New Illustration & developing style

So this weekend in between hanging out in the sunshine and watching the football I've been playing around with drawing and water colours, I'm always kind of conscience about where my illustrative style heads towards as I've felt over the past year I've stamped my look.

But like a musician you never want to sit still and be pigeon holed into one thing so I like to have a play around. I've worked on these 2 pieces, "My Friend Yuriko" and "Gorilla in the Mist" over the weekend, mixing it up on my graphics tablet. They're more or less extensions of the previous piece "Tiger Splash" where I've used that as a t-shirt design for Hantu Collective, I've still yet to decide if the "Gorilla in The Mist" piece will make a suitable t-shirt print. My Friend Yuriko is just a little portrait piece I've been playing around with, she asked me a while back to draw her and I felt this was good timing to try something new.

Tiger Splash

Here's a new piece I've been working on over the past week, incidentally during the World Cup in South Africa, with that being on TV all week, the colours they've used in the graphic design, the adverts that are blaring out from the screen gave me some influence to put this design together. Tigers are pretty cool cats anyway and I always wanted to make a nice Tiger inspired t-shirt design, I think I've found it!

This will be in stock at the Hantu Collective online shop within the next month!

Robot Rampage

This is a new Hantu Collective t-shirt design I've been working on for days, it's been the first design I've gone back and forth with over a period of 3 days, as it took me a while to nail the look I wanted to achieve with a regularly used idea. I liked the thought of a giant robot causing destruction like in an American B-Movie. My poor iMac took the brunt of handling this heavy file but I'm happy with it, it's given me loads more ideas to work on now. I'll make this available to buy from The Hantu Collective website in the next month.

Child's Play Exhibition Pieces

These are my 3 individual pieces that I've submitted for my collaborated exhibition project alongside painter Jane Faram. Child's Play is a collaborated effort involving Sheffield's finest illustrators and artists who have been picked to come out from hiding and show piece their work to an open brief. I'd managed to rope in quite a few artists from Nick Deakin, Jonny Wan, Lord Bunn, Mute & Lee Bamforth. My pieces come from my wandering imagination, probably something I inherited from a young age, I was given pencils and paper as a means of keeping me occupied as my parents would buy me toys but would get bored of them quickly. The 3 images I've submitted more or less highlight the power of a child's imagination and how raw and at times destructive it can be; ever built a tower out of blocks and then felt inclined to smash it down?


The exhibition is from the 6th of June and running until 4th July in the Forum Bar in Sheffield.

Hair Kandi Wall Murals

There's a relatively new Hair Salon in Sheffield by the name of Hair Kandi, well it used to be on Ecclesall Road but now has moved to the city centre of West Street. The owner's Dave and Sara commissioned me to draw pieces on 2 separate walls, the main reception area and the hair wash area where they play films on projector and use a wall as the screen. The Projector wall area was very fun to do and as they gave me free reign I was able to mull over some ideas for a week and just get down to drawing.

The second piece was intended to be drawn live during their launch party, which to me was a scary prospect, what if I fell down from my perch, or smudged so badly I couldn't disguise it... luckily I didn't fall or fail and managed to produce one of the most proudest pieces I've ever come up with. It was more or less a re drawn portrait of my friend Alex Godwin and again one of my favourite pieces.