DON'T BRUSH ME

This was one of the first drawings that i produced with a brush and ink. I did it about two to three years ago I think, before that it was all rotring pen which I found became lifeless and time consuming. Around this time i was looking at comic artists and desperately trying to figure out how the weight and character of line was achieved. In particular it was the work of Geof Darrow that inspired me and i was convinced that he had to be using technical pens to draw with that kind of detail but my own endeavors with the pen (although at times very successful) just wasn't blowing my skirt up. I think Darrow actually uses a brush (don't quote me) aided by some drugs. No drugs for me (except coffee) but there has been no looking back from brush work. Its quite a revelation to discover a new medium like this but its taken me a couple of years to develop and polish up on, when i started it was painstaking, deliberate and lacking fluidity which you can see here a little (this was me really cutting loose at the time). Now i'm finally getting to the stage where I can draw almost as swiftly as i can think about drawing, leaving me now to concentrate on coming up with ideas!

GASTRO!

Sometimes you have to wonder where the ideas come from. I've drawn some weird things in my time and have on occasion sat and considered mid drawing, "what would Gran think of me if she saw this?" Particularly at uni where i spent most of my time drawing street ravaging monsters and severed heads. In this instance I have somehow managed to knock out two images that carry a gastronomic theme with Alice consuming a growth inducing cake and the other being a great grotesque orange stomach. I still doubt if this is up Grandma's street but its a step from severed heads.

The designs are for don't panic's poster and flyer competitions, you can vote for them here if you love me!

sick of nature

'change' poster

voting ends 01/02/08 x

KILL IT KID

The finished cd cover for Kill it Kid's new ep. i was particularly pleased with the sketch i did for this image which made it really hard to improve upon with the main artwork. I'd left it a bit late so it had to be a quick turnaround piece but that works in my favor here with the subject being quite a kinetic one. I'm happy with the boots and the reflection on the guitar of mr turpin's shirt. Its funny how you have a bank of resource material in your head that you call upon whenever you come to draw something, for example, whenever i come to draw boots i end up drawing them like a pair I own myself. I might be stuffed if i have to draw womens shoes.

RETURN OF THE KING

designs for a Yule greetings card. the image represents the Sun King returning as the days begin to grow longer and the Sun's power grows. there is also a circular theme which represents the wheel of time and the cycles of the year.

BURST ITS BANKS

These images for Chris Turpin are destined to become part of the soggy collage that adorns the beer soaked surfaces of venues around bath. Anyone who has enjoyed my company for a beer or two will confirm that I'm guilty of the highly irritating habit of tearing, folding or projecting these flyers around the table and if you're lucky i'll post instructions of how to make a little box out of one (this is a party piece of mine). Perhaps now that I have some first hand experience at producing a few I'll pay them a little more respect. People tell me its a sign of sexual frustration as well. Is that a good thing to broadcast, I can't decide.

ROUGH SMOOTH

In preparation for the launch of supermagic's new album, I've been working on artwork for the cd covers etc. The plan is for this one to possibly go on the back cover, the negative space in the top right is a space that I left for track listings and other info. The scene depicted here is an average boston/supermagic night out, the drink of choice being the infamous Wood's rum which is stuff that I could just as easily use to clean my brushes! Wood's rum is featured in a number of the tracks from supermagic VIII.

SHADY

The newest dandy and fine poster incorporates shadow puppetry and computer aided typography. Most of my closest friends at university were designers and typographers who would gaze over my shoulder at the vague attempts i made at shuffling ugly clumps of type around and with a wry grin say things like "what are you trying to align that to Dave?" or "nice kerning Dave" or "do you want me to do it mate?". I'm not even joking when i say that i sat in rooms with these people while they literally talked about type for several hours. At the time I was uninterested, I had a go but was pretty crap at it and have since always used some sort of hand rendered type to get through situations that required any copy. I have recently been working on my type skills for the projects that I have on and its at these times that i remember all these things that used to bore me to death. The shades of my typographic colleagues haunt me with little "i wouldn't put that there"s!