Quick One's

I've been incredibly busy this past month, not that i'm complaining.. it's always the way for illustrator's, where either overworked or sat around twiddling our thumbs.

Above are some rather quick illos that have seen print over the past few weeks.

At the top is a cover for Accountancy Age, I'm not exactly sure what the article is about; the brief was to show a business type walking into a airport departure lounge, with his back to us and on his bag he has one of those airport label/stickers they put on your luggage with the words; 'Wish you weren't here'.

There are something's i'm generally not keen on drawing, one of those is the back of people's heads, in some cases you have no option, but I always try and give a 3/4 view , just so I catch some of the eyeline and cheekbone... reason I'm not keen is that by taking away the face, it's hard to invest the back of someone's head with any sense of character, alas because I wanted that perspective for this illo, just so it draws the eye in, I went for a flat back of head shot.

You'll notice i've stuck a plane in there, just so you know it's an Airport.. i'm subtle like that.

This image was art directed by the great Dan Parker at AA, I was saddened to hear that this would be my last cover for the title as this issue would be the last print edition, it's unfortunate also because i'd had to turn down two really cool covers prior on the grounds of my work schedule... they'll be remembered as the two that got away!

On a more positive note I was honored to be asked to provide the final cover, and hopefully i'll work with the AA fellas; Dan, Iain and Gavin on other things at Incisive Media... they've been great clients over the past 12 months or so!

That brief was sent on a Friday evening, and the final was sent in on the Monday, with some changes made for the following day.

The two illustrations below are for a feature that ran in Nuts magazine; about the tallest buildings in the world.

The top image, is the main feature artwork; Big Ben, Empire State Building, along with the new Skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi, The Shard in London etc.. and the biggest being 'The Mile High Tower' that is under development in Kuwait.

The bottom image is an insert for the feature.

Simon Freeborough AD at the magazine asked me on the Wednesday evening if I could fit this image in (deadline being Friday) at the time I was up to my eyeballs in other deadlines, luckily because he'd already set out the layout and scaling (final feature has a measurement guide on the right hand side) it was a case of me just providing a tidy drawing.

I got up early the next day and the artwork was created by that afternoon.

Now I actually like the simplicity of the drawing, in fact I have a leaning sometimes to my more info-based imagery, however my brother on seeing it said; "That can't have taken too much work".. The cheek! I can assure you while this image may be quite simple to look at, it proved tricky in areas (all those windows, making things readable etc) not helped because of the mountain of other work I was doing at the same time.

Luckily I think Simon and the fine folks at Nuts appreciated the work i'd put in on this, and in under 24 hours no less!

That's it for now, i'm waiting until other images see print before I post them up; one's a real beauty though, but more on that when it hits the shops.. right back to work!

New Men's Health Illustrations!

Again been slow in putting up new stuff; busy, busy at the mo, to make amends here's a batch of illos that have graced the pages of Men's Health over the last couple of months.

To kick things off I thought we'd start with the latest 'Snack Off' spot illustration, now I'd posted earlier that I thought this series had been cancelled, so imagine my surprise to get an email from MH Art Editor Extraordinaire Rob Milton, asking me to come up with an image for Broccoli vs Spinach, not only that but Rob gave me a bit of free reign to come up with possible ideas.

After some thought, the idea that Broccoli would probably work best as someone with a 'fro played a major part in choosing the concept for this; with this in mind my best ideas were 80's footballers, so Broccoli would have either been a German player of that period or perhaps our very own Kevin Keegan, which I think Rob was already to go for, until I suggested Tom Baker's Dr Who and a Dalek Spinach... which happily got the thumbs up, I drew it in between other jobs and luckily it all went smoothly.

I'm hoping that there's still more of these 'Snack Offs' to do for the magazine as they're great fun... we've covered most meats by now, but we still haven't done anything with Turkey.. and i'll not feel we've completed the series until we tackle Turkey!

Above is a great little image I was able to come up with for Deputy AD Kerem Shefik at the magazine, he wanted a spot illustration for a feature titled 'Rise of the Machines' in which he wanted Arnie's Terminator using a bit of gym equipment called the Roman Chair, this is another one that was quick and fun to do, in fact I offered two different versions of the scene, and he chose the one above (the better of the two!)

What I liked about this image was that it was printed absolutely tiny, maybe the size of a 50 pence piece in the magazine; I thought it looked kind of cool being such a dinky size, alas I was hoping this would become a series; either with different Terminators doing different exercises or maybe other 80's Movie characters using gym equipment; Robocop lifting weights, Rambo doing press ups, Gremlins doing squat thrusts?! Maybe that's a series I should do in my own time!

This is an advertorial image that ran in last issues Men's Health for Gillette, David Godfrey the promotions AD at MH got in touch to ask me if I fancied producing a spoof of the 'Your Country Needs You' poster artwork, the brief was simple; we want a drawn copy of the image, but want you to remove the 'tache. Easy! I thought... "You've got two hours to get it to us" said David... er...

I got my backside in gear and came up with the above, I actually provided a few versions and the above got selected. I never saw this in print, but it ran full page and I imagine running with the right text would have come out well in print.

This is yet another advertorial (I've had a lot of these of recent!) this was again commissioned by Promotions AD at MH David Godfrey, a very simple scene to draw for the hair restoration product Regaine, I came up with a series of roughs and the above one got chosen, I was expecting for David to get back to me with regards to producing a final, but they liked the rough above so much they actually ran it.

Okay, so that's a little catch up, what I can say is that some big illos are on the way soon, one is proving particularly epic, but more on that next time.