McConkey Week at Nuts!

Wow, have I been busy... I know I always say that, but this time it's been monumental, in reality I can't show you the majority of what i've been up to as it hasn't seen print yet, but i'll share those with you at a later date.. there's lots to make their way here in the upcoming few weeks/months.

So got an email from Barney at Nuts, asking me if I fancied doing a biggie, now i've been turning down the last few gigs due to my hectic schedule or jobs not being right for me, a lot of typography stuff for lots of clients has been put my way, most of it i've been turning down, as it's simply is not something I feel that strong at.

But when Barney suggested the image above, with a deadline of less than a week.. and me with very little on my schedule, well things fell into place and I started the mini epic above.

Now as anyone that reads this blog will know, the Sgt Pepper homage is something i've done before, my original foray is an Apple themed one I drew for Mac Format over a year ago, and it's one of those in my portfolio that always gets a good reaction, generally speaking i'm not one for repeating myself, but on this occasion I didn't feel this was a job I could turn down, also who else could draw fifty portraits in such a short space of time... I decided I couldn't let the guys at Nuts down and just went for it.

With the Olympics just around the corner, this was a feature about the 50 Great British Sportsmen as voted for by Nuts readers, brief was simple, draw all the sports stars in their peak of fame in the above homage, now believe it or not I drew this thing in about 4 days, with the 5th day left to make alterations to the type and significantly resizing the drum for the purpose of type legibility.

This image proved a tiring affair as you can imagine, i've saved it extra big here, so you can see in greater detail the work that went into it.... however I wasn't finished there.. I still had more drawings for Nuts to complete.

This drawing was completed probably within an hour flat, I had to be extra quick on this, as my time was being taken up finishing the Greatest Sportsmen illo, this is a drawing of Gaz from hit MTV UK show Geordie Shore for the regular section Celebrity Kama Sutra.

Having completed the top two images, I thought I was done for the week..great, time to put my feet up and have a cup of tea I thought..er.. I was wrong, Simon at the mag got in touch and asked if I could do the above instructional illo about Richard Hammond setting himself on fire, I think this was a last minute addition to the mag, so they held back on printing an extra day, again super quick turnaround on this as I got the brief about 4-ish on Thursday, and I emailed in on the Friday at lunchtime, probably 12 on the dot.

All these can be found in this week's mag on shelves now, it was a hectic week, but a great one work wise... expect more images here soon, including some new stuff for some very big names in the magazine world!

Incisive Illustrations!

So here are some recent illustrations done for two magazines at Incisive Media... I say recent, but these were done a while back and i've only just posted them up, still as you all know by now i'm rather tardy at this kind of thing.

The top one was done for a supplement fold-out cover for Law Week (I think that's the title!) anyway I was asked by the Art Director to draw a portrait scene of some of Law's high flyers, I was provided with reference for each person and went about creating the drawing, sometimes trickier than they look these jobs... luckily I was working with a great AD on this, and someone who i've worked with on various titles at Incisive, so things ran pretty smoothly, just had to rearrange a few of the figures in the alterations department.

Bottom illustration was for the cover of Insurance Age, idea was to draw a carnival style shooting range, with selected items referring to bits in an article, again really enjoyable, as you can see I didn't hold back on the colours and went full-on technicolour on this.

I remember looking at first person shooter games for reference in this, like Call of Duty etc, and originally I had the gun less central, what you find in games like that is that the hands/gun are usually placed off centre, which is something you don't even realise when you are playing them, anyway for compositions sake I moved the thing in a more direct position, something i've learned over the years is a 'must' for covers.

Again with this I had the benefit of a great AD, a different fella from the one above, but again somone who knows his stuff and when and where to use my work... so there you go two separate covers, two separate magazines, two great Art Directors and one lovely publisher in Incisive, hopefully i'll continue to do some more stuff for these guys soon.

As an illustrator you find over time that it is actually publishers like this, who have to make somewhat dry material shine that offer some of the greatest briefs, and are some of the finest people you'll ever get to work with to boot.

Last Supper Prints Now Available!

Okay so I said my next post would be up in a few days and that it would be about images that didn't make the cut for my booklet, it appears i've lied on both accounts... reality is I got really busy there for a while, and the reason I haven't put up the posting about images that didn't make the cut is that i'm saving one or two of the images for something else.

As i've said before here on this blog, undoubtedly my most popular image (on the web anyhoos!) is my 80's Movie Classics Last Supper illustration, which seem to have blown up on the internet over this past 3 month or so, I think a big website got a hold of it and it's gone pretty crazy from there, with it ending up on facebook, twitter, a million pinterest pages, blogs, it's all over the place, as such I now get a lot of messages regarding the artwork, and recently most recently acquiring a print of the artwork.

I've been a bit slow on the uptake, but I have just recently sold the first print of the artwork to someone that got in touch via email, the print (see pic) is now on it's Transatlantic journey to it's new home in California.

