Christmas Commissions Part 2: Anthony and Hector

There's a house just down the road from us which goes Christmas nuts every year. From mid-November it's like Blackpool Illuminations in miniature; a bright, garish, animated, tacky, vomit-inducing contrast to the predictable lack of snow (this year, the heavens didn't get the memo again, unless rain is the new snow and we're just not with it). Bless 'em, I hope they never change.

By contrast I am usually Mr. Humbug incarnate until sometime mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve. This year however, I was dragged kicking and screaming into at least thinking about Christmas early by a client wanting a bespoke Christmas card.

I enjoyed this thoroughly; a nice, simple interpretation of his own idea. Wonderful! Get your orders in early, because this was a very enjoyable mini-project.

By the way, Anthony is a professional music composer which 

should explain the joke, and Hector is the dog.

Christmas Commissions Part 1: Attack of the Golf Zombies

Unless your name is Elf, you probably want to put Christmas behind you now. However, for me this is the perfect chance to tell you about a couple of items I carried out just before the festive season... for that very reason.

"Bubbub and His Babe."

This was for a client who wanted some sort of comic book image for his brother-in-law. The guy in question is into comics, specifically Captain America whilst both himself and his girlfriend have in the past dressed up as Capt and The Silk Spectre (from Alan Moore's "Watchmen").

Take into account that the gift reciever is also something of a golfer AND gets the playful monicker "Bubba" thrown at him whilst his girlfriend gets the slightly less imaginative "Babe." It didn't take me too long to imagine a comic cover set on a golf course, featuring zombies as the stock villains. ...I took a slight leap of faith with the zombie theme and checked with the client first using this sketch (whilst pointing out that the zombies will be added later):

If I can offer a bit of advice for illustrators; it's that no amount of information, both written and visual (such as photos) from clients is too much... if you can push them into doing a sketch, do it! Get as much as you can before you begin and make notes, unless you have it in email form already. The pink hat as worn in a photo sent to me for example, is something that the client suggested would be a nice touch and I agree. ...Plus it links the title colour to the image a bit.

 This is the final image.

I used this commission as an excuse to get hold of more Pentel Colour Brush Pens. They are great and unlike say felt tips, the ink doesn't bleed when dry so you can lay down the black first and THEN colour over the top.

Zooooooming in.

I blended a couple of inks in an egg cup to get the skin colour, which doesn't show up very well on this scan. The other thing about inks of course is that unlike felt tips, a brush creates some texture but doesn't scrub the paper horribly. And there we have it, an A3 sized original.

BBC Heaven!

Vizii? Mixital? ...Internet? ...What do these words even mean? Well, the BBC have a thing online called Mixital, which has in turn a sub-thing called Vizii.

"Mixital's a BBC site that turns players and viewers into creators.
We've designed easy-to-use tools for young people over 13 years old to make and share things like visuals and stories."

"Vizii is a new tool aimed at kids and teens, allowing them to 'visualise' music and the spoken word and available on the mixital platform"

So Mixital is the platform and Vizii is the tool. It has taken me a while to get my head around this. Basically kids can make music videos by dragging a load of pre-set elements into a video maker to accompany a music track. I created some of those elements.

The tracks include such artists and bands as The Staycations, Asylums, Blooms, Monogram, Rukhsana Merrise, Rawschac, Alex Vargas, Jayelldee and Lorelai (presumably not to be confused with the Alan Tam song from Armour Of God starring Jackie Chan). If none of this makes sense, just go to the bloody site: BBC MIXITAL and VIZII

I created images of people playing guitars, banging drums, jumping around, texting (as kids are want to do). I put some of those elements together for my own sites like thus:

 That is "sick."

 Gnarly! ...That's still a word right? She bangs the drum
whilst wearing a dinosaur onesie. A DINOSAUR ONESIE.

 Wicked! (That means the opposite of wicked.) The Texting Astronaut.

That's a Super Suit

This is different. Am I now a fashion designer, or have I just insulted the world of fashion design with my flippancy? The answer of course is neither, please read on...

 A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be in the fairly unique position of creating the pattern for a super hero themed suit. This was for a company "Stag Suits" that makes fun outfits for, as you may have guessed, stag nights (or any occasion really). The pattern is made up of comic-book style super heroes all flying around doing their thing, complete with sound effects. My instruction was to make the characters look like they could come from the comic world without actually just drawing superman or spider-man for rights issues, however this made the project into much more of a creative process for me.

I think I would need a few drinks inside me already before going out wearing it, but it was a great project to work on.

HERE IS THE OFFICIAL SITE, GO THERE FOR ALL YOUR STAG SUITS (I'll stop shouting now): http://www.stagsuits.co.uk/product/patterned-suits/fun/super-hero-retro-comic-stag-suit/

Supergirl Pondering

...Images of Supergirl and other female superheroes posing or looking wistfully off into the distance are fine and dandy, until your mind starts to wander around the image and into what they might be thinking.

I like the idea of more than a pinup under the guise of "justice, justice and more justice" and instead into the realm of regular mundane thoughts... which in a sense makes it less. Does Supergirl not live on Earth afterall? ...I'm digressing there, basically I've broken the fourth wall, and once down, that's it; the floodgates are open! Just ask Ferris Bueller.

She shares my opinion on Richard Pryor

Who'd have thunk it?

Another Bloody Drawing of Bruce Lee

Every artist and his dog seem to draw Bruce Lee at some point; the internet is awash with pencilled or airbrushed pics of the guy and it's a mixed bag. So it was some retisence that I finally cracked and had a go.

Bruce Lee is still the definitive martial arts movie icon. He lived from 1940 to 1973 and was the founder of Jeet Kune Do (or, Way of the Intercepting Fist), which is a form of emtpy hand combat derived partly from Wing Chun. Although a child actor in Hong Kong, he only starred in four completed "kung-fu" movies. Game of Death was only partly shot when Bruce died at just 33 years old.

The yellow jumpsuit worn by Bruce for Game of Death has become something of an icon in it's own right and was more recently mimicked in the outfit worn by Uma Therman in Kill Bill.

A word from Mrs Uncle Sam

I'm creating; not prints, or digital but original ink-coloured pieces! Look here for more: facebook.com/Loudon.Illustrator. I am toying with the idea of crafting a series of pin-up images containing messages not usually associated with the "genre" and still influenced by the charming imagery of artists such as Gil Elvgren.

I am however, not 100% sold on my own ideas, and may be repulsed by them in a short space of time. For example, I am clearly objectifying women and therefore, you could be forgiven for questioning the whereabouts of my own critical judgement. At the same time, I feel if I question myself too much, then nothing will get done outside of commissions frome clients, which is essentially what this is.

 Mrs Uncle Sam is aware of the system 

espoused by her war mongering beau.

I predict a night on the sofa for him.

Sailor girl muttering under 

her breath presumably.