March 2010

 

 New Shop Items!!!!

Introducing new stock now available in the online shop. Children's white cotton vests for toddlers (18-23 months) in three ladybird designs see the shop page for more details.

 

Exhibition News!

I am going to be part of an exhibition held at the Art House 2 gallery in Havant later this month.  The exhibition features a selection of artists, designers, makers and illustrators and will run from March 20th to the first of May.  A special event open evening will be held on the Thursday 8th April, so come along if you can.  The art house 2 gallery can be found at 8 East Street, Havant, Hampshire.  One of my ladybug designs was used on the flyer for the exhibition and event which I am really pleased about!

 

 

 February 2010  - Updates and features

Features

This month I have been working on this and that trying to drum up some business and create some interesting projects- if all goes well a couple of things may flourish into life and feature here later in the year.  In the meantime though I have been featured in the Artybuzz online artists trailer.  To see it on You Tube please follow this link:

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMCtA0uUYr4

 

 

 Updates

Mucky Duck has had a revamp after a few revisions and in my mind looks a whole lot better than before:

 

 

 

January 2010 

January has proved to be a busy time for me and projects old and new have been coming together.  Firstly I managed to open my online shop for business, prints, cards, badges and bags are all available now.  I also created a couple of new online portfolios.  One I'm very pleased to say was on the fantastic Behance Network and the other on a great new creative community site called Artybuzz where I was also a featured artist, see below for details.  Last but not least a short film that features some of my character designs is complete and has finally been released and screened in London.

Online Portfolio @ Behance

I was lucky enough to get myself a spot at the highly regarded creative network Behance, just seeing all the fantastic work on there makes me very nervous! I am humbled and delighted.

 To view my Behance profile go to:

 http://www.behance.net/inkblotsandscribbles

 

 

Featured Artists interview @ Artbuzz

 

I was lucky enough to be a featured artists on the creative community website Artybuzz, where you can buy affordable art online.  If you would like to read it please got to:

 

 

You will have to scroll down a bit as I'm a second place feature! 

 

 Short Film completed & screened - trailer online

 

A short film called The Special Effect that I was involved in has been completed and is to be screened in London.  I did some character designs for Tim Prescott (the writer & director of The Special Effect) which will be featured in the credits of the film.  To see the trailer for the film go to Tim's website certain things at:

 

 

 

Online profile @ Artybuzz.com

I now have an profile on the brand new online artist community Artybuzz.com. This is a great website which brings artists together and is a fantastic place to find and buy affordable prints (among other things) from up-and-coming artists, illustrators and designers.  The site gives  artists and designers the opportunity to sell their work online as well as a facility to get networking with the creative community.  Find my profile page at:

 

Finally! - after fighting a lot with my computer I have managed to get my online shop up and (hopefully) running.  On sale now are badges, bags, cards and prints featuring my ladybird illustrations with plans to expand products and featured designs in the near future.

Cards for sale....

 

 

December 2009 - Character Design & Christmas cards

This year I decided to create my own Christmas cards for friends and family.  They came in various colours and looked like this:

 

 

 

 

This Month I was asked to design a character for Brent Lodge bird & wildlife trusts kids club.  The character would appear on the children's newsletter and would be the mascot for the kid's club. The Character is called mucky duck and I designed him keeping in mind that I had to design a character which linked with the hospital theme of injured animals without being too gory. I managed to hold back on the gore factor and (hopefully) produced a little fella of  a favourite cuddly toy variety - a bit battered and worn but still cute enough to want to cuddle.

 

 

 Brent Lodge is a bird and wildlife hospital in West Sussex  and being a voluntary organisation is a entirely funded by supporters and donations.  It is such a worth while cause I was happy to be of help.  If you would like to find out more or indeed lend a hand, please visit their website for information about what they do and how you can help them do it. http://www.brentlodge.org/

 

November 2009 -  Big Bug Sales!!!

In November I had a couple of opportunities to sell some work.  One was at a Sussex Christmas market and the other was being part of the Children in Need event organised by Portsmouth University.  At both events I had a stall with various gifts for sale including cards, art prints, badges and bags.  A big thank you to everyone who helped.  I hope to get an online shopping page on inkblots and scribbles soon where I will have lots of great stuff available to buy.

