A quick exploration of negative space and assumed negative space within this symmetrical image of a dude on a BMX. I love how art and design can take you on a journey beyond the obvious just by using colour and form. I’ve always been fascinated in the exploration of colour relationships and how colour can completely change to mood of an image, while fundamentally, the structure of the image or graphic stays exactly the same. Of course playing with these structure and exploring their dynamics usually leads to new and fresh ideas and keeps the creative juices flowing.
Art
The Day I was Vincent van Gogh
Yesterday, I was mostly being Van Gogh. I created this version of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ for my wife’s art classroom doors, ready for the new school year to start. It was a lot of fun to do. In doing so I felt that I got a taste of the energy and vibrancy that Van Gogh painted with. The mimicking of the technique and style was a lot of fun and it was interesting trying to interpret such a masterpiece. Certainly a lot of energy and verve within each brush stroke. Quite a limited palette too. That said, there is a lot of warm colours that aren’t immediately apparent when you gaze upon the actual painting. Anyway, I hope that I did it some justice. The funny thing is, I can also see my own style in there too. Hard to avoid to a certain extent. It’s amazing how much you can learn through the exploration of someone else’s technique. All good fun.
Codsall Middle School – Portrait Illustration Workshop 2018
Here are some of the images that the pupils at Codsall Middle School in Wolverhampton produced during a recent portrait illustration workshop. The images are derived from their own portrait photographs. They learned to look for dominant parts of their features to pull out their true character. These are a handful of the images that were produced on the day. It was hard to pick the images for this blog as they were all so very good. There were 138 year 6 pupils that I worked with on the day. The workshops were a lot of fun and I always love to see young people creating great imagery and learning new skills. I’m sure you will agree that these images are just fab.
A Carton Full of Creativity
A gif animation of the EMELBI Boi Carton. I love animated gifs. They’re great things to play with in terms of a quick bit of animated creativity. They make brilliant little adverts too.
Art is a Human Right
It absolutely is. Everybody has the ability to create and make art. Exercise your right to be creative. Exercise your right to make art.
All Stars Performing Arts Presents ANNIE 2017
I recently designed the ANNIE posters, flyers and social media promotional material for the forthcoming summer show by the All Stars Performing Arts school based in West Yorkshire. The show will take place at the Bradford Play House where tickets can be purchased via the Box Office.
Set in 1930s New York during the Great Depression, brave young Annie is forced to live a life of misery and torment at Miss Hannigan’s orphanage. Annie’s luck changes when she is chosen to spend Christmas with the famous billionaire Oliver Warbucks, at his grand Manhattan residence. Mr Warbucks is determined to find Annie’s parents. However, the spiteful Miss Hannigan has other ideas and hatches a plan to spoil Annie’s search… With its multiple Tony winning book and score, this stunning new production includes the unforgettable songs Hard Knock Life, Easy Street, and Tomorrow. Annie is a show for all the family to enjoy! So don’t miss the All Stars perform it! You can bet your bottom dollar you’ll love it!
Sketchbook Images – December 2016
Some quick sketches from a recent sketchbook. Number six was drawn by my 4 year old daughter. I added the kiss speech bubble. We work collaboratively some times. Children’s unbound creativity is a wonder to behold most of the time.
Gomersal Primary School – Creative Workshop 2016
Here are some of the images that have been created by the children at Gomersal Primary School in recent creative workshops. These will be added to the canvases that they have been working on for the last few weeks. Can’t wait to see the finished items.
I really love their use of blended digital textures incorporating their hand drawn portraits. Brilliant creativity.
Beardyman – God Damn I Look Fresh
A quick sketch of the Vocal Beatbox and Musical Noise genius Beardyman.
He posted a video this morning on his Facebook page running a little competition for fans like myself to get involved with. I freeze framed the video and made this image from the freeze frame.
Never heard of Beardyman. Why the chuff not? Check him out here… www.beardyman.co.uk
Art and creativity is everywhere. You just need to look for it.
Amazing Disgrace
It’s not united, but this is the state of America.
Story Time
I did a little illustration of my daughter having a hot chocolate before bedtime. We like a good bedtime story in our house. My wife and I collect children’s books, so there is always a good story to hand.
Sketch It!
Here are a recent collection of images. They are a mixture of hand drawn and digital art play.
Mr. Scoper
Nimble Line Bimble – 09.11.15
Bag Bandit B Boy
Nous Trois
Found this the other day. It’s a triptych of characters painted on board that I did back in 2007.
I’m not actually sure what happened to them or where they ended up, but I have always loved these characters.
Hue Too
Face illustration on A2 cartridge paper.
Berol Pen, Quink Ink, Posca Pen & Biro.
THE GIFt 2
Coffee Morning Sketch
A quick sketch with a bit of Photoshop play. Faces are just so expressive. They tell us so much about a person. Mood, intention, character, right up front. But sometimes it is more subtle. Micro expressions are harder to read, but they are there. You just have to look!
Earth Spirit
A quick pen drawing, digitally edited and coloured.
Rage Head
The Butterfly Effect
Hero Boy
New Illustration
Cartoon line boy, a super hero boy, equipped with a cape he’s a gold tooth boy.
He’s an out there boy, a real hero boy, a fine and dandy do it well and for the people boy!
Self Portrait
Spectrum
SPECTRUM
The trick is to be one!
Pen and Red Crayon
Salendine Nook High School – ‘I CAN’ Street Graphics Project.
In 2013, Salendine Nook High School won the Guardian Newspaper’s ‘School We’d Like’ competition and was awarded £5000 in prize money to revamp the Blue Tunnel, which is a key linking walkway between different buildings in the school. See the initial post from The Guardian… The Guardian – Salendine Nook: graffiti art project transforms old walkway.
I was approached by the school in the summer of 2013 and was asked to facilitate a creative project consisting of a series of workshops based around the title ‘I CAN’. These workshops began in autumn term 2013 and ran through to March 2014.
The initial workshops explored the history and culture of street art and graffiti and looked at the myriad of artists whose work adorns the street of the world’s urban spaces. Particular focus was placed upon methods, techniques, colour use, image placement and characteristics concerning each individual artist’s approach and style.
We looked at everything from the huge typographic scrawls and intricate lettering styles of graffiti and the continued development and evolution of graffiti culture, to Wheat Paste posting, the Knit The City phenomenon, Banksy, The London Police, Shepard Fairey and many more.
The creative workshops were designed to produce a range of strong graphics, which were either hand drawn, painted, developed from photographic elements, made using collage techniques and indeed a mixture of all these modes. Strong emphasis was placed on different drawing techniques designed to loosen up the creative process and produce an unexpected quirkiness in the resulting graphics.
Students also explored the use of the light box to trace images in order to develop quick and strong graphic styles and to experiment with composition. There was also an emphasis on the significance of mark making, constructing textures using paint splats, printing with inked bubble wrap and other interesting found materials.
Sponged ink marks and small hand drawn elements like arrows, swirls, cross-hatching and all sorts of shapes and patterns were created in the exploratory process.
Out of the mass of graphics that were produced in the workshops, the students started to get a real and definite idea about which images they wanted to use in their final artworks.
The imagery was then scanned at high resolution and prepared for layering and colouring using Photoshop CS6. This allowed the creative process to be further investigated resulting in the impacting and beautiful graphics that were produced in the student’s final pieces.
The project was a wonderful journey of creativity from beginning to end and a lot of fun was had along the way.
I think the resulting artworks speak for themselves.
Check out the Guardian article here… The Guardian – How street art can boost learning and community engagement in schools.
This was a super project commissioned by the Guardian and funded by Zurich Municipal.