Scaling the shelves

The lovely people at Management Today asked me to create an illustration about certain successful independent products doing well in supermarkets. Obviously it's not easy for these small companies, so I decided to show their products literally climbing the shelves.

First I started with a pencil line drawing on some stretched watercolour paper. When there is lots of detail involved sometimes I work up an acrylic underpainting to establish the tonal values and effectively seal the drawing so it doesn't disappear when I apply watercolour. However I did actually shade certain areas in pencil beforehand because the medium offers more control and I can erase my mistakes!


With the acrylic underpainting I concentrated on the background to try and set this back from the characters.


The finished illustration with watercolour and gouache over the acrylic underpainting.

That's one greedy bunny...

Here's some artwork.

After asking the Art Director I can now show you some artwork for the BBC audiobook (see previous post). The top image is my illustration done hopefully in a similar style to the two below. After studying the previous covers I decided to work up an acrylic underpainting to imitate the use of ink and then block in with watercolour.

The Further Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Audiobook

I have no idea when this audiobook will be released, it is on pre-order at the moment but I'm unashamedly going to get a copy myself because I did the cover illustration. Maybe that's a bit self-indulgent but it is my first cover.

I was asked to create an illustration in the style of the previous three books in the series. This was something I've never done before but enjoyed the challenge immensely.

Still Life No. 01

7" x 10"

In reading Eric Fortune's blog I came across a passage that said something along the lines of 'doing a still life painting helps to improve your technique.' Good idea I thought, so here's my first ever still life in watercolour! Inbetween my other projects I hope to keep this up, I reckon by choosing a wide variety of objects it should help me depict an array of surfaces more convincingly.

ArtOrder Challenge 'Rust'

12 x 15 1/2

FINISHED!! Still not sure if I like it or not but I did enjoy painting it so maybe I do!? I'm happy with the text border mainly because I got to try out the massive lightbox I was given by a friend - cheers Richard.

ArtOrder Challenge, Progress Shots

An illustration to accompany the quote, "A sword, a spade, and a thought should never be allowed to rust."

Below are the initial compositional sketch, final drawing on stretched paper and then a days painting at the bottom:
The background is close to finished, but I might add a suggestion of golden light seeping through the mist. I'm wanting to make the crows, leaves and sword spade combo really punchy!

This is probably bad luck...

This little fella featured on the Christmas cards I sent out last month (yes I know!). Even though we are well into the new year I still thought I should post this.

Note to self: No walking under ladders, avoid cracks in the pavement and definitely no umbrella opening indoors.

The Unfortunate Career Of Stede Bonnet, 1688-1718

10"x 23"

This watercolour has been used as the artwork for the debut album by The Shudders. I'm very pleased with it, some good reference definitely helped, so much so I've posted it to the Spectrum to be considered for annual 17. It's my first entry so fingers crossed! I've also attached the working drawing so you can my original composition. I pretty much went from the drawing to getting reference and starting on the final piece. Some of the highlights and pastel colours were worked back in with gouache at the final stage.

A Sneaky Peak

Here's a small sample of a painting I was working on in the last few days. Its actually part of the artwork for the new album by The Shudders. Once again the scan doesn't quite do it justice (I've got to find a scanning service in Swindon) and there's also a bit of a peculiar twist to the image which I guess will be revealed on the launch night next month.

More News:

Its official, I'm on Wikipedia!* I didn't write about myself in a drunken fit of egotism, honest, it's all down to the man who bought my Percy Vear painting last week. Unbelievably the grandson of Percy Vear (who is also called Percy Vear... is this getting confusing? ) walked into the gallery and purchased the watercolour, since then I've been in contact with Percy and he offered to link me into the Percy Vear page on wikipedia.

*Sadly the page was removed because I'm not a person of note which is very true. However the administrator accused me of authoring the article which is not true and then went on to insult me. Does his/her action deserve my response? No.

Even More News:

I was delighted last month to work on my first BBC Audiobooks cover. The piece was designed imitate the style of the previous cover illustrations - I will post the image when I can.