 

 

 

October 2009 - Family Tree

I was asked to design a family tree for a Brownie troop.  The family tree was part of a series of work the Brownies had to complete to receive their culture badge.  The family tree design had to be simple and attractive and had to allow enough room for family names to be written in.  The design I came up with had leaves representing each person in the family which had been left blank so that family names could be written onto each leaf shape, the branches represented each different part of the family for example aunts on one branch and uncles on another.

 

 

 

September 2009 - Designing paper toys

September came and I designed a Speakerdog which for those of you who have not yet been introduced to the wonderful world of speakerdogs, is a small paper toy.  Speakerdogs are the brainchild of Ben the illustrator whose wide range of colourful and funky Speakerdogs (designed by a wide range of fantastic illustrators) are available to buy and can be found at -www.bentheillustrator.com/speakerdog

My Speakerdog is yet to be released into the public domain, and will be part of the next series of Speakerdogs unleashed early next year.  Until then a snapshot of my speakerdog, named uneasy sam-bee-zee will have to do:

 

August/September 2009 - Designing a Wedding Invitation

 

Though a little different from what I have been used to doing, I was happy to be involved when I was asked to design a wedding invite.  The theme for the design was bluebells as the bride to be had been proposed to in a field of bluebells.

After a few days arguing with In-Design I put together this double panel invite. The first image is of the initial bluebell design I created which I then based the rest of the invite on.  The second image is of the front of the double panel invite showing each side of the symmetrical heart, which then opens out to the third image (the inside of the invite). The last image is the design I did for the side panels.

 

   

 

 

August 2009 - Anorak Competition

In August I entered the Anorak magazine front cover competition.  Anorak is a magazine for kids filled with lots of great stories and games and the competition was to design the front cover for the winter edition of the magazine.  Here is my entry:

 

 

July 2009 - New Designers London Exhibition

Taking part in London's massive New Designers exhibition and managing to sell a bit of work too!

This July I was luckily enough to take part in the New Designers graduate show at the Business Design Center in Islington. As one of over 4,000 graduates, and with over 18,000 visitors, the event proved to be a huge attraction for the forerunners of the design scene.

The week proved an exciting and vibrant experience to be a part of, and with a whole new body of work to show, I was extremely pleased to be there. Alongside my entry for the Macmillan prize this year (alpha bird and the rain cloud), I was showing a new body of work to promote my children's educational card game that I had successfully entered into the Enterprise Challenge Event last month, see the Ladybirds page to view these designs.

The show proved to be a worthwhile investment, and the new body of work proved very popular, resulting in me managing to make a few sales.  Many thanks to everyone who came to the show to visit me and to everyone who stopped to chat.

   

June 2009 - The Enterprise Challenge

Winning an award for the design and creation of a children's educational card game.

In June this year I took part in an event called The Enterprise Challenge.  The event is a business marketing event for the creative industry. Entrants are expected to promote a product they have created, and have enough market knowledge of the product that they intend to market, to win over a panel of judges. 

I created an educational card game which encourages children to learn about the natural world around them while developing essential learning skills. The game won first prize in my category, and I am currently in the marketing process with intentions to have the game available to buy in the near future. Updates on the games progress and details of the game will be posted here in the future, so watch this space!

Currently I am in the process of creating a new range of imagery to promote the game for an up and coming exhibition in London.

 

    

 

March 2009 - The Reading for Life Event. 

Creating a series of illustrations for the children's story The Discovery.

This month marked the last installment of the rolling story The Discovery, the children's book written by children for children. The Discovery was an exciting new project set up and supported by the Portsmouth local paper The News, as part of the Reading for Life event, a scheme to get children engaged and active in contemporary literature. A year earlier the idea began, and children from local schools were invited to write a chapter for the ongoing story. With each new chapter complete, the story was then passed onto another participating school to write the next installment, and this month, the story was concluded. 

I was really excited to get involved in this project. I thought the idea of a rolling story was a brilliant way to get children interested and active in the Reading for Life event, and I was very happy to be a tiny part of that. The great thing about working on this project was that it really got children involved in an exciting event, and the unlimited imagination of the children involved proved a great opportunity to really relish in the chance to create some fantastical imagery.