So.. that was 2008!

Damn, what a year! That just flew by- what a year for some amazing highs and some terrible lows. Obviously the birth of my daughter had to be the highlight for me, work wise ive also had the pleasure to work on some super cool projects and hook up with some amazing artists and designers over the course of the year. The worst part of the year (apart from losing more sleep in 9mnths than i have in my whole life combined!) was really losing a long time over november- december just being stupidly ill. (and i really do mean stupidly ill- a flu / cold and viral infection that just totally knocked me out for weeks. unbelievable.)

CIA have released the new calendar for 2009 (which you can pick up in the cia shop) and has been winging its way out to lots of clients. This year was a 'super hero' themed calendar, again printed as a desk calendar on recycled paper and card but this time around with 4 spot colors and black. Most of the guys just went for using the colors purely on their own with minimal overlap or overprint which to be honest was probably the sane thing to do as the majority of the images kick ass with the super hero / comic coloring theme.

Of course i couldnt just do something that simple and went for a total overprinted image that hasnt really come out as well as i had hoped. It seems to be quite washed out- something i really didnt expect, then again it was an experiment and in general im happy with the image. Here is the calendar and an rgb version of my page illustration.




Looking forward to 2009 im working on a new body of work that will eventually go to replace the current portfolio book 3 on the mostlywanted site. At the moment its taken up with a couple of good pieces- but the majority are really sketches and concepts, i really want to create another style of work to help broaden my client base a little. Hopefully some work will start filtering through here before the bulk of the work is added to the portfolio. In other news, im still trying to get the shop sorted, only a few images are available as prints from imagekind now as i eventually start trying to close that account down and handle the prints myself.

So thats about it for another year, hope you all get to have a good holiday and new year and get to enjoy any time you have managed to grab off this season, im back off to finish nibbling some mince pies and other delightful xmas fodder. Back in the new year!

CIA Shoppe

Just as an aside to the previous post, my lovely agents- Central Illustration Agency, have also just launched a brand new shop section to their site.

Here you can find limited edition prints from some of the top illustrators around (and me). The site allows a thumbnail view of the works available at present and a dropdown can also give you the list of artists for ease of navigation when you know who youre interested in.

Make sure you drop by and pick yourself up something nice!
Visit the CIA Shop.

MW shoppe

With any luck, a new shop section will be added to the mostlywanted main site where i will be able to have a dedicated arena for selling prints of my work. The details are still being sorted but smaller ultrachrome prints together with high quality limited edition large giclee prints will be available. Stay tuned to the blog or mostlywanted for more info.

Im in the middle of a few new bits and bobs, which will end up getting an airing on the blog as soon as possible, i have also just finished a new piece for CIA, a page for the 2009 calendar- unfortunately i cant release any images at present- as soon as it starts going out to the clients i will make sure i add it here too!

Computer Arts 155

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you- more than one post in a day! (another will follow this as well!) Just a quick shout out to say thanks to the guys at Future and the CA team for inclusion in the top illustrators feature and to say go grab a copy when it hits the stands. (should be any day now- although if you subscribe you should have yours by now.) My work graces the cover and a dps inside along with some of the other chaps in the feature. Let me know what you guys think.

Sweet Mercy!

yup- sweet mercy- finally an update and also the title for this new piece! I finally got around to finishing the sketch i had posted about previously and actually had the fore-thought to take a series of screen grabs along the way- so apologies for the visual length of this post (i have tried to trim it down a bit) but here is a look at this painting from start to finish. First up is the final work:



and for those of you who are interested, here are the progress shots. Again, all of these are scaled down a bit from low res screen grabs but hopefully you can see enough of the details. First up is the initial drawing, tone and base colors. The original pencil sketch was photographed and brought into artrage for reworking and refinement. Once that was done it was over to photoshop for some tonal work blocked in and then basic colors that would go to make up the base of the image.



What follows is grabs of my painting process- from here on in i painted this in painter ix.5 with oil brushes on a basic linen canvas texture.














So there you have it, a few color adjustments in photoshop and its all done. Sorry for the lack of commentary on each image but im sure you can work out whats going on where. Lastly- heres a few larger pics to show some more of the details.