The Hand Drawn Creative Blog

Rewind… Summer 2015 and the Golden Greats Exhibition

So let's kick off the Hand Drawn Creative re-cap with last summer's exhibition as part of Bangor's Open House Festival. I remember the opening night's weather being atrocious – heavy rain & black clouds don't usually get people out at night. But I underestimated the draw of the Open House Festival and opening night was a huge success and Sync Space was packed out. Here are a few of the pieces that were on show on August 2015 along with a short video from local filmmaker Ross McConaghy…

'Sync Space Presents' - Neal McCullough from Ross McConaghy on Vimeo.

  

Planet Pulp – RED Show

I've been a regular contributor at Planet Pulp for a few years now, so I'm honoured to be part of their first group show in Los Angeles tonight. Hero Complex i hosting and we're expecting a great opening night. Here's my entry – a reworking of the Silent Running movie poster, you'll be able to pick it up on the Hero site in a few days or so.

I guess You had to be there…

A lot going on this month, but hopefully these new print designs will be up for sale soon. My Wife and I travelled down to Dublin for the Phoenix Park show early this month and we were both profundly moved to see a band playing together that have been the soundtrack to our lives (and dare I say our childrens' lives). We both agreed, it was the best concert either of us had attended. So I've been beavering away at these commemorative poster designs (Mani & Reni will follow shortly). Each print will refer to one of the Stone Roses' landmark comeback gigs. If you were in attendance, what better way would there be to remember one of the best nights of your life? 

Belfast Culture Night (Part 2)

We actually made it up to the Culture Night in the end. My Lara Croft piece was up & lots more top class illustration was on show too. My favourites were definitely by Julie Turkington, Mark Reihill & Matthew Knight on the night. The second Belfast Culture Night seemed to be in full swing when we left. I'll try & come up sans kids next year to get the full effect of the evening. Prams can be a nightmare at these big events.

 

 

Gamer Culture at Belfast Culture Night

I'm leaving the house tonight (a rare occurrence these days) to pop out to Belfast Culture Night, where I'm taking part in Bag of Bees' Gamer Culture Exhibition Should be a blast, I'll take the camera up to get a few snaps to upload in due course. In the meantime, here's my entry up close…

Wacom Live Draw Weekend

I had a pretty busy weekend at the Sea Bangor maritime festival in my role as a Wacom Evangelist. Two solid days of showing the general public all the Wacom tricks I know whilst simultaneously creating an original illustration to commemorate the event. Good fun but hard work, I'm still reeling from it and it's now Tuesday!

I'm going to work further on this piece – there was a lot of glare in the marquee over the weekend, so I couldn't really get a great view of what I was actually drawing. But given all the chatting to interested parties and mini tutorials, I don't think this was too bad for a few days work…

What the Dickens!

Hi gang, sorry it's been a little while – I've had plenty keeping me busy over the last month. There was the Chillifest at Custom House Square – an awesome day's trading, where HDC made record sales of prints, postcards and badges, along with meeting some of Belfast's most laid back & generous clientele. There must be something about good Chilli and cold beer – it just seems to loosen the old pursestrings.
I've also been continuing character design work for one of my clients, expanding on a group of 5 existing characters into a whole family of animal characters. I'm going to hold off for a little while and reveal the whole bunch once I've finished up. It's shaping up well at the minute and is a great opportunity to explore the world of childrens' illustration. I've also added a recently finished piece here, which I've been working on over the last week for sirkusonfoot.

Pigeon & Plums is an occasional Vaudeville & circus show that's taken place in various Belfast venues since 2005. I was brought on board to tackle the design of this year's Christmas Show in the Black Box, and as you can see, I've heavily on the Edwardian Vaudeville concept, using a wealth of typefaces I usually never get to look at these days. The overall design is dsfiniley a busy affair boasting a great line-up of brilliantly named acts (Diana Bolical?!)  It should definitely be quite a night.