As an illustrator working mainly for magazines, i've never put too much thought into selling prints of my artwork, however due to the popularity of the image, the buyer in this case being a patient fella while I arrange how to actually print, post and receive funds in the best and safest ways, I will from now on be selling prints, not only of this Last Supper image, but of anything else here or on the website that people may want.

Here's a quick rundown on the cost of the Last Supper image; the print can be produced in two separate ways;

The first one being the cheapest is a high quality digital print, this will be produced on either a semi gloss card or more flimsy high quality paper (if you want this as a poster) and will be handled by a printing firm that tackles all my booklets, postcards etc... I will vouch for the quality of the print, certainly up anything you would see in commercial printing like a magazine or something like that, and is something I wouldn't hesitate to either framed up for the living room or pinned up like a poster for a dorm room/man cave or whatever.

The price of this (regardless of paper or card) would be a very reasonable £8.50, however that isn't including postage and packaging, this will be dependent on where you are in the world, and i'll just pass this costing on to you, the one I sent to California for instance was around the £11.50 mark, so that would bring the total up to £20, however I will always try and find the fairest price and safest posting of your item, so each case would probably vary a little.

The second print I offer is for the one's of you out there that demand that extra little quality, and this would be a high quality giclee print on fine art paper, which is how the above print was done, up close this print is sensational, and is about as good a print as you can buy... as you can imagine this extra quality comes at a price; the price for this is £40 plus, again i'll be charging you for the postage and packaging, again this will be reliant on where you are and the best way of getting it to you, in most cases I don't think it'll ever come to much more than the price I used as my for instance (£11.50) so this would be rounded up to £50 or less if I can mail it cheaper.

Sizes of the Last Supper print are as follows; digital print; 260mm x 430mm (roughly) and the giclee print comes in the bigger size of 297mm x 450mm (the size the original was created)

Artworks are mailed via a postal tube, unless you are the UK, then I may be able to send the artwork flat, also the price of postage would probably be significantly cheaper as i'll be posting inland.

Think that about covers everything, if you are interested in a print then feel free to email me, you can find my address on my website, just click on the link on the top right.

Right, back to making pictures... i'll see if I can post something up again at the end of the week with regards to recent jobs.

KALEIDOSCOPE VOLUME 2!

So here it is finally, the second volume of Kaleidoscope, the first so many will be hitting the mailboxes of Art Director's up and down the land and further afield next week, the second batch which I think i'm going to keep a closer eye on, as I think in hindsight they need a bit of further trimming at the printers so there's less deadspace (these things happen) will be sent out over the upcoming weeks and months, apart from said niggle i'm generally speaking happy with the quality of print, selection of images etc.

Thought i'd kick off the post with the cover image, see above. I wanted to do something more iconic on the cover with this one, and I wanted to do something again wholly personal to me, I suppose the image
above could be classed as a double portrait, one of me as a boy with his nose in a book (although that was more usually a comic book) drawing paper and Star Wars toys nearby.
The second portrait it could be argued is the demented clapping monkey with a carousel head, i'll let you read into that as you will, surrounding these portraits are references to things that have influenced me; kitsch bits of pop culture, video-games, comic books, animation etc..

The illustrations i've posted up on this blog are generally new images that haven't seen print anywhere else, in reality the actual booklet is made up far more of my more well known printed images that have already been displayed on this blog, the booklet is kind of a 'best of' with a few new things... a greatest hits, with new material if you like.

Above is an illo of the Arctic Monkeys, nice to be a bit more subtle with the colouring for once, also serves as a companion piece to the John Grant illustration I did for Mojo which this runs opposite to.

As a boy growing up in the 80's, there was a time there when bad taste to a certain extent was enjoyed for what it is and for a period became a cultural phenomenon, as anyone that used to collect the Garbage Pail Kids will attest, which I've said here before has been a long time influence on my work... the above image I think owes something to those sensibilities; Stephen Hawkings: P.I.M.P!

For a period in my career, the majority of my editorial jobs came from magazines with a decidedly female demographic, this to a large extent changed because of a couple of things; Women's magazine which were for a period a hotbed of illustration stopped using quite as much, and secondly my work, after I took a brief sabbatical (to use an Americanism!) a few years ago became a lot more personal, as a result I swapped what was then a more "flowery" approach to my work in favour of my current style.

The above images I hope go about resetting the balance, because i'd love to be working as much for women's titles as I do for the boys mags, and tech mags and business mags I now work with.

So as people already know that have read this blog before, I love drawing things from my own childhood, pop culture stuff from the 80's and 90's regularly shows up in my personal work, the above series came from an idea spawned by an actual paying job that was commissioned by Men's Health.

It was a series of exercise illos that featured the Terminator (see top three images) which have already been posted here before, anyway I got to thinking; why couldn't we draw other characters from the 80's working out, an Alternative Guide to Exercise if you will.

Above you have Johny 5, Sloth, Hulk Hogan, Chuck Norris and Mr T showing you how to keep fit... if i'm being honest, I hope a book publisher sees these, and we get to do a book on this, imagine a Robocop guide to bench pressing, star jumps with Gremlins, squat exercises with Beetlejuice, I could go on, that'd be a book people would buy right?

