The Hand Drawn Creative Blog

Out & About with Wacom

I was thrilled to work with an old advertising colleague again recently in Holywood. I was brought in to help on a pitch for a prospective new client (which was a storming success by the way). It was great, also to work in a team for the first time in years. The design office were quite excited in my tecnical kit bag too. I'd brought along my Wacom intuos 5 touch medium tablet (ideal for in-situ freelance jobs like this) and the designers were all keen to try it out. Everyone got a go and everyone was impressed including myself. I don't get much opportunity to use the little guy these days. I think Wacom may have a bit more business after my week at Walkers :D

 

 

Extraordinaires Design Studio

Here's a project I participated in about a year ago with Belfast's Creativity Hub. I was asked to illustrate two of the Extraordinaires characters along with a host of Ireland's best known and talented illustrators. The final product is called  Extraordinaires Design Studio and is being marketed as a toy to help train our next generation of Designers – great idea. I missed last night's unofficial launch party, but I'll be in Dublin on Friday night to attend the official launch and put my signature on some prize giveaways as part of the OFFSET conference.

Here are the two Characters I designed for the Design Studio…

 

Fab News…

Fab Europe are running a four day sale of my prints from today (20 March 2013)! I'm really excited as to what may come from this, and am really chuffed that they've approached me. All print fulfilment will be carried out by my good buddies Brough & Ready in England, so all the prints will be much larger than usual and gallery archive quality too! If you've always fancied investing in one of my prints, now may well be the time to act.

 

 

Off to the Shops?

I've been toying with the idea of a new online store for a long time now. My Etsy page has done me proud over the last couple of  years, but I've struggled with the lack of control I have over the page structure and overall design.

When appearing at London's Go Global Conference late last year, I was impressed by Mary Tan White's talk about her company moonfruit as an alternative to Etsy. As a result, I've spent the first week of this year designing my own fledgling online store The Hand Drawn Creative Shop (keep it simple). Now I have all my stock on offer in a clean, HDC branded environment (great!)

Like to draw? You'll love this…

Isn't it great to see good old fashioned drawing skills join with new technology so seamlessly? The new Wacom Inkling works on the premise that your best illustrations always start with a simple sketch or doodle. This great new illustration tool from Wacom promises to be affordably priced (approx. £150.00). The neatest feature for me has to be the sketch to vector export. Pretty impressive stuff – if (like me) you carry a sketchbook everywhere you go, this is one Wacom gadget definitely worth further investigation.

 

 

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…

I have seen the light…

Big news this month for Hand Drawn Creative is my invitation from European pen & tablet manufacturers WACOM to join their Wacom Evangelist Program. Only 57 creative professionals throughout Europe have been officially appointed as enthusiasts of the brand. Illustrators, Graphic Designers, Photographers, Comic Artists & Visual Effects artists.

I'm honoured to be included in this roster and have been a long-time user of Wacom products (over 10 years now). I can't wait to get my Wacom Toolkit in the post. One of the perks of the program is a free Intuos4 tablet of your choice – I've picked the Intuos4 L model which is closest in size to my current Intuos2 tablet. If you've not used a Wacom Tablet before, I'd strongly recommend it. It's such an intuitive way to work with your computer.