Here we go again! Another giant-sized bundle of jobs...
At various points this year I have been busier than I have ever been in my decade long career in doodling... in fact at times I have bitten off more than I can chew, this became apparent over the space of a couple of weeks when I was drawing many of the illustrations seen on this post.
Above is a double-page spread for the football (Soccer to my American friends) magazine Four Four Two, now I am a big footie fan, and a real fan of the publication too, originally I was offered a spot illustration for the title, which I had to turn down due to a ridiculously busy schedule.
I hate turning down jobs, particularly if it's for a title you really want to work with, but I only have one set of hands and if I am committed elsewhere, then there is not a lot I can do.
Luckily the Art Ed Tom Chase wasn't deterred too much and offered me this much bigger job a few weeks down the line... unfortunately I was still kind of over-committed with other clients, but I just didn't want to turn such a great mag down again...so I kind of made a bit of a mistake and took the job, and tried to crowbar it into my schedule... which proved tricky!
The article I was illustrating for the mag was about fans missing important goals, which was great fun, but I probably did not realize how much work was going to be involved with these.
I'm kind of happy with how they came out, the image above looking nice on the double page, but it proved quite stressful for everyone involved I think.
I'm very thankful to Tom for keeping a level-head and putting up with my whining about how busy I was.
Here are two more from the article (I think there may have been 7 drawings in total, including the double page!) there was a lot of back of head shots with these, generally I am not keen on drawing backs of heads, all artists have one or two bugbears when it comes to drawing, I don't think i've ever said it here before, but backs of heads is one of mine... it's hard to emote things when all you can see is ears and hair.
Regardless I think these came out okay, only thing I would change is the red head on right on the bottom drawing, however to put it in perspective, both of the stewards in the bottom illo were originally both men, and had to be replaced in super-quick time.
Like I said earlier big thanks to Tom, and hopefully i'll get to work with the title again under less stressful conditions... y'know that's if I haven't put them off by my bellyaching!
So as I have already stated I was pretty busy for a period there, I was working from 6 in the morn while 6 in the afternoon for two/three weeks solid (no weekends off)
Above is an illo I was working on at the same time as the Four Four Two drawings, this was for the cover of Insurance Age.
The idea was a beauty, a conveyor belt of different kinds of self-employed careers, with the "butcher, baker, candlestick maker" standing at the front of the queue.
I think under less stressful times, I would have packed this drawing out further with more people and details, but generally speaking I though this came out well, this was art directed by long-time client Dan Parker over at Incisive... Dan's always great to work with.. Ha, even when i'm a complete stress-head!
This is the second cover I did for Legal Week, which was used for a various promotional purposes across a variety of platforms.
I spoke a little about this on a past posting, the first one we did was great, I suppose this one was more of the same, but by not working with the same experienced art director that I had on the first job (hello Dan again!) it resulted in leaving me in some pretty sticky circumstances and resulted in this final drawing being completed in two days, despite, having a month to run through roughs and ideas, etc... Looking at the image with fresh eyes having not viewed it for a couple of months, it's pretty good I think.
Some at work exercises for Fabulous magazine, quick turnaround, I like the AD there Laura Cunningham, she's lovely to work with. 'Nuff said!
A job for regular letters column at Top Gear mag, this came at the end of my busy spell, under a tight deadline (I was working on other jobs) and this was drawn in one day, in fact it was a Sunday I drew this in between tucking into my Sunday roast.
This was for an article about a Hyundai virtual salesroom, complete with naff salesman hologram... I quite enjoyed this, a bit more simpler than some of my stuff. Art directed again by the great Peter Barnes!
Above are a series of spot illos for Empire magazine, obviously doesn't even need to be said for any regular readers of this blog, but it's a thrill for me whenever I get an Empire brief.
These illustrations went with a sidebar to a feature about the Hunger Games, the article was about the death toll, and variety of deaths in popular YA (Young Adult) films, like Maze Runner, Divergent, etc
See if you can name the films.
This would have been a dream job, but I was already drawing those illustrations for Four Four Two and Top Gear at the same time, I got this at exactly the same time as the Top Gear job with the same deadline... which meant that I drew these, the TG job and finished up the FFT images all over the same weekend... it was shattering!
I have one rule... never turn down a job for Empire! Simple as that... They are the one client, because I have been reading the magazine for most of my adult life, and one day aspired to work with that i'll move mountains in order to work with them, regardless of what work I have on, or if my arms fallen off, i'm in hospital in a coma, whatever, there's always time for Empire.
This one was art directed by the always ace Adam Gerrard.
Finish up with some lovely (but gruesome!) jobs for his awesom'ness, the one and only Ped Millichamp at Men's Fitness.
First up to celebrate Walking Dead returning to our TV screens, here's how to evade a zombie exercises by Rick (Andrew Lincoln) from the series.
I am a massive fan of the show, and it is right up there with Game of Thrones as being the best thing on Telly, so I was honored to get the brief for this one... again other jobs to contend with, probably would have liked more time to draw the zombies, but what the hey I can live with it.
Bottom and final illo is for the regular MF feature Top Tweets, this time about Simon Pegg getting into shape.
We did a Shaun of the Dead style gym scene.. I remember struggling with the perspective on this, because Pegg is so low down, and our viewpoint, etc. Also an issue was trying to get the body shape for Nick Frost correct, i've spent too much time I think drawing so many people that are superhuman physical specimens that when I draw a regular body shape I now struggle.
I think we got there in the end on this.. at the time I though I hadn't perhaps done my best work, but seeing this one in print, it just really worked on the page.
Best two bits for me are the twitter bird eating zombie brain, and the female zombie who's hands fallen due to the weight of a dumbbell.
Right that's me done for now, expect another big jobs haul here before the New Year... and I suppose the other bit of news is that I am looking to join the Twittersphere (quick as ever with these things!) either sometime before Christmas or just after, I think me and Twitter will do extraordinary, but terrible things together... just you wait and see!
