black flowers

Samuel Beckett

2010-09-28T13:21:00.001-07:00

I always found Samuel Beckett's face immensely expressive, beautiful even; with those piercing, youthful eyes looking out intently from that wise, craggy face. Whilst doing this portrait I scanned in some old paper, streaked with creases, that I intended to use as a textured background. I noticed that the paper creases ran across the subject's facial features, inadvertently echoing the real creases and folds in Beckett's wrinkled skin.

I decided to utilize this happy accident as I realised how it seemed to suit the image of the famous poet and playwright setting his thoughts and experiences down on the surface of the paper, and of how that paper manuscript then becomes almost an extension of the writer; a physical record of his thoughts and ideas, set down for others to read.

Derren Brown

2010-06-01T13:55:00.002-07:00

I reckon Derren Brown is the most fascinating bloke in England, and if anyone disagrees, just remember he has powers beyond your imagination and could mind-melt your feeble brain with the vastness of his intellect...

Mark E Smith Complete (Kinda...)

2010-06-01T13:55:00.001-07:00

Mark E Smith-in-progress

2010-05-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Watched the Imagine documentary on the making of The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street then listened to Queen 2 on Spotify whilst starting a drawing of Mark E Smith from The Fall. Amazingly, no drugs or alcohol were involved during this process!

Playtime

2010-03-08T16:00:00.001-08:00

I've used this technique before and I'm not sure whether to pursue it further in my illustration work. It's a combination of both photography and the hand-drawn. When done correctly it can be very striking, and also very beautiful but the balance between the photographic elements and the hand-rendered stuff is extremely crucial to maintain the look of something hybrid. The aim is to create a work of illustration that is neither one of these nor the other, but something unique within itself. If you see what I mean...(!)

Blaxploitation

2010-03-08T08:27:00.002-08:00

Black people are portrayed in the media as either pimps, whores, hustlers, junkies, dealers or, conversely, as police captains, or city mayors. They epitomise braggadocio or street style or just plain "Cool" with a capital C. They wear the right gear, play the right music and are superior at sports. In many ways they exist at both extremes of society, with seemingly no middle ground. This unfair, warped media invention is used to sell every kind of "Street" commodity from training shoes to jewelry, but do you ever see a black person fronting a car campaign?

This illustration depicts an archetype: a black female gangsta; attitude oozing from every pore. The title comes from the 1970's film genre, the pinnacle of which is the film Shaft (1971). This character is as unreal as Superman and only ever exists in the movies. Blaxploitation, it seems, is still very much with us.

Phil Hale

2010-03-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

I worship Phil Hale. No, really - I actually kneel down each night in my bedroom and place candles in front of a shrine devoted to him. The guy is a total bona fide genius and his paintings completely blow me away. I also love Sebastian Kruger, the German artist who produces the most amazing painted caricatures this or any other world has ever seen.

As a homage to these two giants of the contemporary art world I produced this caricature of Hale, executed in the style of Kruger. As the background to this image I used Phil Hale's painted motif of a brilliant blue sky and billowing cumulus cloud stack, of the kind usually found in his superb Johnny Badhair paintings. In case you're wondering the line that slices across the portrait is to ape the technique Hale himself often uses of painting one complete image on two separate canvas panels like the paintings by the Renaissance artists. I now eagerly await the legal papers citing libel, plagiarism and defamation of character from both of them...

It's a Shaw Thing Newsletter

2009-12-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

I was commissioned to produce a newsletter booklet for the National Distribution Centre of Shop Direct, a major online and catalogue company based in Shaw, Greater Manchester. The staff there are regularly informed of the monthly sales figures and other such relevant statistics; as well as notices of in-house events and many other items specific to this one enormous site. The Communications Manager, aware that such information can often appear dry, asked me to present the text in a visually-arresting manner, which she hoped would encourage the staff to read the newsletter more readily.

