Portrait Commission - Pepsi

portrait commission - Cassia

Miniature Schnauzers

A recent pet portrait commission. 

Process picture - pencil prior to adding watercolour:

Portrait Commission

part of a set of portraits commissioned by a lovely client in New York

Process pics

A few months back I completed a painting for a client in New York who commissioned a portrait reflecting the style of classical Hollywood.

I really loved working on it - it taught me to plan out my images beforehand, because I have always been someone who draws straight off in pen and ink without any kind of pencil guide, and I always felt like drawing in pencil first was somehow cheating (thanks, Aubrey Beardsley).

But actually, the longer the process of making something, the more room for discoveries to be made, and it's often where the best ideas regarding colour and composition have chance to step in.

Lately my process is: detailed light pencil sketch (focusing on areas of colour) > then watercolour > then add ink lines (sparingly). 

If I draw in ink before I watercolour the tendency arises to stay too strictly within the lines, and the colours can't interact as much. There is still plenty of room for improvement - I always feel that I could paint much more loosely than I do - but it's all part of the learning process.

 

first sketches

 

pencil and watercolour

watercolour, gouache + pen and ink

final piece

close-up

Portraits on Postcards

Edgar Allan Poe - SOLD

Billie Holiday - SOLD

Etta James - SOLD

Vivian Maier - SOLD

All postcards commissioned through my Portrait on a Postcard Project: http://bit.ly/18W3oTm

New Empress: The Stewardesses (1969)

An illustration for New Empress's B-Movie special, for an article on the 1969 film The Stewardesses

New Empress: The Violence in Silence

We've just got the new issue of New Empress in the post - now A4 sized, printed in b&w, with a glossy cover for the Silent Film Special. My illustration for Helen Cox's article "Slap That Baby Make Him Freak: The Violence in Silence" (about violence directed towards babies in silent-era films) was of a train about to hit a pram. I wasn't sent the article to work from (the brief was just to have a pram in a precarious situation) but oddly enough one of the first examples of infant-directed violence mentioned in the article involves a pram hit by an oncoming train. 

(Please note that no babies were harmed in the creation of this illustration.)

I also made a colour version too:

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

These are a few examples of illustrations I made a few months ago for a commission. 

The brief was to design a set of characters - Mr and Mrs Farmer, their son Junior, Grandpa, Mrs Farmer's friend and Mr Farmer's colleague, who all discuss the work required of a pharmacist, and what this entails. 

The client stipulated that they didn't want the characters to have any racial resemblance "to avoid an awkward choice". They wanted four double page spreads to convey four conversations between the characters.

I sent the characters, along with a storyboard rough to the client, after which they gave me the green light to continue. That led to these illustrations:

After they saw these illustrations, they changed their minds. Now they wanted green silhouettes based on stock photography instead of illustrated characters. And they needed them by the next morning. Really, I should have told them to find another illustrator at this point - I felt quite depressed thinking I would have to put my name to something so far removed from my own ideas. But I really needed the money, so I was in a bind. I duly sent over these images:

Surprisingly, given that I was asked to use stock photography, they found the silhouettes too "catalogue pose". The woman was too slim for their liking and because she was a pharmacist she wasn't supposed to be wearing jeans. Now they were asking for an illustration of Grandpa and Junior, which they wanted to be "generic yet stylised". It would have been much more helpful if they had sent some sample images of what they thought "generic yet stylised" meant. I sent over this illustration:

After this shocking image, they cancelled the project.

I didn't feel that I was taking huge risks - I was trying to create images that people could relate to - women having tea together, a boy playing with a ball with his grandad.

The client was asking for Grandpa to have a walking stick and for Junior to be in a wheelchair and for the main character Mrs Farmer to be overweight, and for none of the characters to have a racial identity. They were so afraid of offending people, and I found this really sad. I'm sure that people with disabilities don't need characters to be disabled for them to relate to them. And it is terribly patronising to expect a white person to fail to identify with the thoughts and ideas of a black person.

New Empress Magazine

I had a nice surprise in the post this morning...

Issue 3 of New Empress is now available from these stockists:

• The BFI Southbank shop in London.
• Wardour News in Soho, London.
• Cornerhouse in Manchester.
• The New Empress webshop.
• The Prince Charles Cinema, London.
• Riverside Studios, London.
• Watershed Media Centre, Bristol.

Art against knives

I'm currently working on a portrait project for Art Against Knives, a charity which sets out to "reduce the root causes of knife crime through youth-led arts initiatives that provide an alternative to violent gang culture":

Hey, is that you?

Here's a little teaser portion of my poster on the front cover of the special edition "Van Gogh Museum Friday Night Programme" issue of Unfold. 

And here it is at the front desk in the Van Gogh Museum!

A huge thankyou to Russell Joyce, Steve McCarron and the rest of the very talented team at Unfold, and to the Communication Department at the Van Gogh Museum for this commission. I loved working on it, and I learnt so much.


You can find out more about the Picasso in Paris (1900-1907) exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum here, and about the Friday Night events for the exhibition here.


You can find full coverage of the exhibition in Unfold, which can be found squirrelled away in any one of these gezellig Amsterdam establishments.

(above image: another of my illustrations from inside the issue)

Unfold

 This is for the new issue of Unfold - its out today, so if you're in Amsterdam, grab a copy! 

Its a wonderful poster publication featuring work by some very talented writers, designers and artists, covering  "what's on. where. when. why" in Amsterdam. 

(Here are some of the magical places where you can find a copy).

My illustration is for an article on Amsterdam's International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), the biggest documentary festival in the world (the little building reflected on the fly's body and wings is the Pathé Tuschinski, where the opening night and awards ceremony will be held.)

Thanks to my art director Russell Joyce at Unfold!