#A1Winnie Progress

First picture I took after spending about three hours pencilling and erasing.

Hot on the heels on #A1Alan comes #A1Winnie, which will be my display piece at Man About Town Barbers during the Chelmsford Arts Trail. Here's some WIP pics...

Sometimes I wonder why I decide to draw this way...hand cramp after three quarters of an hour.

I call this area 'The Book Of Eli' because it took the entirety of that film to get done. The film's OK, BTW.

Intercorstal: Open Call for Assistance

As part of my Arts Trail work, I had intended to get a new, site-specific version of The Intercorstal done. However, time's now running out and I've not made a lot of progress.

The intention was to use photos of my venue (the wonderful Man About Town Barbers) and overlay them with panels to make the comic, much as I did for 'Valentine' and the recently completed 'Witches'. I've got the photos, I've just not got time to do the drawing.

Which gave me an idea... Could I outsource the work? There are one or two people out there who 'get' the Intercorstal, or who are interested in Abstract Comics in general, so could I get them to do one or two pages each? Which is where this request comes in.

Would YOU like to do a page of the Intercorstal? All I can offer in return is a copy of the printed comic, full credit, and the chance to work on something fun that you might not have done before.

If you do want to help, please email me at: gareth@grthink.com

I'll send you a JPEG for you to work on, you do some stuff and send it back to me. You'd have to work pretty fast -- any entries not returned by the 5th won't make it in, unfortunately.

If you do happen to be new here, some pages from the Intercorstal can be found here: INTERCORSTAL BLOG

Any takers?

Dumbassery

Edit, Monday Morning: This is all cleared up now, and the illustration's going to be used. Doesn't make me any less of a dumbass, but does make me feel a little better.

On Friday afternoon I picked up a callout from a new writer for Amelia's Magazine called Caitlin Sinclair, but managed to miss the deadlne of Sunday afternoon for the simple, amateur, dumbassy reason that I thought the deadline was Sunday night.

The illustration was for a review of a kind of walking-tour theatre show up in Edinburgh called Blood and Roses -- it sounds really interesting, so I'm looking forward to reading the review. Here's the illustration I did, above.

I hate missing deadlines, or producing work that isn't up to par. Those are the things that I live in fear of as an illustrator. I've worked pretty hard to build a reputation for getting things doen quickly and well for Amelia's, so to have fluffed it now is gutting. My best and only excuse is that I've got quite a lot on my plate with Arts Trail stuff at the moment, becasue I've only got two weeks left to do the mega-sized picture of Winnie for Man About Town, and figure out a way to display it.

One thing about this illustration -- it's yet another example of me not having a single style. I mean, I've probably got a 'signature' style, with the swirly black lineart I do most of the time in my personal work, but when it comes to editorial and fashion illustration I seem to be all over the place. I suppose that could be a good thing... at least it keeps doing these illustrations fun and unpredictable.

Chelmsford Arts Trail Poster

Me and a few other artists on this year's Chelmsford Arts Trail were asked to do some posters. The brief was pretty open -- we just had to include the title 'Chelmsford Arts Trail', the dates of the trail, and limit it to two colours + white. I went with Marconi, who pioneered radio from Chelmsford, and despite the fact he was a massive fascist, is still kind of a local hero.

My face, in a photo, in a newspaper

A couple of weeks ago I went down to Hoola in Chelmsford to meet some of the other guys on the Chelmsford Arts Trail, and have our picture taken for the Essex Chronicle, and today I found the picture in the paper. I'll be honest, I'm pretty pleased with how the picture came out, I was expecting... I don't know. Something different.

Also, despite my limp wrist, I managed to have my photo taken reclining on a bean bag without looking too camp. Great success.

Latest work for Amelia's Magazine (August/July 2011)

I've been really busy lately, working on the large Alan Moore portrait, working on prep for my final piece for the Chelmsford Arts Trail (I'm doing a portrait of a bulldog called Winnie), as well as finishing my submission to Ballad Of's Little Book Of Horrors and doing a poster for the Chelmsford Arts Trail... but I've still managed to squeeze in a few images for Amelia's Magazine.

Oh, and that's on top of doing flyers for Paul Foot's Jigsaw attempt at Stepney City Farm and Folkestone's A Town Unearthed projects...

Here's a quick round-up of the ones that I remember doing... (in no particular order)

Illustration for Amelia's review of the documentary Just Do It.
This is an illustration of a scarf by designer Lucy Jay, from an interview with Howkapow. (Lucy was kind enough to mention the illustration I did on her blog).
Jean Paul Gautier at Montreal's Festival Mode et Design
A fashion illustration for luxury brand Dagmar's AW 2011 collection.
This is a scarecrow I did some Intercorstalling to for an article about Scarecrows at Hampton Court Flower Show
This is a flower I Intercorstalled for an article about Flower Trends at Hampton Court Flower Show.

#A1Alan, finished!

*UPDATE* 13th August -- Me and my wife Amy went to see Stuart at Man About Town this afternoon because I'd forgotten to add a signature to the picture, and when we got there it was hanging in the doorway... so chuffed with myself, and so grateful to Stuart, Jordanna and everyone at Man About Town.

So, I finished the big picture of Alan Moore in plenty of time, and have dropped it off to Stuart at Man About Town for him to take to V Festival and display at his pop-up barbers. There's not much to talk about in regards to it, so here's 12 of the many pictures I took as I went. They should be in order, to show what happened when.