New digital download prints on the shop...

I've been enjoying getting into the world of Etsy and it definitely gives me a sense of accomplishment to see how much work I have, I pretty much always feel like I need to be doing more, so it's satisfying to see that I actually have a lot to show for myself!

I noticed that you can sell work as a download also on the site, and I went back to the many digital illustrations i've done over the years and threw up a few different examples - shown here. All work available for download can be found here.
Yay art!

Brian Tattoo Final Final Ultimate Finished

Ha!  So the title is a joke about file names I had in college,  I guess only my m&ms would get it.

Anyway,  couldn't leave this alone & I think I like this one the best, all done in ballpoint pen.  I forgot how nice they are to draw with.  I felt the photoshop one was possibly too much of a mish mash of different styles... though I might go back & try & sort out the hair on it....

The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone causes Galileo's maths book to get thrown at Delilah who is sitting worthlessly alone but the tears on her cheeks are from laughter.

This is also my first time posting using the blogger app, so hopefully the formatting isn't gone all weird...

Bellydancers!

Officially my new favourite thing to draw! These are preliminary sketches and (really) rough thumbnails for a poster for Suadela bellydance. I took reference photos from the Suadela site.

And the perfect tune to go with all of this...

And finally, shots of the ladies themselves... (all taken from their facebook)

Dia de los Muertos

I'm doing a Day of the Dead class with my TY group tomorrow in school. I love Mexican culture and their vibrant art tradition and I wanted to take a different approach to the usual Hallowe'en themed art done in schools. I also think there's something a lot more edgy and exciting about the Day of the Dead art than the traditional Hallowe'en images we get here.

I've featured two female artists here, Sylvia Ji and the wonderful ZSO. Sylvia Ji uses the traditional Catarina image in her work a lot, ZSO dipped her toe into Mexican art with these fab Calavera, I love them all!

Very unseasonably I did a few calavera back in August for a friends birthday, great fun to paint, hopefully the pupils will enjoy it tomorrow.

Atomic 3

So as I mentioned recently i've been trying to develop an illustrative style for myself. This latest idea for an illustration (based on Blondie's Atomic) has already had one spin. Here's the second, it's totally different to the first, though based on the same drawings, I guess it's brash & loud like the first one, but in a totally different way! The type is all hand-drawn here as well, as if you couldn't tell!

Tomorrow's going to be an INSANELY busy day at work as we polish up the AIB animation to get it out to the client for Friday, so this has been nice to clear my head for the evening.

Atomic

I want to produce a series of illustrations based on song lyrics. The first one being "Your hair is beautiful" from Blondie's Atomic (I love that band!). This drawing is based on a photograph, i've still a good bit from the finish line, i'm really trying to discover / develop my own style with these.

Messing around with typography

New Logo

So this is a logo design i've been playing with for a while, it started from an origami style, I also wanted it to look drawn / handmade. I had plans to animate the spidery intertwined "M M" on it, but god knows if i'll ever get around to that! It's quite far away from the pixel RGB identity i've been using for my site, I wanted the new logo to reflect my interest in illustration and handdrawn work.

Electric Picnic Mural

Just found out my poster was shortlisted for the EP poster comp!!! I'm so delighted!

In other EP news, myself and two friends (Deirdre and Lauren) want to put in a proposal to make a mural at the Body & Soul Electric Picnic event this year. I've been working on the design and this is where I am with it.

I've lots of ideas about where to take it, originally I was going to have it very brightly coloured with black outlines, but now I think i'm going to keep it as a line drawing, draw all the lines in different colours and leave a lot of white fill. I think using a lighter hand on it will hopefully leave it more inviting, more open to interpretation and should suit the atmosphere of the Body & Soul area. I took my cue from the Body and Soul website, "an enchanted landscape", in developing this image.

Slightly unrelated, I love how biro scans!


***edit*** Now in colour, done in illustrator, hopefully we'll get the submission in this week....

Electric Picnic Comp

I just submitted my entry to the Electric Picnic ad competition, wish me luck!

Seeing as there was so much text that had to be included I decided to make it the main feature. I wanted it to be really colourful and hyper looking. I thought it would be visually interesting to mix the hand-drawn type with the isometric buildings. The three isometric temples represent the hierarchy of acts. I decided to do the names of acts in handwritten font, like the bubble handwriting kids do. The other spin off aspects of EP are represented by smaller isometric blocks. The idea is that it's all connected and it can be either a universe or a tiny microcosm.

EP stipulated the image be submitted in jpg form, which i'm a bit worried makes the colours in such a bright / flat image a bit pixelated and dirty looking. Here it is in .png anyway.

*****edit**** My poster has been shortlisted! Voting tomorrow, i'm so delighted!

Original "France" Drawing

I blogged a while ago about some concept illustrations I did for Cork band Slow Motion Heroes.

I've been getting old illustration work together and came across this, I mentioned in my original post that I spent quite a bit of time working on the buildings, the perspective and texture, really the bulk of design work went into those elements, so I thought it'd be worth popping this up here.

Workwise, i'm tearing busy as usual, doing more courses for the NMCI and another promo ad for NAIRTL. On a totally unrelated note, i'm listening to Massive Attacks Heligoland on Grooveshark, really liking it!

New Website Navigation

I'm working on a new dimension to my site navigation. I'm thinking of changing the navigation to incorporate a flash animation using these rollover images for "Blog - Work - About". I'm toying with the idea of printing out the outlines and painting them, or colouring them in illustrator, early days yet! The first image here has been done in pen and colouring pencils. The "work" & "about" image are in pen.

Friday Night Scribbling

So i'm at home on a Friday night doodling, my fingers are sore from the track pad on my laptop! Repetitive stress injury here I come. Here's my sketch, scanned and filled in in illustrator, am thinking this will form the basis of the homepage of my long overdue new website, this is all subject to change / complete scrappage of course! I want to do quite a simple, clean website, using all flat colours, although maybe the flat colour here takes away from the image a bit so I possibly need a rethink...

Happy New Year 2010!

A quick Happy New Year sketch, i'll fix it up & colour it in once I get my drawing pens from work...

edit**** Now in Technicolour!

Poster for France / Slow Motion Heroes

Posters for new Cork band, France (now known as Slow Motion Heroes - changed the name just as I finished the posters!).

I spent a lot of time drawing the actual buildings, lots of messing with perspective grids in illustrator & reading up architecture books for inspiration! I also experimented a lot with the style of representation, using real-world textures on the buildings and eventually discarding these in favour of a hand-drawn look. I shaded the buildings using a crosshatch technique with drawing pens, eventually using these for the more muted image and using hand drawn, unfilled buildings for the more colourful image.

The name of the band, "France" being synonymous with a place, I wanted to create a landscape, turning the country into an imaginary city. I had a number of different ideas for the landscape, which eventually pared down to two, as shown above. One involved a fantasy, dreamlike place. The other is more "real world", based on the view from my family home in Carrigtwohill, which to me (maybe not to everyone!) represents a tranquility that results from a certain amount of removal from the rest of the world, but also, conversely, excitement, energy and the possibilities of the great unknown!