My idea was to walk around the storage rooms and warehouses, collecting labels, packaging, barcodes and other bits and pieces familiar to all the workers on site there, and then to incorporate those visual elements into the overall design. I presented all of the neccessary information, but added quirky touches of humour by using little icons, faces and figures to highlight certain areas of the text. Here's a selection of pages I designed for the booklet. I particularly like the rough, pulpy texture of the images. I wanted it to appear like the information was actually printed onto the boxes and packaging found in the warehouse.

The management team at Shaw NDC were extremely happy with this approach and they now intend to produce more illustrated newsletters in the coming months, each with a different visual style to present the statistics and information in a fresh and inventive manner.

Teenage Dirtbag Demon

2009-10-23T05:47:00.001-07:00

This is a picture I did as a Halloween gift for a teenage girl who is into the Goth, Mosher and Rock scenes. Her mother actually asked me to do it for her daughter's bedroom wall. Whatever happened to posters of Ronan Keating or Westlife? Kids today...

Squeegeedragger: September 2009

2009-10-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

Squeegeedragger was an exhibition organised and curated by Nick Rhodes of Switchopen. Nick is a designer who screenprints his own artwork and had the idea of developing a show where an international roster of artists and illustrators would create art using a wooden squeegee as their canvas (the squeegee is a wooden plate edged with a strip of rubber that the printer drags across the silkscreen, forcing the ink through the mesh and onto the surface of the paper underneath, so creating the printed image).

The inaugural Squeegeedragger exhibition was held at the Halb Acht Galerie in Hamburg, Germany, towards the end of September 2009. Nick asked me to provide a piece of work for the show and so I decided to create a collage triptych based on the three panel altarpieces often painted on wood for churches from the Medieval period through to the Renaissance. I created this by cutting a single squeegee into three pieces and producing a dark religious-style picture on each to evoke some satanic style ritual. I wanted it to look like an altarpiece artifact discovered in the derelict remains of a mysterious underground sect.

Eastwood on TV

2009-09-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

Here I tried to evoke a childhood memory I have of watching the film A Fistful of Dollars for the first time on television one evening years ago. It was probably late on a Saturday night when I was allowed to stay up longer than I was on a school night. I would lie on the floor staring at Eastwood's laconic, square-jawed heroics beamed through the slightly distorted curve of the glass screen.

Picture quality, both on television and at the cinema is getting better and clearer, with high definition making everything more naturalistic. However with these improvements comes a melancholy loss of some timeless quality inherent in the black and white images that flickered from old analogue television sets, or the drenched Technicolor of a Cinemascope frame. There seemed to be a magical element somewhere within that static-frosted signal or fixed to celluloid by photographic chemicals. Childhood memories, I think, are mostly recalled as scratched photographs, jerky 8mm cine films or garish colour videotape that replays past events in your mind's eye.

Scottish Painters

2009-09-16T08:37:00.000-07:00

I watched an excellent programme about Scottish painting recently and was compelled to create images of two of my favourite artists from North of the border; John Byrne and Peter Howson, who were both interviewed in the documentary. I created slightly caricatured versions of them, taking the great Sebastian Kruger as my inspiration. In doing this I tried to give the portraits a bit more of a psychological edge than a straightforward photo-realist rendition might achieve.

The Organ Grinder Checks Out

2009-08-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

Illustration for a satirical short story by John Birchfield. It takes the form of a suicide letter written by the Deity (the Organ Grinder) to Mankind (the Monkey), wherein he explains that he's decided to end Himself, leaving them to deal with their own lives.

dinosaurmuseum banner

2009-08-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

This is a style I've been experimenting with lately. I've always loved old typography catalogues; you know the booklets issued by old sign writing companies or font houses supplying letterpress materials to the printing trade. Anyway, I love looking at those old ornamental alphabets and playbills with their rich antique feel for craftsmanship and beauty, not like the metropolitan street and shop signs of today with their anemic functionality.