The above illustration is one of the central images in volume 2, and is also printed as an A3 poster and given away with booklet, this one took a long time to put together, which if you click on the image above you'll be able to see the level of detail I went to.

I wanted to do a companion piece to the image that I did for Kaleidoscope volume 1's cover, which can be seen elsewhere on this blog, which I suppose is a toy box of visual influences, and things from my childhood.

With this, the original idea was to draw robots from TV and film, only about halfway through an art director quite randomly sent me a piece from the internet that was while not visually the same, was in fact the same idea... D'oh! Thanks Rob Milton formerly of Men's Health for that!

So I quickly changed the theme from just Robots to 'Robots and Aliens' which is the title of this piece.

Now certainly the most popular image that i've done of recent years is my 80's Movie Last Supper scene, which this past month seems to have spread like wildfire on the ol' interwebby, i'm not sure why it's just taken off, but it's one I get emails about pretty much every week.

I'm hoping the above will be equally successful in it's own way, it's lovely to think that my work has reached a large audience that share my more geeky sensibilties.

Okay that's it for now. If you're an Art Director and you want the booklet and poster mailing out then get in touch, next few hundred will be hitting the letterboxes of clients over the upcoming weeks, months (I think it'll take me an age to send them all out!)

Next post coming up probably in the next few days will be a collection of the images that didn't make the cut for the booklet, some of which were really quite nice, just was a case of being a bit ruthless about what made the final selection.

Epic Rudeness- More Celebrity Karma Sutra!

So been meaning to do some catch up postings, if it's been quiet here of recent, it's because i've been busy, but as i've got some big entries to put here soon, over the next couple of weeks this blog is going to get very busy with some of the things that have been taking up my time.

Thought i'd kick off this posting with just some of the regular Celebrity Karma Sutra spot illustrations I do for Nuts magazine, you may want to click on the above image for a closer look.

See if you can name them all, if you're not from the UK this may be difficult, in fact it may be difficult even if you are from Blighty if you don't keep up with the Tabloid fodder from shows like TOWIE etc..

These were all art directed by the great Barney Hammond, who's a real pleasure to work with, and indulges my more madcap ideas for these.

Another great thing about this series is that they try and remain topical, so whoever's been in the newspapers for being a bit naughty usually ends up as our target, some weeks it's difficult, especially if Simon Cowell's love life is dominating the headlines and you drew him months ago, can be a real search to find our victim!

Favorite one for me out of the above would have to be Hulk Hogan, who allegedly had a sex tape leaked..how weird!

Look out for more postings shortly, including a big one for my booklet Kaleidoscope, which is currently at the printers!

New FD Spots!

Again massive delay in putting these up, in my defense i've been really quite ill this week, in fact i'm still not 100 percent, just trying to take things easy this week, hopefully be back to my old self soon.

So here are some new illos for Financial Director, the great Richard Crump was again the AD/commissioner of these.

Even though these are tiny drawings I actually do think some of these illos are the best that I do, as I've said before I've always thought of myself as an ideas man, and that's what I like to get paid for, more often than not though it's portraiture... still I like doing that too, so can't complain!

These are in no particular order, and it was a case of jut picking a few of my faves over the past few months, above the mug man, was about being made a 'mug' of in the workplace, this idea was suggested and I really like it, below that is for an article I can't remember, but hopefully the image is self-explanatory.
Rubik's Cube image, is for an article about solving the economic puzzle, cool idea I thought, with simple execution, no need for flashiness if the idea works! Below that is for an article about personalizing mobiles, went as gaudy and tasteless as poss, this is also a repeat of an idea I did for Men's Health years ago, which can be found on one of my very first posts, if you're going to steal may as well make it from yourself!
Computer beating up man illo, was for an article in which man competed against machine (not physically!) can't remember the article itself, but as you'd expect the computer proved smarter, had fun with the pixel skull on this one.

The dog with the dynamite in his mouth was a suggested idea by Richard for an article about Best Intentions, I couldn't come up with anything else that fitted the brief and duly started drawing, got my Lab Bud to pose for this, albeit without the dynamite, anyone that knows this dog would attest that if you buried dynamite, he'd dig it up and bring it into the house, and drop it at your feet... and they say Labradors are intelligent!
Bad Santa drawing was for the Christmas edition a while back, simple idea just draw a Bad Santa, I was thinking more Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places than Billy Bob Thornton, both are great films though!

Finally bottom image was about graduates, Richard just required a slightly worse for wear student type for this, I was happy to comply... this actually reminds me, that it's now a whole decade since I left Derby Uni with my 2:1 in Illustration, and set on this path of making pictures, officially I count 2013 as my real anniversary of breaking into this business, as I didn't get my first paying job until Jan of 2003 and then went on to actually make a career of image-making, so i'll be doing somethings throughout that year to celebrate no doubt.. doesn't time fly!

Mac Format- 50's Style!

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!