LFW Sep2011 Illustrations for Amelia's Magazine Pt 1

I love illustrating London Fashion Week for Amelia's Magazine -- get such a mix of styles to work from and the hectic pace suits my way of working -- if I get a long time for a image it goes two ways: stale or perfect (but usually stale) whereas banging out two images in a few hours without really knowing what you'll be doing tends to inspire. Everything stays raw, which is how I like it, but working from images of polished, expertly designed clothes means that the rawness is tempered slightly.

Illustration of one of Toni & Guy's SS12 suite of styles, before I tarted the image up in PS.

I especially enjoyed working on Toni & Guy for this article by Matt Bramford, because drawing hair is one of my favourite things, and it's rare to get to focus on it. I agonised over the backgrounds and levels for about two hours, and you can see both final images over at the article, where they really belong. But I particularly liked the 'tall hair' as it came out of the scanner, which I've posted above... it's not the sort of thing that I'd submit to Amelia's as it's a bit too wonky, but I love it.

I did this image for a preview of Emesha by Amelia Gregory (in an hour, at the last minute), and really love it, even if my appreciation for Abigail Daker's work is a little too obvious (well, it is to me...). One cool unexpected benefit is that the model that I drew added me as a friend on Facebook. So, you know, I did something right.

Also did this image of Jasper Garvida for Alia Gargum's interview with the designer. I was chuffed to bits with the figure -- I didn't need to fuss with it or redo anything on it, it just formed there on the page. Trouble came when I added the background, because as try as I might it just didn't work for me. Which ultimately led to me temporarily returning to my old style of adding the background in afterwards for the rest of Fashion week.

I did some more preview ones earlier in the week and have also done a few more already, but will talk about those in a later post. In the meantime , go and read Amelia's Magazine because it's not just the articles that i've illustrated for which are amazing.

Portrait series - sole

Now that the Chelmsford Arts Trail is in full effect and I've got my display at Man About Town is set up (photos to come as ssoon as I find the camera cable...) I've decided to do a series of portraits of artists/people I admire. The first is sole, a rapper I've been a fan of for a long time now (about 10 years... goddamit I'm old).

I've posted my first attempt, which will probably act as a sketch and a lesson on how not to go wrong. For one, when I 'finished' it he still had he whites of his eyes, but without pupils looked a bit like a zombie. So I added pupils and any intensity in the portrait vanished. So, I filled in the whole of each eye and now it looks worse -- for one thing, there's a shape underneath the eye on the left of the frame that is eye shaped, so it looks like I've put  the eye lower down than I actually did. I'll probably do some work on the shirt, hair and beard next time too.

Anyway, thought I'd share. It's kind of what this blog's for, right?

#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.