The Hand Drawn Creative Blog

Moo!

Hooray, my new business cards arrived bright and early this morning from moo.com. If you don't know of them, they're linked with flickr  and are a great way to dip your toes into the world of print. They're pretty freelancer friendly too. I ordered 50 cards with the option to print up to 50 of my illustrations on each card with contact details on the reverse for just over a tenner! Not bad eh?.

I was so chuffed that I decided to order the supercool brown & orange Troika Business card holder to keep 'em all in good nick. Check it out below, it's just like a Star Trek communicator. I am now ready to network in style! Yes, oh yes.

Live from Fundonald

Okay, it's Friday, it's very early in the morning and it's at that stage of the pregnancy where it's time to race up to the hospital worrying about anything that could possibly go wrong. Luckily all appears to well with our glamourous mum to be and the upshot of hanging around hospital waiting rooms is we get to have another scan of the little peanut in her tum- tum! We had the first scan 2 weeks ago and it was literally the size of a peanut, but as you can see from the scans, it's a lot bigger now and needs a more appropriate nickname! So what do you think? There'll be a crisp fiver* winging it's way to person who comes up with the best foetal nickname. Submit your comments in the field below! *we're actually a bit skint this month, would a drawing of a five pound note be okay?

Speed Sketching…

I started doodling this last night at 21.30h whilst watching TV (something I haven't done for ages). I thought to myself "let's see how long this'll take to do from pencil sketch to finished vector."

It's funny how the process works when you're in the zone – I scanned the pencil sketch at 22.00 and worked until 23.00, started again at 08.30 this morning and stopped work at 10.00. Blimey, 3 hours all in from pencil to the Web! Not bad, even if I do say so myself. The finished vector is in full colour and you can see it here

We're Not Worthy!

What a treat on BBC 4 last night, Quentin Blake (arguably Britain's most famous illustrator) was interviewed by cultural heavyweight Mark Lawson. I saw him speak in London a few years ago at the Illustration Awards and he came across as a charming chap, something this interview only helped confirm.

It's great to see a senior Illustrator of such high standing still working (see his recent work with David Walliams), he also took on the role of Curator at the National Portrait Gallery and Paris' Petit Palais and continues to work at setting up House of Illustration Museum.

I love his work, so simple, messy and cheerful, it's great to see him displaying his work in Maternity & Children's Wards. His official website is a treat too.

Great interview. Very inspiring. It's on the BBC iplayer and I'm sure it'll be on youtube soon.

One in the Oven…

Well, after what seems like a lifetime, Julie and myself can officially announce that she's knocked up... real bad! We've just come out from the first scan and I can report that the yummy mummy to be is positively glowing and the dad to be is as confused as ever about the wonderful journey that is pregnancy.

We discovered that we were expecting on the eve of my 35th birthday, just as the Red Arrows were flying past our window. An event neither of us are likely to forget!

So there we go, freelancer and now father to be – who'd have thought I had it in me!

Rush Jobs

Here's a funny little job I worked on a while ago – at the start of May the Belfast Telegraph briefed my then employer with a brief to create a graphic for one of those 'Bags for life' thingy's that everybody goes nuts for these days (but always manages to leave at home when they actually go to the shops!)

Great fun! Like most Graphic Designers I love a challenging brief at 9am on a Monday. Slight problem though, the print deadline was 2pm the same day. But like I say, we designers love a challenge, and so it passed that at 14.00 hours the finished artwork was winging its way down the information superhighway – but, jeez!, what was the rush?!

A question I'm still asking, because 6 months later, after I'd completely forgotten about it, the bags were finally released yesterday a our local Sainsbury's, as you can see modelled here by my beautiful wife Jules. Looks pretty cool though, don't you think?

Obamarama…

A hearty congratulations to our colonial cousins on their choice of President Elect, an excellent race was run by the Democrats and the always ice cool Mr Obama. I can't help but think how much they were helped by excellent design choices - that fantastic roundel, great, clean sans serif typography and the work of great designers like Shepard Fairey, Scott Hansen and Lance Wyman who, as you can see below, produced some truly iconic poster designs for this successful campaign.

Ready to Upload?

This is the first (and probably last) time I've blogged on public transport. It makes for a very shaky typing experience if you're using an iPhone!
I've been pretty busy this week working on a downloadable PDF portfolio for Hand Drawn Creative. It's taking some time but should be up some time very soon. In the meantime I'll leave you with the cover illustration of me in my home office. Well, I'll upload it whenever I get back home from this seemingly endless busride!

Hello Ruby in the Dust…

BBC Four continues to dominate my Friday night viewing habits (much to my wife's annoyance), but how can I avoid it when they run such great programmes about my rock & roll heroes like Neil Young.

What a great evening's viewing and what a good excuse to upload an old illustration I've done of the great man himself, playing that great old Gretsch White Falcon