I've Moved!

My new blog is here: drawosaur.wordpress.com

Portfolio Selection

I've had a few enquiries regarding commissioned work recently, so in this post you can view a small selection of work from my general portfolio.  Click on the images to see them bigger.  A good guide on how to request work from an illustrator can be found here. 

Film using 2D puppetry to illustrate a pop song by The Divine Comedy.
View it at http://tinyurl.com/BillyBirdFilm
See how it was made at http://tinyurl.com/BillyBirdProcess

 A shadow puppet film. View it at http://tinyurl.com/LaikaFilm

Paper-cutting. All my cuts are made by hand with a scalpel.

Detail of paper-cut.

Paper-cutting.

Made for a project about WW2, coloured digitally.

Made for a project about Land Girls, coloured with acrylic paint.

Pages from my sketchbook, pen and wash.

Drypoint etching.

Monotype prints.

A wedding invitation.  Featuring a selection of things that are meaningful to the couple: their family backgrounds are Russian and Maori, and they got engaged in Paris.

Season's Greetings card, coloured with pencil.

Examples of life drawing sketches.

How the Old Empires Did at London 2012

Here's a bit of fun, if you're interested in history and organising things into tables. Which is much more my cup of tea than watching sport, to be honest.

My dad wanted to know where the USSR would stand in the final medal table, if it was still a country today. The 15 independent post-Soviet states, which seceded from the USSR in 1991, are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. (See if you can guess which of those spellings I had to copy and paste.) They all sent teams to London 2012.  Here's what we came up with:

click on the image to see it full size

At London 2012, the USA won the most medals: 46 golds and 104 medals altogether.  So in this imaginary scenario, the former Soviet Union would slide into the top spot, with 47 golds and 164 medals in all.

EDIT: A shot-putter from Belarus has had her gold medal revoked and a Russian athlete has moved up from bronze to silver accordingly. Amendment to the table:
Russian Federation:  Gold 24, Silver 26, Bronze 32, Total 82
Belarus:  Gold 2, Silver 5, Bronze 5, Total 12
Former USSR:  Gold 46, Silver 45, Bronze 72, Total 163
So in our scenario, USA and USSR draw with an equal number of golds, although the Soviets still come out on top with 163 medals in all.

~o~

After we'd worked that out, I wondered how the medal table would look if various countries still belonged to the Victorian British Empire. This was slightly more complex to work out, because the Empire fluctuated a lot over time, so I selected countries that were part of the Empire in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympic Games. (This means we must leave out Kuwait's bronze medal, as Kuwait came under British protection in 1899. Actually many of the 'from' dates in the table are imprecise for historical reasons, but they're good enough for this purpose.)

click on the image to see it full size

A smash hit, as the British Empire knocks the spots off all comers: 55 golds and a whopping 185 medals in total.  The vast population the Empire had to choose from would, however, give them a massive advantage.  Although Victorians would've been perfectly happy with the headstart this would give Britannia in the fields of trade and industry, they might have recognised that in the world of sport, this wouldn't really be fair play (see Caveat 1).

EDIT:  Because of the news item above, New Zealand have had a silver upgraded to a gold.  Amendment to the table:
New Zealand: Gold 6, Silver 2, Bronze 5, Total 13
Empire: Gold 56, Silver 56, Bronze 73, Total 185

~o~

Caveat 1: As my dad pointed out, the British Empire has never actually competed as a single entity: in the first Games, athlete Edwin Flack was listed as Australian; Cypriot results were counted as wins for Greece. In the 1936 Games, Canada and India entered as separate National Olympic Committees. So there's no point in time when all these medals would really have counted for Team GB, or Team BE.

Caveat 2: Obviously independence and self-determination are a Good Thing, so I don't want anyone thinking I made this table in a flurry of nationalistic nostalgia. Certainly it's a triumph for Jamaica that their runners have done brilliantly in their 50th year of independence, and it would be in poor taste to try and nab those wins for Queen Victoria. I just think it's interesting to see whether current medal behemoths USA and China could be beaten if other countries clubbed together. A hypothetical historical puzzle!

Cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park

I used two images for reference here.  I found a picture of codebreakers busy at work, and the layout of their desk reminded me of an Evelyn Dunbar picture, which has a much more interesting composition.  So I tipped up the perspective and painted it this way as a tribute.

There seem to be very few photos of Bletchley Park around -- for obvious reasons -- and the ones that exist look quite staid and unexciting.  I suppose if an official government photographer was there, everyone would be on their best behaviour.  The written stories and sketches are far more vivid and full of life and humour.  I think photographs aren't going to be much use to me for this section.  I'm also aware that I should make some more dynamic 'action' pictures, which might be tricky for BP because it was mostly people sitting around doing office work, or standing monitoring big machines... and I'm aware that if I only illustrate the more colourful incidents, that would give quite the wrong idea about the place.  I need to try to strike a balance between interesting and correct.

Cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park

Evelyn Dunbar, 'An Army Tailor and an ATS Tailoress' (1943)

Evacuee Teatime

Anne Norris was awarded the British Empire Medal for looking after evacuees from London.

