Just a quick portrait comparison

A couple of portraits from last year, both in black and grey ink. One cartoony in style and one a bit more straight laced, though faces weren't exaggerated at all in either. Something to think about for yourselves.

Two good friends of ours, from 

Chorlton Runners' running club! 

They run in lots of different countries,

and have two cats. Also, he turned 40

and she bought this for him. 

How I got Started in Illustration - Part 3

I'm gonna make this post really short...because life is short; less talking, more doing I say! My first real commission was a children's book entitled Matthew and the Money tree. It can still be found on such websites as Amazon ---> right here.

The cover is still the most epic aspect about the book.

I got the job through a site called "Elance" ...it's one of those bid-for-projects sites in which talented people under-cut each other ensuring that few people get paid what they're worth and where non-discerning clients get said work very cheaply. Those were dark times and I usually begrudge such sites even though I am in the unfortunate position of crawling back to them once more despite bigger projects since my first commission. Odesk is another such site. You "could" say they are useful for those starting out, at a push. As an artist with moderate success, I find such sites a pain in the arse; whereas students from the Philippines probably have some financial success out of them. Suffice to say, my fee for Matthew and the Money Tree was small.

This is one of the better pages.

The work was fraught with other problems too, namely a lack of consistency in my drawings. I remember that after finishing the book, I had to go back and visit each page and create new heads for "Matthew" because he looked different from page to page. This was a lack of experience on my part in creating anything sequential. What I should have done was create "style sheets" from which to draw reference.

One such page I had to re-visit for head-swapping.

Despite my problems with inexperience and the sheer disheartening workload of the book, I am glad I did it. Better things were to come... by which I do not entirely mean nightclub flyers such as this one:

Apparently they all died of scurvy. 

I was also in a design "collective." ...I did that drawing of women in a boat whilst someone else did the design work. I will always be eternally grateful for such opportunities but boy does the drawing make me cringe. 

Art For Starters ...or how I got started in freelance PART 1

Sick Animals:

I was for the last few years, somewhat half-embarrassed and half bemused whenever I thought about my final major graphic design project at university, recalling that it involved cartoon animals. Moreover that these animals are depicted killing each other and being generally vile in ways that only school children would find amusing. Now, on reflection and with the passage of time, I can just about comfort myself with the idea that it showed "some" initiative on my part. 

Back in 2004, I had decided to come up with a range of greetings cards that was both fun and something that I could make money out of when I was let loose into the big bad world post-uni (The University of Salford).
 

 They even had a logo, typeface and

vomit-inducing range of T-shirts that

no one in their right mind would wear.

I did manage to get the cards on sale in various Manchester shops including Thunder-Egg, Urbis (formerly the Museum Of the Modern City, which now houses The Football Museum), Magma Books (including it's London branch). Here, for your viewing pleasure are a few of the cards...

 Some of the cards are references to

various movies; including Indiana Jones, 

Star Wars, Kill Bill, The Omen, Reservoir

Dogs and The Wizard of Oz

The Right To Bear Arms

I drew this about a year and a half ago...

It was an idea that popped into my head that I felt I just had to get down on paper. Unfortunately this was just prior to my current obsession with traditional inking, so it doesn't quite have that vintage comic look that I was after. Also unfortunately, I recently saw an episode of Family Guy in which a similar "Bear arms" gag reared it's ugly head. Arrrgh! So just for the record, I made this, before I saw that.

The vague statistic in my comic strip is based on something I read about actual gun ownership in a Bill Bryson book. (Most likely "Notes from a Big Country" ...though I read it about ten years ago, if I could have been bothered to look up the actual passage which mentions the statistic as a percentage; I may have used it.)