I'm not dead...

So I make all these grand promises to post more drawings up and to be a better blogger than I have been during these last few months and what happens? F***loads of work piles in :-( I am wallowing in self-pity here. It's the usual story again... juggling up to three jobs at once and all of them quite demanding. Pity me. If you can.

I'm back doing some more - huzzah! - car parts. This time it's really car parts, like suspension springs and brake discs. My life is thrilling, really it is. And I'm also working on stuff for Tesco and Nationwide. In short, it's all gone a bit crazy.

Nothing much has been happening around here other than work. House progress has been slowly grinding to a halt with too many weekends away, the husband going to Miami on a conference and a general lack of energy. I think the autumnal cold and darker days are getting to me. It is lovely and sunny outside today, but I'm stuck in the coldest and gloomiest room in the house drawing a steering wheel. Someone buy me one of those light box thingies, please.

Playing

I don't play enough in my work. I usually stick to the things I know and the things I find easy. I am determined to play more and to experiment with new ideas because I'm in danger of getting bored of myself. I was in the studio blowing bubbles with ink the other day and getting very messy. They came out looking like little planets.


I composed an 'about me' page yesterday for the Helfa Gelf open studios next month, and wrote some rather pretentious arty rubbish about what I want to work on in the future. It sounded rather far fetched (I think the word 'philosophy' was used), but it's true - I want to try something new, to explore the ideas that preoccupy me and not to just go with things in my comfort zone. Even though the fun stuff is enjoyable to make and I love making people laugh, I know that I can try other things too.

This and that

Well. I'm nearly there (she says). Merely days away (I hope) from finishing the latest crazy round of work. I have been drawing bits for Honda again, doing some Top Secret character drawing for some anonymous clients, and drawing houses and stuff for a website that I will tell you more about when it's published (which may be a while yet!).

After all this, I plan to be on holiday for a while. I don't know what I will do. I hope that it will be very little. I am bad at doing very little, so probably I'll be messing around in the house, doing a lot of window shopping for things I can't afford and generally wasting time pottering about. Hey, maybe I'll even draw something funny, although I haven't felt funny for a while. We may, if I get my new passport in time, go abroad for a week but we will have to see. I feel a strong urge to go somewhere with some sunshine. Wales is not the place for sunshine. I am finding it hard to form well-considered sentences.

EDIT: Guess what? A new job just landed in my inbox. I think I will say no. Will I be strong enough to say no?

Varoom interview

Pop over to the AOI's Varoom magazine to read a little interview about my artwork for Honda's recent press ads.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Mine was the best I have had in a very long time - a great group of friends, lots of food and a wild walk (or two) in the countryside. Bliss.

Now back to work!

checking in

Hi all. Sorry things have been a bit quiet lately. I've been a bit busy/tired/distracted. Work continues to pile in. I am meant to complete 60 seconds of animation by Friday afternoon and haven't even started yet (not my fault!), but it's going to be a crazy few days. This may also coincide with the go ahead to colour another six pieces for Honda. I may pop. This could be messy. I need a holiday.

more Honda

Another of the Honda ads that I've been illustrating should appear in the weekend papers at some point... Here are some details from a couple of the images:

Honda

You may, in the UK, have seen this ad in the weekend newspapers, for which I drew the illustrations. It was fun, trying my hand at a different style. I'm working on more this week, and will put up more images when the ad has gone to print.

Meanwhile, we don't have internet in our new house - I'm using the neighbours' wireless (with their kind permission, of course!) and I haven't had a chance to get a post together about what we've been doing. As soon as I was available for work again yesterday, the phones started ringing, so I'm a busy bee this week.

life drawing

Been working on some web banner animation for the past couple of days, so it's been pretty dull here. I managed to go to life drawing for the first time in weeks on Tuesday, though. Eldyne again.

Meanwhile...

In the midst of all this destruction and rubble, I have been working. Here is a little peek at something I was doing for another car client earlier this week.

Some friends

Hello. Sorry it's been a rather quiet week here - I've been working and getting distracted by other things which I will tell you about next week. Here is a collection of badges that I painted just for fun - it's like a gallery of the creatures that live in my head! Maybe I will put some of these up for sale in my Etsy shop when I have a moment.

Have a marvellous weekend!

Meanwhile...

Here's a little snippet from another book spread I recently completed for Dorling Kindersley. Best not ask what it's about!

lost the plot

Thank the lord it's Friday. I have had enough of this week, have you? Here's part of a little something I've been working on for my lovely agents at Jelly:


Hope you have exciting plans for the weekend. I have no idea what we will be doing. Pastry making and maybe a walk somewhere, I think!

Happy Monday!

OK. So it doesn't feel like Monday to me. I've been working all weekend, which I don't normally do. I like to keep proper office hours for working - 9 til 6, Monday to Friday - or I think I would go crazy. I can't tell you exactly what I've been working on yet, but here's a sneaky peek of something I drew yesterday. Doesn't look like it from this picture but, ironically, I've been drawing car parts :-)!

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

The serious artist

Client: Ikea

I'm in a bit of a maudlin mood about work at the moment. I'm returning to a topic that preoccupies me to an unhealthy degree - what it is to be a true artist. I know that a lot of people who stop by my blog are illustrators themselves, so maybe you will understand what I mean when I say that I wonder sometimes if I'm an artist at all.

Client: Tesco

Client: Fiat

You see, I draw a lot of animals and car parts, and I animate run cycles and dog silhouettes, all on demand and for clients, not myself. It's what I have to do to make a living and a lot of the time it's quite fun. A lot of time is is soul-sapping. When the work isn't coming in thick and fast I have the chance to work on personal projects. And that's when I come unstuck.