Advice on Line and Wash

This discusses some of the issues raised in the previous post:

"Line and Wash:  This is probably the most common combination of media in use in children's book illustration, allowing as it does for so many different approaches to drawing and colour.  The balance between the respective roles of the line and the wash will vary greatly from one illustrator to another.  In some instances the line will be used to convey most of the information, including tonal values, with colour being used as a flat background that would make little sense on its own.  By contrast, other artists will describe most of the form of the image with washes and use the line only to strengthen and clarify.  It is important to be clear about the balance between these roles as they can duplicate each other, leading to an image becoming fussy and overworked.

"The colour of the line is important, too.  It may be black, if you intend to give the drawing greater prominence, or you might choose to use a neutral-coloured line to play it down a little in relation to the colours in the washes.  Alternatively, you might use different-coloured ink lines for different areas of your design, blurring the boundaries between drawing and painting, and bringing elements forwards through the use of warmer colours.

"A perennial problem with line and wash is what sort of paper to use.  A surface that takes a line really well is rarely ideal for a wash, while a good watercolour paper is usually too soft and absorbent to take a line well.  I find that the best compromise is a stretched hot-pressed watercolour paper, or a thick, good-quality drawing paper."

from Illustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury (2004), pp44-45

Trench Kids

watercoloured

pencil under-drawing

Children sheltering in a trench during the Battle of Britain over
the hop fields of Kent, 1940. Photo by John Topham

It's so many years since I used watercolours, I felt a bit apprehensive, but I think this has come out all right.

- The blue of the middle boy's jumper was far too strong and knocked everything else out of balance, but I've toned it down a bit with glazes of white. I'm looking forward to doing loads more pictures because by the end of it I'll probably be much more confident with both watercolour paint and using colour.

- I thought the drawing looked a little bit manga, a bit Studio Ghibli in the faces, but it looks less so now that there's colour.

- This is on cold-pressed paper (the difference between cold-pressed and hot-pressed paper).  The painted areas look nicer and the pebbly texture is appropriate for the dug earth.  But I think if I'm working in fine detail, it would be better to do most of my work on smooth hot-pressed paper.

- What to do about the lines?!  I'm wondering whether to go over all the lines with black ink.  I like the delicate quality to the image as it is, but I'm worried that the forms are getting a bit lost.  I have a good command of line, I'm much better at line than colour.  Some of my favourite illustrators like Janet Ahlberg, Axel Scheffler and Helen Oxenbury would go over it in ink.  But the problem with ink is that once it's done, it's done; no going back.  I could spend a whole day on a picture, put on black lines and then realise it's wrecked.  So I think I'm going to do a few more watercolours first and then decide whether overall, as a group, they'd look better with ink.

Framed Dino-Commission

Look!  This is an Etsy commission I did back in April.  It shows a little girl and three things that she loves: ballet, T-Rex and her toy monkey, Angus.  The client went to a bric-a-brac shop with her god-daughter and got a vintage frame, then they spatter-painted it together and framed the picture.  She just sent me this photo.  The marks remind me of wildflowers, and I like how the neat, careful illustration contrasts with the vibrant, spattery frame.  Lovely stuff.

Making It Happen!

Here's my crowdfunding site. I'm so happy, seven people have contributed on the first day!  It makes me feel even more determined to make a good exhibition: I want to do them proud.

You can contribute anonymously, or... onymously and leave a comment.   You can also choose whether or not to show how much you contributed.  Everything's in US dollars, but I've calculated some UK pounds conversions and put them on there.  You can also choose a 'Perk', free gifts, incentives for leaving certain amounts.  It was a bit hard to choose Perks that wouldn't eat into the overall budget (I'd rather give anything left over to charity, really) but I hope I've thought up some nice ones.

So please: share the link and help me get the word out!

Imperial War Museum Photos

Earlier this month, I was in London visiting my friend Chris.  I took the opportunity to do a bit of museuming.  The Imperial War Museum didn't have very much about codebreaking -- mostly their Secret War exhibit focuses on spies -- but I did enjoy the exhibition of WWII portraits, People's War.  There was a portrait of a desert rat that made me think of my granddad.  The new Family in Wartime exhibit is not as interesting as the old Children's War one, though, but I'm glad they've put several Evelyn Dunbar paintings in there, her work is wonderful.  Here are some photos and sketches from my day out:

opposite the British Museum: Randolph Caldecott's house is now a bookshop

Imperial War Museum

from a display with quotes and pictures related to the blackout -- I keep stumbling upon this cow photo!

so many mid-C20th illustrators also created arresting war art.  This is a harrowing drawing by cartoonist Ronald Searle (St Trinian's, Molesworth).  Ronald Searle drew fellow POWs in secret. Many of his pictures have a corner chewed off because he was so hungry and just wanted to eat anything.

postcard of a poster from WWI

this is from 'the Trench Experience' exhibit. I'm not sure if these pics of the models are bad taste or not. I had to do them in b&w because the lighting was so low, but it does make them look like I'm trying to fake real photos.

the models had creepily detailed faces and injuries

some quick doodles I did - sandbags

evacuees

blackout clock