The Gold Lady

Last week I was asked to produce an illustration that would run alongside a beer and curry night, the brief was fairly open giving me a lot of creative wiggle room, the criteria to fill; Indian and decorative.
Armed with the excuse of 'researching' I was happily absorbed for the next hour or so in a whirlwind of embroidered saris, sequinned bindis and pretty Asian ladies.

Composition wise I needed to leave enough blank space to accommodate the text that would explain the event but this would luckily balance out any heavy detail, allowing me to get trigger happy with henna inspired patterns!

I also had to bear in mind that I was going to need to turn my illustration into a life sized version for the accompanying wall mural.

 

This was the outcome and unknown to me at the time, the easy part. 

Next came the wall painting/drawing, not having actually drawn on walls before I was in the dark as to what the effect might be.. 

Despite a few misplaced smudges and smears needing to be fixed a face did emerge from the wall, a bit of a ghostly face to begin with, but a face none the less!

 

 

The picture above shows the organised mess that helped create her including; pens, pencils, paint, paint pens, paint brushes, gold ink and various unhealthy snacks.

And not to forget a final sprinkle of hand glued gems hidden amongst her jewellery and bodice to give her an extra bit of sparkle.

Bring on the wall

A short while ago I made up for 1/4 (not counting the much appreciated occasional extra helping hand) of team mural!

The challenge, set to Sarah aka Inkymole, was a seriously big wall, 15 metres to be roughly exact. The client; Briggs Hillier, a company responsible for creating retail environments for companies such as Schuh, Adidas, Harrods and River Island.

The mural was set to include all manner of objects relating to the company; from baby Nike shoes to the famous buildings that populate the various countries that they have worked in.

All fanned out around the keystone of the piece, a famous quote by Dieter Rams brought to life by Sarah's hand.

You can find a much more detailed explanation of her in-depth design process here.

Plenty to get stuck in with then.. The building itself was still in it's infancy with no main lighting and no stairs. Cue a rather ungraceful clamber to the first floor via ladder, feeling a little like I was entering some sort of giant industrial tree house.

Reporting in for painting duty and battling consecutive 12 hour shifts, despite breeze block not being the most co operative of canvases, the wall began to take shape!
 

Now for some 'look how hard we're working' action shots;

It was an exciting, tiring and educational experience, throwing up questions (perhaps down to the constant exposure to paint fumes) such as whether there was actually life outside of the wall and why does this drill I've drawn look like a pregnant goldfish?

Realising that I’d clocked in more hours with ‘the wall’ than I had with any other person that week and after having a particularly tricky run in with 'Moscow', it was luckily about time to call it quits.

And this is the final finished product, I think the wall's looking pretty content in it's newly transformed setting and we're pretty chuffed with it too!

It's alive!

All right on time for Halloween my spooky lady drawings have been birthed into the world of illustration, not quite kicking and screaming, but definitely with the odd hiccup along the way!

The final outcome is pictured below along with my initial rough sketches for the full 'here's one I did earlier' effect.

It's been a challenge getting the right balance of creepy vs pretty and also trying out loads of things I haven't drawn much of before such as glass, light reflections and water (I owe thanks to the saviours of Youtube for the extensive amount of  'how to' videos I got through for that last one..)

Hopefully I've managed to pull it off though, Happy Halloween!

Season of the Witch

With the spirit of Halloween firmly lodged in the brain, I’ve been designing a couple of illustrations to help celebrate the ‘feastivities’! In the meantime, here are some smaller cropped previews to eyeball over before the final images are fully revealed.    

The ‘Elixir of Immortal Life’ provides eternal beauty. Sadly enough for this pretty lady, upsetting the delicate balance of nature meant that she was forever cursed to have sinister forces prey on her unnatural youth, in an attempt to steal it from her and take it for their own.

 

Sirens may look all kittens and rainbows from first glance but their unearthly song is used to lure sailors and their ships to a gruesome demise. This particular set of ladies like to claim a souvenir from each of their unfortunate victims..

Finalised versions of these to come soon! 

London Part II

Following on from my previous post we also wandered on up to Hackney’s “Little Shop of Horrors” to view their array of intriguing curiosities! On arrival, we were met by an assembly of two headed teddy bears who graciously accepted our two pound admittance fee and ushered us inside.

What followed seemed to represent a jungle of oddities, large taxidermy bears awaited a tea party closely observed by two headed sheep. Whilst companionless dolls such as the unfortunately named; “Fat Homeless Helen”* looked on in hope of rescue. There was something for everyone, presuming that golden pig snouts and mummified dancing rats are on your Christmas list this year! Either way, I left feeling much more inspired for the ghoulish festivities of Halloween.

To follow was Somerset House which is currently housing the AOI Illustration Awards from the 2^nd through to the 27^th of October. Winning pieces included children’s books to the self initiated and more or less everything in-between.
 

A few of my favourites are pictured below alongside the accompanying wall mural that I particularly enjoyed! Despite my best efforts to remain unbiased and after an appreciative viewing of everything that was on offer, I inevitably gravitated towards the more fantasy based pieces, aswell as soaking up any portraiture based work on my way. This included a sneaky eyeful of sketchbook work and a sprinkling of animation before a quick play in the fountains sent us and our soggy shoes on our way.

*(For those interested, Helen remains homeless but hopeful to this day and arguably just as fat, depending on your perspective.)

London Part I

A trip to London at the weekend saw us skilfully dodge the bad weather whilst allowing us to explore the unchartered and often mystifying land that is otherwise known as a child’s imagination, courtesy of the V&A Museum of Childhood.

Equipped with a healthy helping of pain au chocolat we got a glimpse of exactly what children believe the future could hold for them. This was in the form of captions which were then illustrated by assigned ‘grown-up’ artists; the results were amusing, heart warming and occasionally terrifying!

A few snippets included “Yellow and red animals will be living on a world of rice”, “The sharks look silly. No tooth fairy for the sharks because they always brush their teeth” and the absolute and straight to the point gem, “Kangaroo is eating the future (banana shaped)”.

These are only a few of the many varied predictions, but I like to think that statistically speaking surely one of them must come true, right?

There’s more information on other events run by the Museum of Childhood here, http://www.museumofchildhood.org.uk/

Blustery Day

As autumn starts to creep forward so does the nostalgia of crunchy leaves and disobedient windswept hair, with this in mind, last weekend’s arty project seemed to fit hand in glove with this season.

Being asked to fill a salon window was a little daunting, but to be able to try alternate sizing’s and media was really exciting, luckily my more often used pencil’s weren’t too jealous and they enjoyed a well deserved Sunday off!

Sarah and Leigh kindly loaning me their wall for a test run helped to iron out any kinks or any lingering pre salon day jitters on my part, whilst giving us a better idea of how my image on the left would fit with Sarah’s floral lady on the right.

Armed with an array of paint, paint brushes and paint pens and fuelled by cupcakes we set about making our wild haired ladies come to life!

Sure enough amidst a few duck lips, HD brows and an ever patient Sarah my lady face started to emerge and after some skilful backwards typography the two lady faces were entwined together.

And after a hard afternoons graft this was the final result! 

A big thank you to Tom and Katie for donating their windows, you can find out more about their salon or information on where to go if you want to have a ganders at our lady faces at http://www.hairnation.biz/

To look at more of Sarah’s lovely work pop on over to her site http://www.inkymole.com/