Nuts Nativity

As promised here's me being a bit more up to date with my postings of jobs, and this is pretty up to the minute as this illustration hit the shelves today!

Simon Freeborough Art Director of Nuts magazine called on a Friday afternoon to see whether i'd be available for a job he had in mind, unfortunately I was down the pub... I should point out I'd earned my afternoon down the boozer, as I hadn't had any time off in two weeks.. I thought i'd be safe to go for a quick pint, I mean who's gonna call past 4 on a Friday... er...how wrong was I?!!

Luckily I got the message at about 5-ish and got in touch, Simon then went about setting a brief for a Christmas TV themed Nativity image, which I got at about 7 that evening.. probably the latest i've received a brief.

The turnaround on this image had to be very quick, to top it off I was also finishing up on another image (that'll be posted here when it sees print) I started a tight line drawing on the Saturday, finished up my other job on the Sunday, then on the Monday sent in the line drawing above.. luckily very few if any changes were asked for, I then went on to colour and sent that in on the Tuesday... all this while making an emergency alteration to the other job I had on the go!

Even though I didn't necessarily have the time to enjoy this job as much as I would have liked, I think the final is a solid image and printed very well, and is certainly I believe what the nice people at Nuts wanted.

It was great to get to work with Simon again, I think if you were to ask anyone that knows me which clients makes a good match for both my style of work and sense of humour, then me and Nuts are a very good fit... hopefully i'll get further opportunities to work with them in 2011!

Illustration above shows Matt Lucas and David Walliams as Mary and Joseph, Harry Hill as the baby Jesus, Top Gear fellas as the three wise Men, Jimmy Carr as the innkeeper, Mitchell & Webb as a goat and sheep, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer as a donkey and cow, James Corden as a moon and Doctor who as the angel.. oh and a TV playing the Christmas premier of Avatar.

Blimey! It made for a tiring weekend juggling all those figures and two jobs at the same time... still I should be pretty much done now until the New Year!

Tasty Accountancy Age Cover!

I've been extremely busy these last few weeks, so yet again I've neglected this blog, still I should have a bit of free time from now into the Christmas period, so i'll do a few catch up posts on images that I've been working on recently.

Jobs over the last few weeks/months have come from Men's Health, Nuts (out Next week!) and an absolute beauty for Mac Format due to be published next month (more on that another time!) but first up there's this rather tasty drawing for the cover of Accountancy Age.

This was actually done last month, but i've only just got around to showing it off... this was art directed by the great Iain Winfield at AA; the illustration was for a feature about 1042 (or some other big number!) tax breaks/reliefs, I think AA Editor Gavin Hinks came up with this blinding idea of making a pick n' mix image, with each sweet referring to a particular financial relief.

First thing I did is go out and buy a couple of selection boxes of sweets... purely for reference purposes you understand, and then set about drawing and designing the wrappers, I didn't have to hand in a rough for this one, as the composition for the most part was pretty random.

I got the call on the Thursday for this job, I sent in a couple of designs the next day and had the final in on the Monday, it was one of those rare smooth jobs, this is probably down to a couple of factors; The guys at AA have a good understanding of what i'm good at and actually choose me for the covers that my work is most appropriate for, they set a reasonable deadline and they make things very comfortable for me, allowing me to find the best drawing solution for them.

Working for Accountancy Age has proved to be a real gift over these last twelve months, so you can imagine how gutted I felt, when having been called for my services a couple of weeks ago for another cover, that I had to turn them down, because I was committed elsewhere.. not only that, but the brief was an absolutely amazing one! In fact I made a point of telling Gavin the Editor, that it was one of those missed briefs that'll keep me awake at night.. because I know it's the kind of image that I would have loved to have drawn. Alas, it wasn't meant to be...