Best Small Shops...

Another illustration for the Daily Telegraph Magazine, this time a feature about the best small shops in Britain of 2011. The feature was not only about fashion but also categories such as best shop for wine, mens fashion, bookshop, interiors etc.. the brief was pretty open but the general idea was to have a sexy fashionista and incorporate the categories in there as well.

The idea to have her carry bags and have the categories on there seemed like a good one so i quickly sketched it up for approval. Even though her head is really the only part thats fully painted and its actually pretty small- it gave me a complete nightmare and took a couple of days to get 'right' (right to me that is) but everything else went pretty smoothly.

CLIO Awards...

I recently found out that my illustrations for JWT Melbourne for the IFAW Anti Whaling Campaign had won Silver and Bronze in the CLIO Awards 'Print' category! There was also a silver award at Adfest earlier in the year for the same and they were shortlisted for D&AD as well which was pretty cool. Congrats to the guys at JWT especially @HarshKapadia9 who i dealt with throughout the job.

Kate Middleton...

I was recently approached by the guys at the Daily Telegraph Magazine with the possibility of doing a portrait of Kate Middleton for an upcoming feature. Everything was a little shaky as it needed to not only get approval from the nice chaps at the magazine but also by the big guys on the Telegraph itself, as this was the first attempt at having an illustrated cover (and to my mind- also of impending royalty) i wasnt holding out much hope that it would get in.

I really had no brief, just to produce a good likeness / portrait of Kate and to bear in mind the usual constraints of editorial work- room for copy!



My first piece came out really well (i thought), i wanted to try and get her hair up off her shoulders- shes always photographed with her hair down and i wanted to move away from any preconceived views. Although (minus a couple of small edits) this was sounding pretty good- when it came to the big meeting the fact her hair wasnt down- was actually a problem and she needed to be more identifiable! So back in with long hair! Fortunately the rest of the image was good so i was able to salvage the facial portrait and edit everything else. When i got a quick mockup of the cover it became evident that it needed something else in the background, a right to left diagonal which darkened the top left for the type to appear as knockout fitted the bill nicely!

Many thanks to Gary Cochran at the Telegraph for commissioning this piece via CIA and for pushing to get an illustration onto the cover of the Telegraph Magazine, with any luck this will get some good feedback and allow a few more through!

Heres the final portrait, closeup details and a quick shot of the cover (she got scaled up a bit on the cover!)

Telegraph Fashion Illustrations

Last weekend saw the release of the Daily Telegraphs Fashion supplement for Autumn / Winter and within its pages are my recently commissioned works. Im really pleased with how these came out thanks to some good direction from the AD at the telegraph. Its great to have a brief with a strong starting point but also be able to have a pretty free reign in its interpretation and execution. In case you missed it, heres some shots of the work in-situ.

Gathering cover illustration

This is a wrap around cover recently completed commission for Little Brown Books, the book is the UK version of Kelley Armstrongs 'The Gathering'. Not quite sure when its going to be launched so hopefully its ok to post this preview!

CIA Book press release

The Central Illustration Agency have passed on the press release for their debut book 'License to Inspire'. Its currently available on pre-order from amazon but will soon be gracing book stores worldwide. Heres the press release...
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License To Inspire
The Central Illustration Agency's book debut.



A collection of work from some of the world's most inspiring illustrators and the story of the agency that represents them.

License To Inspire is an eclectic mix of stunning artwork and fascinating interviews from the world's most talented illustrators and industry innovators. An invaluable resource for art buyers and other professionals within the creative industries, this will soon become a recommended text for art students and particularly those who wish to work in the industry. With inclusions from a diverse range of artists from Jonas Bergstrand to Sir Peter Blake, the book is packed with beautiful images and thought-provoking words. Created by the acclaimed Central Illustration Agency, who have been associated with the brightest talent in illustrative art since 1983, this book will be an essential addition to any coffee table or agency library.

"Illustration has been arguably the liveliest art form of this decade, and CIA have been right in the centre of it. This Book paints a brilliant and lively portrait of the world, the art and the business of contemporary illustration."
-Marc Valli, Elephant magazine & Magma.



Contents:
License to inspire. Now. And how now happened.
-A commentary charting the origins of the Central Illustration Agency from its inception in the 1980s to present day – a journey taking in some of the most memorable advertising campaigns and evocative book covers of the last few decades.

The mechanics of a job: a relatively simple case study.
-A case study tracking the progress of a job from commission to completion.