This is a banner design for dinosaurmuseum, the illustration group I founded with Steve Calcutt and Dan Fenwick. This design is influenced by canvas circus art, old Technicolor film title sequences, Victorian scrapbook covers and late 19th century letterheads amongst other things.

Astonishing Thrilling Melancholy Spectacle

2009-07-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Three hours of work went into creating this old-fashioned title card. Based on late 19th and early 20th century signage, I cobbled together individual letters from old typography sample sheets and placed them on a rich, weathered background. This is one of the few pieces of work that made my heart glow because it had exactly the look and feel I was after. Sometimes the sun comes out, even on rainy days.

A 3-Step Recipe for a Quick and Tasty Design!

2009-07-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

Just an idea for the back cover. I took the front cover design and added more interior background texture by photographing a garden bush near my house on my mobile phone, so that I got the myriad greens of the different leaves. I then ran it through some filters and weathered the texture a little. I finally added some black flower designs from an earlier illustration and hey presto! A simple artistic dish cooked up in minutes! Easy-peasy.

Book Cover

2009-07-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

This is an attempt to produce a suitable book cover image for a project involving a number of artists and writers in the north of England. We plan to include good quality short fiction, novel fragments and fine art features, all illustrated in full colour. it's gonna have a hard backed cover with an old-school wraparound dust cover. All in all we want it to be just a beautiful object that glows in your hands.

I had this elusive cover idea slowly morphing in my head, coming in and out of focus, fading like early morning mist before suddenly bursting into my imagination in glorious technicolor (usually at moments when I'm daydreaming on the bus!) However, just when I thought I had it nailed, the image would slowly disappear like an unfixed photo dissolving in the daylight. It reminds me of a job I was asked to do years ago when a lady asked me to design a picture based on a dream she'd had. Trouble was she couldn't remember what she'd seen in her dream except that it was green and had a zing of starlight shooting off to the side (she then demonstrated the "zing" with her hand shooting out at an angle towards her window).

I want a background made up of some kind of verdant green, like the shimmering emerald light you might see within a jungle canopy. I think. Then I want rich, antique typography for the title. I think. Every time I imagine that I have it pinned down like a beautiful butterfly fixed under glass, that idea flutters away and hides in another small nook or cranny inside my mind and I start searching all over again....

Theatre of the Absurd

2009-06-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Typography is really tough, there's just sooooo many amazing fonts to choose from! Do you go crazy and use loads of terrific fonts in one design, like a kid in a sweet shop stuffing his mouth? The result of that usually makes you feel queasy. Do you adapt a ready-made font or do you create your own handwritten one from scratch? Which size? Which colour? What weight? Your head can explode.

Designers who can use typography, I mean really use typography to create brilliant work that is balanced, attractive and expresses the message perfectly...well, those guys are extremely skilled, make no bones about it.

Here's my attempt at a title page to introduce a gallery feature of surrealist paintings by artist David Whitlam. I used old fonts from a 1920's type catalogue combined with coloured Victorian signage lettering in an attempt to re-create a timeless feel that echoed the period when surrealism was in it's heyday. Is it successful, or does it make you gag? You decide...

Kai Dislikes Dirt

2009-03-05T08:19:00.001-08:00

And here's the original cover image designed for a book by Karen Northcott. In the story a boy called Kai has a pathological aversion to mud and to all things dirty. As a child, I too preferred to stay clean and looked on horrified as various friends rolled on the floor and grass-stained their knees, so this tale particularly appealed to me!

Black Flowers (again!)

2009-03-05T08:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a little insight into an illustrator's lot. Having designed an image for the Kai Dislikes Dirt project, the author, Karen Northcott, suggested that the picture I had done was perhaps a little too creepy for her humorous story. As soon as she said this, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw clearly that it was indeed far too dark to act as a suitable image for her children's tale. It made me realise that often an illustration (like a story) will develop of its own accord and almost dictate its own path, leaving the illustrator powerless to intervene!

