Happy 2012! What's that i'm a bit late? As ever i've been a little tardy in my postings, I have a good excuse though as i've been working on my second issue of Kaleidoscope.
Kaleidoscope volume 2, is the follow up (to Kaleidoscope vol 1, Duh!) to the booklet that collected together my best work (see a previous post) and proved to be very successful with art directors out there, this issue is a collection of works both published and personal that spans 2010-2012, and the momentous task of putting it together and adding new stuff is killing me... anyway more on that another time!
Above is an illustration I tackled just before the Christmas break, and saw print in January, in fact this issue's just left the news stands... need to put these postings up sooner, i'll work on it!
As was the case last Christmas I seemed to be inundated with jobs and wasn't sure I could fit this in, however Alex Thomas AD at the mag has a habit of coming up with the best briefs an illustrator could hope for, as was the case with this.
Brief was simple; A full page illustration depicting a business type holding a Macbook in one hand and a bag of cash in the other, to be done in a retro 50's advertising style... I think Alex is a fan of Mad Men, which served as the inspiration for this great idea... how does an illustrator turn that job down?
As it turns out, I'd long fancied doing something in this style for quite a while (another one of those on the 'to-do' list) and this fell in to my lap, I struggled with this new style initially drawing the head above almost straight away, and then continuing to re-draw several times, one of which was a direct portrait of Don Draper (D'oh!)... only for Alex to apply common sense and go with the original face... I don't always get it right you see even now, good job Alex as i've said before is a great Art Director and was able to steer me down the right path, which just so happened to be the original course i'd set, I just veered off a bit at the last minute!
Once we got the face right, the rest was a delight; playing with halftones, off-registering colour and applying texture.
The final i'm happy with, looked great in print and hopefully looked kind of authentic.
On related news, just before the Christmas break I was informed that four of my illustrations (found on this blog) which were entered into AOI Images competition for 2011 had been selected for inclusion in the annual in the Editorial Category, always a prestigious thing in this profession. Two of the illustrations were done for Mac Format magazine (Gestures Ganesh, Steve jobs Sgt Pepper homage * see posts in 2011) which I think is testament to Alex's ability as an Art Director as much to my involvement, hopefully 2012 will give me the chance to make even better images for the title.
The next post, which i'll put up next week providing i've got time should be all about spot illustrations, which i've been doing lots of recently; more Nuts Celeb Karma Sutra and more clever little ones for Financial Director!
