Spanish in Sketches

I've been learning Spanish for a little while now. I'm not sure why exactly but it's pretty satisfying nonetheless.

In a bid to widen my vocabulary I've been drawing words to cement them into my memory, and then sticking them up on this blog. They say it's a good way of learning as drawing is "a language without code". So for example, the word for shell is concha:


It's a fine trick for words like shell, brick or mouse but sadly I may never memorise the Spanish word for dignity.

GASH! Summer Party

It's summer time, which the Fresh Prince says is when "The weather is hot and girls are dressing less" which can only mean one thing - Gash! Friday is their summer party and I drew this footy inspired flyer for them.

Families at The Dorchester

This is a booklet for The Dorchester and their special offerings for families. They wanted a traditional children's story look so I got to crack out my watercolours and pencils for pretty much the first time since I did GCSE art, which was pretty satisfying. It's like using photoshop but instant.

The booklet stars Doris the duck, the Dorchester mascot, and her 2.4 ducklings.

It's a small A6 booklet that folds out using complicated paper engineering that words can't describe into two big pages that look like this.


I drew a little illustration of Doris for each of the family specific offerings.

Here's Doris having a little me time.

Doris has a princess-themed party.

Doris gets ready for bed her luxury den. Glamping, they call it.

Doris inspired by a trip to the English National Ballet.

It was a really fun project to work on, and I'm definitely proud of how it came out. Thanks to Jade who was the brains behind the whole operation. As I was designing the booklet as well as illustrating it the whole thing is really a product of pretty much just our two little minds, which is pretty satisfying.

Getting Doris' look right took some work though. The family started off like this:


And ballerina Doris like this:


The whole family went from this...

to this...

to this...

to this...

and this before finally ending up as they did - ie. actually looking like ducks. Using paints, pencil and paper mean that these repeated revisions did take a little longer, but I think it was worth it in the end.


And here are some painty type bits I was thinking about throwing in early on.


So that's nice.

Dadtastic

As proclaimed by the poster of a topless hunk holding a baby on display above the greetings cards in my local Esso, Fathers Day is coming. And Dadtastic! - with drawings by me - is out now, ready for the big day on 20 June.


DIY doctor dad
Never reads the bloody manual Dad
Extreme survival Dad
Always trying to teach a lesson Dad
Listens to nothing but Bob Dylan Dad
Wine buff Dad
Can't cook to save his life DadPDA Dad
Always opts for a pint Dad
When I was a lad Dad
Taxi driver Dad

It's available now from Amazon and real book shops. And look at the early sketch version of the cover Amazon are using:

Oxford, from above

I drew a big cartoon map of Oxford city centre.

Here's some more detail (you click the pictures to view them bigger... you knew that right?).

There's an article about the whole process in B4 Magazine ("your guide to business in Oxford"), which is nice.


EDIT
You can read the article online here, if you want. It's on page 100.

Solipsistic Pop

Here's the first of my four pages in the latest Solipsistic Pop - my longest ever story by at least 75%.

Solipsistic Pop is "a biannual anthology designed to spotlight the best in alternative Comic art from the UK." It puts an emphasis on quality production and content and features some of my heroes and some other people I've never heard of.

Here's a pretty girl engrossed in my story.
There's a launch party tonight. Sadly I won't be there, but Robin Ince and some bands will be, so that's nice.

Scaredy Cats

The shortlist for this years Kate Greenaway thing ("the Oscars of the kids book world", they no doubt say) features There are Cats in this Book, which is really very good. And that reminded me: I have my own Cat-based title that I've yet to share with the world: Scaredy Cats.

So here it is.


Like it?

Italia

All flights are off so here's a chance to travel to the Spaghetti-boot via the magic of a drawing instead. I recoloured this picture of Lily's Italian house I drew ages ago so the colours evoke the national flag, an idea that is completely original and not at all stolen from these lovely book covers by one of my top five Finnish illustrators, Pietari Posti.

Mumtastic!

Mumtastic is a book about fantastic mums. It's written by Martha Valentine (still not sure if she's a real person or not) and the pictures are all by me (so, so real).

Here's the book artfully photographed on a chopping board.


And here are some of the mums you'll find within...

DIY Mum


Everything-is-under-control Mum


Embarassing-dancer Mum


Home-before-11-or-I'll-send-your-father-out Mum


Baby-photos-always-at-the-ready Mum


Scared of technology Mum.



It was the perfect gift for Mothers Day, but you've missed that now haven't you. Why not buy it now for 2011?

Islington then

Here's a quick cartoon for Islington Now, "The voice of the borough" - some news website run by City University journalists-to-be. It's to accompany this article. I'm still not completely sure what it's about, but as far as I can tell there is a hospital facing closure and the next nearest one, whilst being geographically close, takes ages to get to because of the labyrinthine local road system (and thus people will die).

Here it is more or less as intended, but do look at it on the Islington Now site to see it horribly squashed and miscredited.

Daily Draw: No more

Both of my regular readers (mother, girlfriend) will have noticed a lack of posts of late. Not least because I've stopped doing Daily Draw which has made up the bread and butter posts of this blog (boring, of low nutritional value) for the last 15 months: a series of sketchbook spreads in which I drew something every day. A television or a commuter's bald spot usually, though the limited range of subjects belie the strain of deciding upon one interesting enough to draw each day, and it all began to stress me out. So it not being quite worth having a breakdown over, I just quit it.

These are my last few.

Charlotte writing her own diary.


Some Polish guys and the White Cross in Richmond.


The Wrestler, on a laptop and Alexa Chung, on a magazine.


Some soup.


Some vegetables.

Film Strips

Little White Lies (you know, the film magazine) ran a competition looking for comic-strip re-imaginations of movies, all to be done within 6 set frames. I went for The Wrestler.

(Click it to make it bigger.)

I didn't win though, this guy did.


I did another one as well but it's not very good.

EDIT (much later)
The one I thought was not very good, about Man On Wire wasn't so bad after all. It features in the "digital magazine" of runners-up they made.