have a splash screen this time round, so if anyone linked to the main page to avoid the slash screen will need to change it so that they can see the new site.

And finally, the Story Motel Exhibition Starts Tonight at the Owl & Lion Gallery which will showcase artist's books and zines from around the world.

Story Motel Exhibition

Hi all,

The Story Motel exhibition is a collection of artist's books and zines created by participating Artists/illustrators from around the world. These self published works range from the low level zine to different forms of artist's books. In sort its a celebration of the book form as a means of artistic discovery.

for my contribution to the show, I have produced a screen printed zine going by the name of 'Untamed World'. This book is mono in colour to stay true to form of the zine, each book is also unique to one another because of the screen printed nature due to the way the ink has settled on the paper. Another thing is that there are only 36 of these zines up for grabs.

so where and when is this exhibition? its at the Owl & Lion Gallery in Edinburgh opening on the 14th of May and running until the 12th of June. heres a link to the Owl & Lion site.

And heres the address below:

OWL & LION

15 Grassmarket

Edinburgh

Scotland

UK

EH1 2HS

Above is an albino version of the character on the front cover that have I just made, later on I will be uploading parts of the book in all its glory in the not too distant future.

marvin's magical squeeze box

Hi all, still got a lot of things to do and still got to get the finger out and do some minor updates to the site such as adding new work. I've also created a flickr account though haven't added anything yet so once there are images up there i'll make a post and also create a link in the side menu.

the maps haven't been printed yet due to printing problems but they should be out soon so no post on the images just yet. I'm guessing that early may will be when they are released into the wild for all to see.

i'll keep you posted on things going on and to get this blog back to having regular posts.

I'm not dead yet...

...just been super busy with things.

I was going to put up some roughs and images that were created to be used for two travel maps for London though because I honour the fact that the client should at least be the first to unleash these images to the world, i can't put anything up until the printers have got their fingers out of their asses and printed the maps ready for them to go into the wild.

above is another commission, this time for the new NYT blog called 'The Choice' where i was tasked with designing the logo. The blog, along with the writer appeared on 'The Today show' in a short interview where there was a few screen shots of the blog and of the logo. which was nice.

for anyone interested. here is the link to the interview.

as for other things, still a lot to do and so little time.

A sailors life is a life for me

Heres a new image which was mostly inspired by the character design of Popeye or mostly his bulging fore arms. The character design of Popeye is an interesting one, he is probably the only character that I have seen where they have used large fore arms against the pole like biceps. 

On another note, I am planning on updating the work on my website soon. I prefer doing hearty updates so this will include a lot of new work both self promotional and Commissioned pieces. I don't know when the ETA will be but more likely to be in a few months time.

Target Practice

I initially started this image with the intensions of creating a very muscular indian behind possibly a small indian chief (might still make another image based on that concept) but after cutting out the shape of the head, it seemed to better suit that of a child and so i developed it further with the 'william tell' esque idea of the apple on top.

As for the background, the idea of the tepees, trees, etc in the background was already set but at first i was going to keep most of the back ground white. further down the line though, after adding the stream it seemed better to add a nice neutral colour to help bring out the nice vibrant colours in the character in the foreground.