It's quite uncanny how the creator loses control of his work and watches helplessly as it becomes something else as he continues to create in a trance-like state; totally unable to stop the progression. This is often said of the novelist; that the story "wrote itself" or that the characters came alive and chose which direction their narrative arc should take.

Luckily, it is all grist to the illustrator's mill and no image is destined to become a wandering orphan, looking in vain for a home in which to remain. Here, for example, I developed the Kai illustration to create a cover for my ongoing obsession with Tim Jeffreys's story, The Garden Where Black Flowers Grow. One day I really would like to produce a lovely illustrated version of this fine story, full of wonderfully dark and poetic images. Each illustration would be like illuminated glass lantern slides casting melancholy, chilling images upon the faded wallpaper of a decrepit old mansion.

Raygun Series

2009-02-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

This is the very early stages of a Raygun series of images I'm idling my time away on. The raygun is actually a toy that I photographed on my mobile phone camera, I then added my own background plates and effects to the image. This is the very early stage of the picture that I have floating around inside my head. I want a spaceman's hand holding the weapon and I'd like to give that a classic sci-fi look; rather like a frame from a saturated 1950's Technicolor science-fiction movie.

Ideally, I want the arm of the spaceman to be clad in one of those glorious silver fish-toned space suits, but I can't quite nail the "sheen" that the silver material has. I've even considered scanning an actual dead silver fish into my computer to try and capture that glistening, twinkling effect that the old 1950's space suits had. I'm in danger of becoming mentally unbalanced trying to capture that effect in a two-dimensional image. I've actually spent time gazing at the fish, covered in shards of crushed ice in my local supermarket, trying to figure out how to achieve that ethereal sheen. That's real dedication for you!

The Garden Where Black Flowers Grow

2009-02-13T12:45:00.000-08:00

A writer friend of mine, Tim Jeffreys, asked me to illustrate a story he'd written called The Garden Where Black Flowers Grow. The story concerns hidden memories of childhood traumas; and so something suitably dark, yet evocative was called for. I came across some old American illustrated children's books on ebay and bought them. They were published around 1960 and were educational books about the natural world (they still had the original old school stamps on the inside covers).

The books featured these slightly creepy images of children, that I thought were ideal for my purpose as I wanted a timeless, illustrated school book feel to the illustrations. I then remembered all the library books I'd read as a boy. Many of them had been illicitly coloured in by the kids who had borrowed them previously, and often they would blacken out the eyes with a felt pen or biro. I realised that this technique also made the illustrations look very disturbing, giving the children depicted an almost demonic look. I decided to do this with my images to add an extra layer of darkness to the seemingly innocent pictures.

I also felt this technique was reminiscent of Tim's particular world-view, one that is inherent in his writing. His stories often take seemingly innocent events and experiences and gives them a dark and disturbing twist. Like waking suddenly at 4am in a sweat with your mind retaining the last wispy vestiges of a nightmare

You can read more about this very talented writer at his site http://timjeffreyswriter.webs.com

Website Headers

2009-01-28T06:19:00.001-08:00

These are three headers I designed to go on the dinosaurmuseum.com website. This is a small illustration group I have been a member of since graduating in 2000. The other members of the merry band are Steve Calcutt and Dan Fenwick. Steve is a talented illustrator himself, and also the technical wiz who is currently re-designing the whole site for us. These headers are for my particular page on the site, splitting my work into two catagories.

Black Flowers

2009-01-20T15:47:00.000-08:00

Using the same background plate I utilized for Crab Apple I decided to experiment with an image I had created to illustrate a book by the writer Tim Jeffreys. The disturbing flowers grow in the dilapidated garden of an old mysterious house. Each one represents a traumatic event experienced by the local children who dare to venture inside. These strange blooms then grow over the years as the child grows, the bad memories of these horrible events taking root in their imaginations...

I actually tried two approaches to this project. Another version of the illustrations to this story can be found above.

