Sneaks and peeks

More Sneaky-peeking

Freddie and the Fairy

Here are the images I submitted for Waterstones 'Picture This' competition, the winner of which will get to illustrate 'Freddie and the Fairy' the new children's book by Julia Donaldson, writer of 'The Gruffalo'. For the first stage of the competition I needed to do a full 2 page spread (see above), and character sketches of Freddie, Bessie Bell the Fairy, the Fairy Queen and some of the animals that turn up in the story (see below). This was the picture that I showed a sneaky sample of a couple of posts ago.





The deadline was yesterday and after getting home from work sunday night I had to work through most the night to get it done in time to get it printed and travel to brentford to hand it in. I'm quite happy with the results. On Saturday 6th of June they will announce in The Telegraph the 6 illustrators that go onto the final stage to see who wins. It would be swish if I was one of them. Yup.

Another Sneaky-peek

Here is a picture of a tiny bit of a much bigger picture I'm working on. At the minute I'm working on a number of things that I don't really want to show too much of until they are finished, but I still want to be posting stuff, hence why this blog post and the last have been abit mysterious. Perhaps for the next 7 weeks as I get close to the end of my course this blog will mainly be one big tease. Who knows. I don't. To be honest I've got enough to be worrying about with out thinking too much about this kind of stuff. Its probably best to just see how things pan out I guess.

To sumarise: here is a little bird in a tree.

pixelation fun

Ive not posted anything on here for a bit so I thought I'd show a sneaky sample of something I'm working on. Ive zoomed into a low res version of it an I quite like how it looks when its all pixelated. Click the pic to see it big in all its pixelated shinyness. Bye.

Worse Things That Happen at Sea Again

The picture above was the very first picture I popped up on my blog. It was commissioned and drawn alongside "The Giant", (which I've recently redrawn, see my last two posts), by the lovely and swish Daydream Network (see here) for an exhibition of art in response to the credit crunch. Both were drawn on large boards with edding pens. The originals are no longer in my possession, and as I have no good photos of them I decided it would be worth redrawing them for portfolio purposes and because they were both images that I was very happy with. Ive already posted 2 different versions of "The Giant", and here are my recreations of "Worse Things Happen at Sea":

Here is the original uncoloured dip pen and ink drawing. Ive stuck fairly close to the original, the main differences being a change to a new character away from the originals Mr Bankerman, and an inclusion of rain to the stormy clouds. The original was about the size of a sheet of A1 paper, this remake was drawn at A4 size.


Here is the final coloured version. I tried to keep the colours fairly muted and simple as i didnt wanted to make the colour fight with all the busy pen marks. I'm happy with it, and feel ive managed to recapture everything that I was happy with in the original with a few extra tweaks to help it work. Ive been working on the newer, smaller piece on and off for a few days, overal it took more time than the original which I did in an afternoon and an evening.

Splashes and rain? Oh no! I hate being wet! A monster? yes.

Also while I'm talking about the Daydream Network, the new Daydream Network book, DD06, features one of my pictures alongside the work of many others artists and writers. You should consider checking it out. Its not up on the website to order yet but I'm sure it will be soon.

The Giant returns again: Redux

In this version I've tweaked the text to go along with the perpective. I think it helps the image. Not sure if it helps those who want to read the text. hhmmm.......

The Giant returns again

Here is another version of the giant picture. I tried in the original to give a sense of scale and perspective, but I don't feel it worked particularly well. This attempt isnt perfect but I'm happy with it. Overall I think the second version is the most succesful version. Yes.

The return of the Giant

Here is a new version of one of the first pictures that I posted on this blog, back in November last year. Because the original was a large drawing on board that i had no great pictures of, and that I no longer own, i thought I'd redraw it so that it could potentially be put in my portfolio. Above is the finished piece. Below is the original dip pen drawing.


Below is the original drawing that was done with pens on a fairly large scale.

A scribble boy

Oh, and photoshop said unto me "scribble and lo, a scribble boy shall appear", and I did an lo here he is. Yes? of course!