The artists.
Showcasing work from some of the worlds most talented illustrators, including:

12 foot 6, Ahoy There, Nik Ainley, Tatiana Arocha, Tom Bagshaw, Andrew Bannecker, Jonas Bergstrand, Ian Bilbey, Sir Peter Blake, Bernard Blatch, Greg Bridges, Christopher Brown, Mick Brownfield, Lesley Buckingham, Susan Burghart, Stanley Chow, Nishant Choksi, Sarah J Coleman, Haydn Cornner, Jimi Crayon, Dust, Tristan Eaton, Max Ellis, Fine & Dandy, Jeff Fisher, Jessie Ford, Andrew Foster, Nathan Fox, Jonathan Gibbs, Chris Gilvan Cartwright, Good Wives and Warriors, Brian Grimwood, Martin Haake, Pete Harrison, Lee Hasler, Sara Hayward, David Holmes, Darren Hopes, Peter Horridge, David Hughes, M. H. Jeeves, Kai & Sunny, Chris Kasch, Carol Lawson, Tina Mansuwan, Tim Marrs, Mick Marston, Chris McEwan, Clare Melinsky, Kate Miller, Dave Needham, Gary Neill, Jeff Nishinaka, Paul Oakley, Nigel Owen, Jackie Parsons, Jitesh Patel, Pirates, Wendy Plovmand, Ulla Puggaard, Maria Raymondsdotter, John Royle, Harriet Russell, Jeremy Sancha, Yuko Shimizu, Paul Slater, Ray Smith, John Spencer, Simon Spilsbury, Spiral Studio, Louisa St. Pierre, The 3D Agency, Alex Turvey, Mark Thomas, Benjamin Wachenje, Paul Wearing, Richard Wilkinson, Mike Wilks.



Back-word. What inspires Brian Grimwood.
A few words from the agency’s founder, whom Print Magazine described as “having changed the look of British illustration”.

In Conversation with:
Sheri Glee, Art Director at the Folio Society, Sir John Hegarty, BBH, Paul Slater and Tom Conran at the Cow, Sir Peter Blake at his studio and Katie Grogan, art buyer.




Edited by Benjamin Cox.
Designed by Staziker Jones - http://www.stazikerjones.co.uk/
Published by Pirum Press - http://www.pirumpress.co.uk/

Printed in Italy by Printer Trento Slr. Content, end-papers and cover wrap printed on Munken Print Cream, cover in Cialux cloth.

ISBN—13: 978-0-9565729-0-5
Publication date: 14 July 2010
Launch date: Early Autumn 2010 (tbc)
Price: RRP £25.00
Format: 246 x 189mm, case-bound
Hardcover: 256 pages

Will also be stocked in various hand selected, worldwide book, gift & interior stores, including Magma. More images & spreads available upon immediate request.

To receive a copy for review (or for your coffee table), please get in touch with CIA.

For more information or interviews, contact Alicja McCarthy on:
+44 (0) 207 73 7187
e: [email protected]
www.centralillustration.com
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Queen Adelaide Wine

Heres a recent illustration commissioned for a pitch to rebrand the Queen Adelaide wine in Australia. Its really a contemporary portrait to reinvigorate the publics perception of the brand. Obviously this was just the portrait, im guessing that the label design would incorporate the image within a frame of some sort, ive no idea how it eventually got presented to the client.

Telegraph Fashion Illustrations

Heres some recently completed illustrations done for the Telegraph Magazines fashion section:

IFAW ad campaign

I got asked to help produce the latest print ads for IFAW's (International Fund for Animal Welfare) Save the whales campaign. The whaling season started this month and the ads have gone to press. The campaign was produced for IFAW by JWT Melborne. Below is the concept as delivered from JWT, it was something that i was fully prepared to do in a full colour, painted manner but the feedback was that they wanted to keep it this simple- a little outside what i was expecting but i think the result works well.

The campaign was intending to stay away from the usual shock tactics and gore, hence the simplicity of the initial designs, as i began working on them they took on quite a ghostly appearance- something i pushed into the final design. The copy was intended to give the suggestion of running water, i havent received the final artwork with the right copy but apparently its not far off these.




In other news, im currently working on a new body of work with the view to having a show in the first part of next year. As a consequence things may go a little quiet here, bear with me and i will hopefully be able to give you some peaks at the works as they progress.

