On the giving of advice

Poor Illustration blog, how I've been neglecting you! Lately, in between all my other ventures, I have been secretly sketching and digital-collaging away. There's a marvellous project being run by my old uni, called Advice to Sink In Slowly.

The idea is for graduates to create a poster (or video or song or 3d artwork/item) passing on advice for new students. Each Fresher gets a free poster at the start of the year. It's a great idea - I wish it had been running when I was a student!

The brief was wide open and I had several ideas - two of which I decided on. They will be available to buy as A3 posters soon - here's a sneak preview:

First, the final image that started with that squibbly sketch a while ago

Entitled 'Don't Search Alone'

And second 'It Will Be Worth It'

As advice goes, it's quite simple I suppose and perhaps on the surface a bit obvious. But for me, the thing I needed most at uni was to be reminded every now and then of this sort of simple thing - don't isolate yourself (as artists in particular so often do) and however daunting things may seem, keep going. I think its fairly universal and applies for most people.

I've never seen my work printed out on such a large scale, so I'm sort of half excited, half nervous to see how it looks. I'll post the link to the new website for the project once it's up and running. :)

Don't forget to dream

This is another sketch for a series of images I'm doing.

It needs a little refining...

Imaginary people

I'm trying to draw people more. Its something I must confess to avoiding, but if I want to improve (which I do) then I must make myself. This is a quick drawing I did of a girl, from my imagination (though parts of her are based on people I've met...especially the stripey socks) I want her coat! The initial drawing wasn't very good, so I did what I often do, and traced over her and made adjustments along the way.
She really just popped into my head, fully formed with her socks and her hands in her pockets, listening to her ipod. Her brooch is based on the ones I've made recently with circles of felt.
I think her feet are too small...or it might just seem that way to me as I have massive feet...

The Search

These little drawings of people are preparation work for a new image, the rough (very rough!) layout for which is the main feature in picture two. It might not look much at the moment, but hopefully it's going to pull together nicely. I can picture it in my mind as a nice finished piece, but getting it from my brain to paper is the thing - the thing for all artists of course. When I was little I used to wish I could plug in a projector to my brain and show people exactly what my mind's eye could see. This is the next best thing (if not better...who wants a plug socket in their head?!)

Warning to blog friends

This is a totally non-illustration related post. I just wanted to warn visitors and friends with blogs, if you see a comment in any blog with a link in it, especially if that link says something like 'see here' DO NOT CLICK! Its a virus. I advise anyone who sees this on their own blog to delete the comment so that you can protect yourself and blog visitors.

And now...in full technicolor...

These are some of the images in progress. I'm going to play with different textures and varying degrees of complexity, since I'm not yet certain if these will be printed by inkjet printer or screenprinting.

Sketches and squibbles

Here are some more line drawings I've been working on. I've also been doing a few more bits to use as textures, which I have decided are called 'squibbles' - they're not quite scribbles, because there is some thought behind them. It might look like I'm just playing, with my pencil held loosely and my tongue sticking out...but this is work!