The Hand Drawn Creative Blog

Putting Glamour Back on the Slopes…

I was just driving through Belfast this morning and noticed Ski McNeill's new year ski holiday campaign has stretched to a 48 sheet campaign. I provided the illustrations myself some months ago, working on a glamourous 1930's vintage travel poster concept that went down a storm with the client, who just so happens to collect original artwork from that specific era.

The artwork has been mounted on those rotating billboards which explains the poor quality of my photograph. So lets go back to the original illustrations in all their glory!

Arts, Crafts & Christmas…

Hey there everyone, I'm just prepping myself for tonight's Inspire Fair at Blick Studios tonight. I'll be exhibiting the Vintage Collection as I'd mentioned a couple of days ago. In addition to kick-ass guitars, I've just picked up my late entry, which is a nice, simple portrait of Belfast Lough.

I didn't expect the prints to get back until early next week, but my printer pulled it out of the bag overnight! Result! This means 2 things:

1. My Dad gets a Christmas present after all

2. I get to exhibit another winning illustration at tonight's Arts Fair!

I'll be there from 6-10pm tonight, why not pop up and have a look!

It's a small world after all…

This morning Hand Drawn Creative met with 2 of the Creative Industry's big boys! The mighty Wacom and Giant Associates.

Ian Sayers (a supporter of my illustration work) is setting up his new Creative software training company (Giant Associates) on Belfast's Belmont Road. He called to let me know that a Wacom representative was flying into Belfast and could I forward a portfolio of my work to help make them aware of Belfast's pool of illustration talent.

Well it turns out I'm much better connected in the international Creative Community than I thought. The Wacom rep only turned out to be Dave Oduro with whom I worked with in North London's Computers Unlimited! I haven't seen him since my London stag do in April!

Ian invited me along to their meeting where Dave gleefully showed us Wacom's flagship product – the majestic Cintiq graphics tablet. I'd used their prototype model some years ago and was impressed, but this new model really is very impressive. It'd take me ages to explain all the cool stuff you can do on this, so why not look at this Youtube video 

Pretty damn cool huh? Well… it is if you're a dynamic, young, creative professional like me! It was great to see Dave again and to catch up with the Giant Associates guys. Giant Associates will be up and running in the New Year, and judging by Dave's flying visit, Wacom are continuing to do very well. I'm hoping to work closely with both parties in the future.

Getting the good word out there…

 

Hi folks, hope everyone's doing ok and is ready for Christmas. If you have a few gifts still to get – I can heartily recommend heading to Blick Creative studios on Thursday 18 December for the Inspire Christmas Fair.

I'll be there with some exclusive A3 prints from the Vintage Collection, I've framed up a few of the prints by way of a preview. Why not pop down on Thursday, I'm sure there'll be plenty of other great Christmas gifts on offer.

Rocking the Hall

It's a peculiar thing – seeing your work out there on billboards can be one of the biggest buzzes a designer or Illustrator can get. Seeing your work being re-used after a couple of years can still be a real kick, it's just strange when you're no longer involved in the brief and another designer has been tweaking the artwork. I know, I know… Divo alert! I've always been very precious about my creations – they're almost like little vector offspring (yes that probably does sound weird to most – but I'll wager not to many other illustrators out there).

But I digress… Rock the Hall is a great New Years Event that first took place at Belfast City Hall on NYE 2006. I remember that the event was even broadcast live on my beloved BBC Radio 2! I guess those marketing bods at City Hall must have liked the logo, because 2 years later, they've decided to re-introduce it for this year's event. And guess what… Supergrass are headlining! Now all I have to do is wangle a couple of free tickets!

It's all about me!

Hey there folks, you join me as my shameless self promotion continues unabated on the run-up to Christmas. My pal Philip Wilson approached me as Curator of the Blick Studios Blog and has invited me to share some of my posts and recent news on the Blick Blog. The results can be seen here.

By the way I hope everyone's enjoying December's new Blog Header. I was going to go with a Christmas theme, but then I remembered I don't really like Christmas. I'm going to try and keep the HDC blog a "chintz-free" zone.

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.