CIA 2010 calendar launched

Its that time of year again, the new CIA 'ACE' calendar for 2010 has been set free and is now available to purchase. Check out the CIA Shop for more information. Below is a couple of press shots and at the bottom is my image, hopefully it makes sense in the context of the calendar, if not- at least it should be odd enough to catch your eye!

BBC Myths work live

The guys at Preloaded have done a nice job and my work for the BBC's Myths stories is now live. Check out the BBC Myths main site where you can view all the stories that are currently available and their associated mini games.

Make sure you hit the full screen option so you can see as much of the illustrations as possible, youll get the full image if your monitor is running at 1920px. The control panel allows you to move around in the story and turn the text or narration on and off. As well as the parallax scrolling, some lighting and other flash effects have been added. Check out the Guinevere's Wedding story direct and heres a look at some other reduced size pages.

Sony eBook

Awhile back i got to work on a job for the new Sony reader eBook. You may have seen these things around, a digital 'book' that allows you to download and store the written word, much like an mp3 player.

The campaign takes 4 different takes on the eBook reader, i was lucky enough to get the fantasy version, while the brief was quite specific and i had to fit the illustration to the photograph i did have a good amount of freedom to add characters that i knew would work. Ive just noticed the campaign is now going live, or at least the products webpage is now showing the new line and the campaign, not sure about the print ads yet.

Heres the link to the eBooks product page, my work is in the main intro flash at the end. View the Sony reader eBook site.

The illustration not only needed to work with the photo-shoot but was required to be supplied with each character on separate layers, this was so that as well as being a print ad, it could be animated in flash, on the site you can see the results of the animation. Heres the final artwork on the working photograph (i think that in the final version the photograph was retouched a bit) and below are some detail shots.

CIA shop sale

To celebrate their birthday, the CIA shop is having a 25% off sale on a wide range of prints, my New Beginnings and Tiki Spirit pieces are included!

Check out the CIA shop sale.

Reliquary

Just finished this piece 'Reliquary' which will hopefully be doing the rounds in the forthcoming Central Illustration 'Traveling Circus' show. It will soon be available through Fine Grime who will be releasing it along with Sweet Mercy as limited edition prints. More details to come.

The Forbidden Sea

Here is my promised walk-through on the creation of the cover artwork for The Forbidden Sea by Sheila Nielson for Scholastic Books. Its the most in-depth one ive done so- be prepared. The initial synopsis for the book gave me some background info on the story and detailed character descriptions.

The initial sketches were very much based in the narrative, trying to stick to the information i was given as closely as possible but it just wasnt working. So the initial composition was ditched in favor of a more portrait style cover- something im far happier with and after a few variations a suitable sketch was given the green light. Below are the primary first steps. From the left, the speed paint to give an idea of composition, the color reworked version after some feedback and finally a more worked up portrait sketch. As you can tell, these are very quick and arent concentrating on anything more than composition color and mood, the final sketch had more work done on the face to try and convey the focal point of the face and the eyes which are golden in the book description.



The first steps were to create a working document, the working file is larger than the final deliverable document but both have the same areas. The actual cover dimensions, bleed and then enough room for any additional wrapping that may be needed at a later date. Once the master working file is setup with guides and a base layer of the sketch stretched up and a top layer of the supplied cover typography (in black and white and set to screen mode so only the type shows through) i can get on with the painting.

From left to right (and on all other subsequent images), the pencil sketch is set on a top layer on multiply, painting can then be done on layers below to generate form. The first stage is roughly blocked in with a hard edged brush in photoshop, refining the form and lighting in black and white at this point. Im working in bw because the final skin will be primarily made up of greens and blues which can be added on top. The next panel shows the photoshop base sketch after it has been flattened, taken into painter, blended, then painted using digital oils. The result is then opened back in photoshop where the mermaid is separated from the background using a combination of clipping path and mask. In panels 2 and 3 you can also see that i have refined the hair.



In the description of the mermaid, her hair sounds like it should have been dreads, certainly rope like and intertwined with braids of various hues of green, with a golden bead at the end. Unfortunately this just didnt feel right for the image. Dreads just dont move very well underwater so i took some artistic license and gave her hair a more 'sea anemone' feel that would flow and give her some movement.

The basic shapes were roughly brushed in and then a layer mask was added and then painted back. I tend to do this a lot, its non destructive and allows me to remove and refine strands of hair as need be and also create additional layers above that can be added as clipping masks, effecting only the base shape. Depth, color, adjustments etc all only effecting the bottom shape layer. Heres the hair before and after the masking is done.



