Cut-Click Mailart Exhibition, Cleethorpes

Just a quick post to say that I've done another envelope portrait for the travelling Cut-Click mailart exhibition (I talk about the first one HERE). The exhibiton will be up at Artlandinsh in Cleethorpes -- details are in the poster above.

The portrait this time is of Patrick R Donahoe, the current US Postmaster General. Whereas the subject of my earlier envelope portrait was John Stonehouse, who'd led a fascinating life featuring double-identities and faked deaths, which I built into the image, Mr Donahoe seems very boring. The biggest story around him is that he's inherited the US Postal Service at its weakest, poorest state, so I made an effort to include that. Here's the image:

New Year Update

Last year was amazing -- got really stuck into illustrations for Amelia's Magazine, resulting in my inclusion in Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration, The Intercorstal really came on strong (and Collider was made as a little standalone), I fell back in love with using watercolours, and one of my favourite pictures was done, for the travelling Cut-Click mailart exhibition...

And this year's already off to a flyer:

• I'm currently working on a miniature version of The Intercorstal which will make a mini- mini-comic, and I'll post some of those as I scan them.
• I've got some more Fashion Illustration to do for Amelia's this week.
• I'm waiting to get started on my part of a cross-channel Comic Art exhibition (which is what Collider was made for)
• I've just started work on a new portrait for the Cut-Click exhibition, which opens on the 1st Feb in Cleethorpes...which I'll elaborate on in my NEXT POST...

Anyway, wishing everyone a very Happy 2011, hopefully it'll be at least as good as 2010.

Cut-Click Printed Issue

Back in March I posted about having been invited to contribute to Cut-click's first printed issue. I had some of the postcards from St James Infirmary (still to be finished) featured back in Cut-Click 17, also.

Well, today I got an email from Caroline at Cut-Click with a copy of the proof for the printed issue attached, and I'm very exited. I'd submitted two portraits, one based on a photo of me and one based on a photo of my son Bill, and they went for the one based on me. I've posted my portrait of Bill here, right there, at the top of the page. I'll wait for the printed issue to come out before I post the other one.

Both portraits were a combination of my usual swirly detail style, but using faces as frames to work on rather than geometric patterns. I'm very pleased with how they turned out, and rate tham among the best stuff I've done. They took ages which is why I've dodged doing any more of them since...

Once it's printed and I've got a copy and it's available elsewhere I'll post again to remind everyone... for now, here's what to look for when you're out in the world (cover by Tigzy Rice)

Sketches for Cut-Click

I was asked earlier this month to provide an unpublished artwork for Cut-Click's first printed issue, and jumped at the chance. The brief was pretty open... A6 and portrait, which I misread as 'a portrait, A6 sized'. I did two portraits in the end, one of them a self portrait and one of my son Bill, and have sumitted them both, so I won't post either until the issue's out (if I've been accepted). However, before I settled on doing portraits of myself and Bill in the style that I did, I did a series of quick sketches to generate ideas... and here they are. I like some of these, they might crop up elsewhere.