I have impulsively signed myself up for the open studios event in North Wales, Helfa Gelf, with the intention of building up a body of my own, what I call 'proper', work before September. It's not that I have to be a painter or sculptor to take part - being an illustrator is just as valid, but I have yearnings to paint and to make more things with my hands and this is a good opportunity to push myself. To this end, I have started to think about what I really want to do, but right now I'm frozen with terror. It's that blank canvas feeling, you know?

It's been a long time since I've seriously sat down and thought about doing something entirely self-directed. What do I want to do? Who am I? What do I want to say? I used to use my sketchbooks at uni as a kind of repository for my 'streams of consciousness' ranting and self-loathing. I wrote much more than I drew in those sketchbooks. It was a way of procrastinating about producing any artwork at all; I was 'thinking'. I'm procrastinating right now by blogging my insecurities rather than addressing them practically.

I look at other artists' work and am preoccupied by a few questions. What is it that compels artists to do what they do; to choose to paint humans or landscapes or whatever? How do they make choices and decisions about where to make a mark, which colour to use, how big a canvas to paint on? How do they know if what they have done is any good? Or is it the case that whatever you do, you have to believe that it's good enough or no-one else will either. Where on earth do I start?


What I do know about myself is that I am obsessed by dead, stuffed, pickled animals, deformities, notions of conservation and preservation, education and display. I like reading about sideshows and freak shows, the circus and the zoo. I am not a serious person and I should value my ability to make people laugh. It's not easy when most 'real' artists seem to take themselves so seriously - am I too flippant to ever be an artist?

I wonder if any of you also feel like this, and what you do to inspire your own work, to give yourself a kick start when the inspiration and self-belief are running a bit low? How do you know if what you are doing is any good, or does that not matter? Please share your thoughts!

a few things for Friday

I really should stop shopping for a house that I STILL do not own. Grrrr... I can't help it, I'm sorry. It's driving me nuts, but I can't stop looking for lighting and sofas and chairs for my imaginary new home.

So today I thought I should share a couple of non-housey things instead.


Firstly, I took part in a Secret Valentine exchange, organised by the very sweet Alicia of Alicia Rose (website, blog, Etsy, Twitter). We were each given the address of another participant, and had to send something handmade to them for Valentine's Day. I received my gift from Alicia herself, and I was stunned by her generosity and the loveliness of her gifts. She is a talented embroiderer who makes images using her sewing machine (a technique I have never been able to master) and turns them into art for your walls, cushions, tote bags and all sorts of other goodies. I received some note cards, a lovely lavender sachet and two of her art pieces. Now I definitely want a nice house where I can display these!


In Karen's sewing world, this rabbit, temporarily named Konstantin, came into being as a birthday gift for the husband last weekend. I added the silly Russian hat because his head looked a little bare without anything, and the heart because he lacked colour. All very silly. He only speaks Russian and likes to eat borscht and dumplings.

Have a great weekend, all. I'll try to be a better bunny and do some drawing for the blog next week.

portraits from the museum

Just a few of the ladies and gentlemen I met last Thursday.




Sorry, I've not been particularly inspired to draw anything yet this week.

Manchester Museum and other stuff

Yesterday I decided to take a trip into Manchester for a bit of drawing fun, and to get out of the house. I've been working pretty hard for the last week or so, so it was a day off, if you could call drawing for nearly five hours in a museum a 'day off'. I visited the Manchester Museum to draw the stuffed animals and skeletons - one of my favourite subjects.


What fascinates me about them is not so much the animals themselves, but the way in which they are displayed, and the ideas of preservation, education and human curiosity that they represent. A lot of these animals were killed and collected for personal or scientific interest a very long time ago. To shoot some of these species just for your collection is now absolutely unthinkable, when so many are coming close to extinction. Similar ideas interest me about zoos - I have drawn many times in zoos but, whilst their ostensible purpose is to conserve and protect species, sometimes they make me acutely uncomfortable. These thoughts pervade some of my more formal work and I'm hoping that in the coming few months before Helfa Gelf that I will create a body of work that relates to it.


On more frivolous days, I imagine them having conversations with each other:
"So, how was last night?"
"Pretty wild, actually."

For lunch, I met up with the husband to check out the veggie cafe at the Eighth Day health food shop. We shared dhal and a Sri Lankan cashew nut curry, both with brown rice. Absolutely wonderful. They also have a delicious looking take-away at the main shop counter with all sorts of wraps and pies that made my mouth water even after we'd stuffed ourselves full of lunch. If you ever happen to be hanging around the universities in Manchester, this is the place to go (as long as you like high-fibre food!). They even have their own recipe section full of yummy looking dishes.

Have a good weekend!

New work

A sneaky peek at a still from the animation I've been working on for the last couple of weeks. Flying giraffes? Oh yes.

QUIT - Loony Lungs

You poor people who have to travel to work in the mornings might have picked up a copy of the Metro newspaper today and seen a feature in it about the Loony Lungs viral ad campaign, created by Saatchi & Saatchi X for the quit-smoking charity, Quit. The full article can be read here, in D&AD Behind the Idea. I was, with the help of my lovely agents at Jelly, the designer and animator for this campaign. It was a hoot making these!



Watch Sky Dive here on YouTube (links to the other two films can be found here too). Thanks to the people at D&AD and Metro.

Ikea Toy Stories

I illustrated a Facebook app for Ikea, called Toy Stories, just before Christmas. It's an interactive children's book game using five of the toys that are sold in Ikea stores. Basically, you pick a character and a story, and then you write the text to go with the pictures of each story. You can print out the story to keep, to colour in, or you can just save it for later. The husband wrote a hilarious one (at least I thought it was hilarious) for the jungle story.

It's got a few glitches in some of the illustrations but otherwise it's OK. A bit bright for me, but I enjoyed drawing it all the same.