Wednesday 14 May 2014

Latest Projects...

It's been a while since I wrote properly on here, the last few months have been crazy! I've been super busy working with the lovely chaps at Green Android on a brand new set of kids craft books - 'Mini Crafter' to accompany the 'Mini Artist' series I did a couple of years ago. As well as producing hundreds of new illustrations for the third and fourth books in our 'How to Draw' series - Space' and 'Vehicles'

They've both been brilliant projects to work on. For the Mini Crafter books, I was commissioned to design, make, and photograph all 11 step by step projects in each of the 4 books. They're quite a diverse range of titles - Junk Modelling, Puppets, Masks, and Clay Modelling, and together they saw me making all sorts of fun and messy projects, from bin bag snowmen, to vampire masks, and Toilet roll tigers. I can't say I didn't enjoy it!



I'm particularly pleased with the clay modelling title, which I was (if i'm honest) a tad apprehensive about. I'd not really done much clay work before, so it was a bit of an unknown. However, It's the title i'm most pleased with and i'm over the moon at how some of the models worked out.




For each spread, I designed how I wanted the project to look and went about planning how the steps would work. Then began working them up into roughs.

Once the roughs had been approved, I made a couple of practice runs of each project and then got to work building the 'extra' models to be used throughout the books. Finally, I settled down, book by book, making and photographing all the step by step projects. Each project had to be carefully arranged, and photographed in my little photo studio, to make sure the lighting, and positioning were all consistent. 





The chaps at Green Android have done a brilliant job on the design, and have just sent all four books to print. I can't wait to see the final books in the flesh!



Alongside all the craftiness, and hundreds of drawings for the next 'How to draw' books in the series, i've also been working on some other brilliant client briefs, Beast collective projects, exhibitions, craft markets, new products, and some other personal projects too, but more on that another time!


Monday 10 March 2014

I'm a Busy Bee at the mo…

It's been a while since i've posted on here, I've been super busy working on new books for the Bolognia book fair at the end of the month, alongside some other brilliant projects.

Some great stuff has been happening lately though that I just wanted to share…

The little Illustration collective that I'm part of has an exhibition up at Cherryleaf coffee house in Norwich all this month. It looks fab, and i'm dead proud to be part of a group of such lovely talented and organised people. We all took a classic book, and re-designed the cover art. They've come out brilliantly and everyone has done a fab job.

Pic from Cherryleaf Website

Kellee drew us a brilliant sandwich board:

Pic from Kellee Rich

One of mine - Hansel and Gretel - All framed up - I couldn't resist seeing what it looked like in the frame.

My re-design of Hansel and Gretel

We all posed for cheesy pictures after the hanging too…
… and the Juniper tree
The Beasts


It's on until the end of the month at Cherryleaf Coffee House - www.coffeehousenorwich.co.uk
We're also selling prints of each of the artworks, along with postcard packs featuring all 14 pieces.



They're available at Cherryleaf, or online via Etsy: http://etsy.me/1nCqWAH


You can find out more about Beast! Norwich at:

Website: http://beastnorwich.wordpress.com
Facebook: BEASTNorwich
Twitter: @BeastNorwich


I'm also gearing up to take part in Clutter city on the 15th March, I've got some new bits and bobs to share with the world. … More on that soon!