And Now For Something Completely Different...

Last year I had the pleasure of working for Facility Management World Magazine. The brief was to create an illustration made up of 13 reasons to look forward to 2013 if you work in the facilities sector such as, award winning developments, the momentum of the Olympics and renewable energies. Each reason had to be illustrated and then group together on a (nearly) isometric platform. I had a lot of fun with a pencil working out how to group everything together into a coherent composition and by the time I had a suitable drawing the Art Director decided he wanted it to go on the cover. Smiles all around and then the thought, I hope I can pull this off!  

I powered up Adobe Illustrator on my laptop and got to work tracing out the platform, painstakingly trying to keep the perspective tight. After that it was into Photoshop to add colour on separate layers so I could adjust the colour schemes easily. I ended up with orange (above) and green (below, just in case you're colourblind).

Next came the figures which I sketched out in pencil then finished off in Photoshop and then arranged with the appropriately coloured shadows in the illustration. In the end I had four versions to show the magazine, orange, green, orange with sparkly bulbs on '2013' and green with (you guessed it) sparkly bulbs on '2013'.

In the end FM World went with the orange illustration with bulbs on and I think they made 2013 black. I now know if I get asked to do something similar again I won't have any problems.

Competition Deadlines

January seems to be a very popular month for competition deadlines. Here are a few that might be of interest:

Spectrum 20, deadline 25th Jan. For Sci-fi, Fantasy and Imaginative Realism artists

Royal Watercolour Society Competition, deadline 18th Jan. Anything type of water-based painting, the finalists are exhibited at the Bankside Gallery in London.

House Of Illustration/Folio Society Book Illustration Competition, deadline 22nd Jan. You may have seen previews of my entries for this competition to illustrate 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley. I wish I had known about the previous two competitions.

Art Renewal Center Salon, 21st Jan . Multiple categories and huge exposure. The finalists are a who's who of contemporary realism artists.

International Artist Magazine 'People & Figures', 16th Jan. There is a different competition every other month, finalists receive editorial exposure in the magazine.

There And Back Again

Happy New Year!

Put simply, the main reason I work in watercolour is John Howe.