Happy Easter

Here is one of the drawings I did to show the people at The Great British Card Company last week:

Instead of eating chocolate all day today I am curled up in my grandad jumper doing a combination of dissertation, 100 page report and possibly some circus drawing for the opticians! 

How is everyone elses easters going?

Get Your Commercial Head On

I have spent the past four days doing a work placement at The Great British Card Company in Gloucester. All year I have had people asking what I will do when I finish this summer and the thought terrifies me so this was an opportunity to learn more about the commercial world of illustration and how I can make my work more sale-able!

I spent my time working with In house illustrators Carly and Simon who quickly showed me that I have no clue about what is considered "commercial" by the general public... With their help I managed to create a range of cards with careful consideration about how to make them appealing to the masses whilst also still using my strengths and my own personal style.

It was a definite learning curve, and even if I don't go into this industry I feel a lot more knowledgable about commercial card design and the range of skills used. I also got to play around with the foiling machine and flitter (glitter) to add extra bits to my cards. However cringy and girly it sounds I did love doing it! (and the glitter is still all over me...) 

In the end I managed to make 4 card designs and 6 gift wrap designs, heres a few samples! The balloon is my favourite, hoping to make a couple of cards to go with that one, my eyes started to blur today from too much Photoshop so I didn't get to finish it. 

These both have glitter and foil but it is pretty impossible to photograph well...

Ballooooons!

The Great British Card Company

So tomorrow I am off to Gloucester to do a 4 day placement with Paperhouse at The Great British Card Company. I had been putting off doing the prep work because I couldn't choose a theme for my cards, I settled on birds but still found it hard to start. I think because I am quite worried about what they want from me... it is a little strange going in with such an open brief and for once I was really nervous about my ideas...

Here is part of one of the visuals I made-bit different to anything I have done before and it isn't quite finished but I hope to get some feedback tomorrow!

24 Hour Comic (oops)

So I posted about the 24 hour comic I did in my other blog by accident... oops... not sure how to change it over so please check it out here!

Heres a couple of the edited pages which I have been Photoshop-ing today:

If anyone knows a good place for printing black and white comics cheaply let me know! Hoping to sort out getting them done for Bristol Artists Book Event

London Drawings

I went on a research trip to London with my friend Jess a couple of weeks ago, we did a lot of drawings in the V&A and Tate modern, was really nice to chill and do fun drawing for a change :)

We are planning on making some kind of book/zine with the sketches we like to sell at Bristol Artists Book Event in April so I have been playing around with sets of images, heres a little preview, let me know what you think, am wondering if some of them might work as t-shirt designs!

You can see some of Jess's lovely drawings over here

I do love a bit of circus

I haven't put much up here in a while because I have been working for the past few weeks on a pretty big project. I have been commissioned along with two others on my course to design the walls of Plymouth Universities new optometry centre.

It is all pretty exciting and I have managed to turn it into an excuse to draw a lot of circus performers and animals wearing glasses!

Here are a couple of preview images, I don't want to give too much away until it is all finished and ready.