My Desk: A Productive Day

It's been a while since I did a My Desk update so I thought I'd do one now, on a day where I'm full of caffeine and glucose and being productive! So what have I been doing today?

1. 
   
   Making Roughs: Three (well, two and a half) of the roughs for the kid's books I'm doing. I'll probably be starting on the final artwork this weekend for the first book. Whoop!


2. 
   
   Zombie Stuffs: Extra pages for the soon-to-be-published-again Brains Etc. with all new pages! Having fun coming up with extra goodies for the book and getting ready to scan and reformat everything. Hopefully it'll be worth it!


3. 
   
   Visual Stimuli: Rather than listen to music today, I was in the mood for some horror films while I worked. Having already watched The Blair Witch Project while drawing cute animals, I'm ready to watch Ginger Snaps (a guilty pleasure film) and attempt to watch a recent purchase, Yo-Yo Girl Cop.


4. 
   
   Energy Drink: I look forward to the coffee-followed-by-a-Lucozade-chaser comedown later in the day.


5. 
   
   Making Key Rings: Work to be done for 2011 B.C on Saturday! An excessive amount of number 4 means shaking hands and scissor fun.

More Emirates work!

I'm never disappointed with the briefs I get for the Air Emirates in-flight kid's magazine; here are a couple of the latest pics I got to do. I really like doing the big pictures with lots going on - especially when I'm told to draw lots of cute animals! :P

I really enjoy this job; I just wish it was a monthly gig instead of quarterly but it's always something I look forward to doing!

Tattoo Design!

I got a very exciting commission a while back to design a cute, Japanese-themed tattoo for someone. I really enjoyed doing this and hope it turns out well! I'll be posting pictures when the lovely lady who commissioned me has it done :D

Awesome New Toy!

I'm a huge book fan, but have more than my little house can hold. Most of my precious tomes are up in the loft and I will admit to hanging onto stuff I don't really need more often than not! I made the decision to buy a Kindle so I can continue to buy graphic novels, art books and kid's books but get novels electronically. I have to say, it's bloody brilliant; I've already got over 100 books on it and you get can tons of free books for it. There's a lot of stuff that's very cheap, mainly older sci-fi and fantasy but that suits me fine! Here's a look at my new toy:

Brains Etc. looks pretty good on the Kindle, which bodes well for the digital version being published soon! It's quite a flexible little gadget and I can't stop playing with it. Of course, it's easier to spend more money on books because they download straight away. But it's worth it! Here's a look at some of the books I'm reading at the moment:

I love the Conan film with Arnie and even though I'm not huge into fantasy, this is pretty good. I sometimes find fantasy a bit hard going but pulp master Robert E. Howard makes for an enjoyable sword and sorcery romp!

Another classic series by Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is a quieter hero than Conan but the adventures he get into are dark and creepy and I like the pacing. Good pulpy action and very atmospheric.

I've just discovered this guy and don't know how I didn't know about him, being a big Lovecraft fan. I'm already enjoying his work and I've only read two stories so far; one about a sorcerer who kills and dismembers his brother (who's also a wizard) only to have the limbs come back, re-form and kill him. This is looking good already!



I just read this for the first time and WOW. What an amazing book. Two men on holiday discover a strange pit and the remnants of a house in Ireland and soon find a journal that belonged to a recluse who used to live in the house. His story is disturbing and almost unbelievable - the house seems to sit on a gateway between dimensions and the man is soon driven mad by attacks from strange pig creatures, time and space start to meld together and no-one else seem to experience quite what he does. Brilliant sci-fi/horror that kept me reading because I NEEDED to know what was going to happen! There's an amazing few chapters where the man experiences time speeding up to where minutes become thousands of years and the universe ends that just left me in awe. Awesome work from William Hope Hodgeson and I can't wait to read more of his stories.

What I love about the Kindle is that all of the above were either available for free or entire collections of the authors work where under £3.00. Money well spent I think. Time to get my sci-fi on! :P

Rorys!

I had a fun commission to draw Rory Williams from Dr Who over the weekend. Here he is in his normal and Centurion form!

Dog-Bot!

HAL

A while ago I was asked to do some robot designs for a website where computer programmers can test their skills on a variety of tasks/games. They wanted a robot character named HAL that would act as a kind of advancement marker for players as they used the site. HAL would start off as a crappy robot but as programmers progressed through various levels completing different tasks, you could get upgrades and new parts for HAL until you reached his ultimate form. I thought this was a neat idea and had some fun designing new heads for HAL that corresponded to different games. Actually, I don't need much persuasion or excuse to draw a robot so I was happy from the start! :P

Manly man illustration samples!

I recently had the opportunity to do some samples for a possible illustration job with Harper Collins which was really cool. Unfortunately, I didn't get the gig but enjoyed doing something I wouldn't ordinarily have done. The work was for an up-coming humour book about men and their quirks. Luckily, I live with a man who isn't a total stereotype in this department so I didn't have to base any of this on real-life experience! I enjoyed drawing the BBQ guy in the top picture and the magazine with boobs on it in the bottom one :P

More Exciting Things In Art Town!

Well, no-one can say that this last month hasn't been eventful! I've just found out that as of next week (hopefully) I'll be starting on a series of 4 children's activity books for Carlton Publishing, the lovely people I worked with for the NRM activity book I illustrated at the end of last year. The books are aimed at younger children and sound like a lot of fun. I'll be able to post more info when I hear from my awesome art director later in the week!

Another rather exciting piece of news is that I will be taking part in an exhibition in December, organised by myself and the uber-talented James Stayte and featuring four other amazing artists. We are just getting things sorted at the moment, including promotion, but the show will be held at the Centrespace gallery in Bristol. No doubt I will be pimping this like nobody's business as soon as we get started!