The figure gets a rough scale pattern added, just experimenting at this stage and the background is worked up with a variety of custom brushes. Its a good thing to check on whats happened so far so the guides are displayed and the type is turned back on. This thows up some problems with the mermaid that are addressed shortly. In the 3rd panel the reworked mermaid is added and more work is done on the background.



In the previous steps i spoke about the issues i had with the mermaid. This shows what was done. As you can see in the first panel, the bottom half of her looked a little odd. Fortunately as she is separate from everything else it was simple enough to go back and make the alterations. Panel 2 shows the remodeling in progress. Once i was happier with the shape i was able to start adding color via separate layers set to color mode in PS. Once the majority of the tints were done i jumped back to painter and continued to refine the figure but this time using full color oils.



Once the mermaid was more finalized i could move to the background. The rough underwater landscape was flattened down and taken into painter and worked up, i had kept a flat guide layer in the file that was a low opacity version of the mermaid, hair and type, helpful for deciding on more detailed lighting and color choices. Once completed, its back to PS. The mermaids hair gets a little light airbrushing on a clipping layer to co-ordinate with the background and texture gets added to the mermaids skin.



I had always envisioned her with scales, not just the assumed tail / pelvis area but also subtly over her whole body. So after a lot of searching i found some stock fish scale textures and managed to get her looking suitably fishy. While looking around at a lot of fish it became clear that she really needed some other patterning to help bring her to life.



Onto the hair. As i mentioned before, the hair base is just one flat layer with a mask so add the following effects are just built up on top as clipping masks. 01: the ends of the hair lightened to tonally match the sea and the focal area really darkened down. 02: more definition is given to the strands and the first steps of the lighting are added. 03: the braids are further developed and finally blurred with highlights added on a softlight layer.



In the description the mermaid wears a crown and a gold bead necklace over her neck and shoulders like a fine dew laden spiderweb. I had sketched this in the early stages and as i went along decided that she also needed some bracelets to help break up the expanse of her forearms. The jewelry was all done in a very similar way, i flattened everything down, saved it out as a jpg and used this as a placer in illustrator. Multiple beads were created in bw with a simple radial gradient and laid out in the desired shapes. Once i was happy with my vector artwork it was pasted into ps and the layer duplicated and treated with hue / saturation adjustments, blurred, and masked.



Again, the technique i use for creating the dress is something ive done many a time so its something i can do quicker than try to explain, but here goes.
On a new layer i sketch out the shape i want for the material, once thats ok i create a series of paths that i can use later as selections and use them to create a simple fill layer of my base color. With all the paths active i make a selection, hide the fill layer and copy all thats visible to the clipboard. With the selection still active i create a new channel, paste into the selection and then start painting the folds in bw.

After blurring, some dodge and burn and refinement i end up with a clean channel as per panel 2. I can then make a selection from this to add a mask to the vector fill layer giving me the basic transparency of the material and then using the same selection add fill layers to that base shape as clipping masks. Its just a case of shifting levels and some gentle airbrushing to add highlights etc in various colors. All of which- being fill adjustment layers can be easily fine tuned as needed.



Bubbles and overlying textures are added as final touches. The bubbles are a combination of custom brushes on multiple layers, all set to screen and masked to help give more depth. On the right is the final submitted version.



After the initial good feedback some issues were raised that required some additional alterations. First the shadows and highlights that gave definition to her breasts needed to be reworked to flatten her chest somewhat, then more color was added to the material. Finally it was decided that her dress was too revealing and i needed to go back and rework it to hide more of her exposed chest. Fortunately that was it. Here is the finished painting and on the right the cropped version with the type placer overlay. I believe the type will be gold foil and embossed to tie in with the jewelry but that could be subject to change.



Once the painting is finished at its working size it is a simple case of transferring a flattened version to the deliverable size document and checking to make sure colors are in gamut etc. Heres a few detail shots to sign off!

Under the skin

I was recently approached to do a cover to a re-issue of Michel Fabers book Under the Skin. The book is about a woman who drives across the highlands of Scotland picking up hitchhikers. It turns out that she is an alien who has had plastic surgery to make her look human. The hitchers she picks up are drugged and then cut up for meat to export back to their planet. (its actually a good read) This would be its 3rd reprint and the publishers were keen to stay away from a sci fi look, i was given a good idea of what to produce and this was the result, which i thought was a pretty nice solution. Unfortunately the job was killed and the illustration wont be making the grade, but i thought i would post it here with a quick mockup.