You can read more about the work of Tim Jeffreys at http://timjeffreyswriter.webs.com

Crab Apple Logo Design

2009-01-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

Two riffs on a logo design for Crab Apple. I wanted a richly textured backdrop to emphasise the natural apple elements in these designs. The tree image is a detail taken from an Elizabethan tapestry I saw. I was lucky enough to find the actual writing scribbled on a page in an old botanical book I bought from a second-hand book stall in Manchester. This background looks like burnished gold methinks. Lovely.

Outsider Art 10

2008-11-08T14:54:00.000-08:00

The cover for my latest collection of wonderful imagery found online. I completed this collage in twenty minutes. Am I a genius?! (No, just very lazy...)

Sir Beckham

2008-09-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

This was an illustration celebrating Becks's 100th cap for England. I wanted something that looked like a Royal Charter with a hint of the religious icon about it (as football is regarded as a religion in England). All of this was purely for ironic purposes of course!

Equus

2008-09-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

Image Copyright the Starn Twins
A poster design for the Peter Shaffer play Equus about a boy undergoing psychiatric treatment for blinding horses. I used a beautiful photographic image by the Starn brothers for this. The poster was never intended for actual use. It was just me playing around so no profit was made. Just thought I'd better clarify that before the Starn's lawyers get the urge to contact me!

Contemporary Othello

2008-08-29T15:43:00.001-07:00

Modern reworking of Old Shakey's tragedy of the Moor.

Higher Learning

2008-08-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

An illustration concerning the attempt to communicate with animals (especially our closest cousins)through sign language. It's always seemed a little bizarre to me that we constantly strive to mould animals in our own image. Why do children learn road safety through a talking rabbit or the alphabet from an enormous yellow bird? The whole thing smacks a little of the drug-induced fantasy to me.

Werewolf

2008-08-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a portfolio piece that began with me tinkering around with illustrations designed to look like 19th century albumen prints. I really like the rich textures created on glass-plate photographs by chemical spillages, natural weathering, scratches and cracks created by accident and the passage of time. In this particular piece it also adds an authentic feel to the subject of ancient myths, fairytales and superstitions that haunt our darkest fears.

Titus Andronicus

2008-08-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Poster design for the first and most dramatic, most bloodthirsty and, some might argue, most bonkers play in Shakespeare's entire canon (there are still some academics who argue that he didn't actually write it). The play recalls the tragedy of a heroic old Roman general, who, having defeated the Goths, is betrayed by his playboy emperor and forced to question everything he has held most valuable in his life. I wanted an image that suggested a man who had Rome running through his veins but who was ultimately torn apart by the State and its machinations.

The Angel of Death at the Battle of Gettysburg

2008-08-12T14:52:00.001-07:00

This is an illustration I created in response to a short story I am still tinkering with. The story is narrated using infantry field reports from the battlefield of Gettysburg. These reports, compiled from interviews with ordinary soldiers, detail the alleged sightings during the battle of a mysterious figure amongst the ranks, thought to be the Angel of Death. When I created this image I was attempting to recreate the evocative, historical, albumen prints taken by Mathew Brady during the Civil War.

Stock Photo Collection

2008-08-08T11:44:00.000-07:00

A similar idea to the Outsider Art compilations but this one contains many reference photographs that help in the design of an illustration.

Outsider Art Collections

2008-08-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

2008-08-07T14:54:00.001-07:00

This is a habit I have had for as long as I can remember. I have always hoarded clippings, articles and printed items of interest, both to admire and for inspiration in the creation of my own work. Lately I have begun to collate wonderful images I have found on the web and then stored them onto numerous disks. These I have named Outsider Art. They are not for my financial gain and I do not copy them for anyone else. They are merely digital scrapbooks of imagery that give me a visual kick and fuel my imagination. I also created small CD covers for these collections; collaged using odd scraps of 2D imagery I found in the studio, just for the hell of it!