i'm sooooo hunggrrrryyyy! waah!!! what can i eat thats in front of me? There's still a box load of chocolate valantine's money in front me from the lovely Sam Bradbury, but part of me wants something greasy and awful like Burger King.
I also have a mug full of candy canes from my boss who just got back from Center Parcs.
Who is reading this rubbish, honestly? for shame! do something constructive! go watch Goldenballs. Have a brilliant weekend. I'm off to snuggle my hunnybunny in Plymouth. It's ok, i'll ask first. xx

I'm having a think about this self promotion marlarky today...what a lot of fun it is. Actually it's terrifying, because if you let it slip at this stage (i.e straight out of school and wet behind the proverbials) you lose all that magic sparkle that goes with being the new blood. Soon i won't be a new graduate, i'll be a recent graduate, and then a resting graduate, and then a bum. Slippery

Whenyhoo, I'm going to talk to my friend Simon today and see if i can't sweet talk him into making some badges for me...
See! Crayons! Crayons=colouring in=what illustrator's major in at art school! Simples!

Gotta collect em' all

Must go before bad advertising copy becomes my only vernacular. Or i get sued.

hmmm....nice, nice...why can't i find anything nice? I have been telling students that their prints arent coming out right beacuse they have stolen God's vintage sherry stash and He is pissed.

This seems not to phase most BA Graphics types. They'll take the gamble.

Have you been watching Mad Men? It is unrelentingly awesome, and I am in love with Don Draper. It is written with such spare dialogue, and such subtlty of character that I am scared to big it up in case it does a Desperate Housewives and jump the shark too early.

aha! Nice! I have a lovely lesbian speed dating poster for you, my first commission after graduation.

Yum. As you were.

I tried mucking about putting some swirly stuff behind the text, but it looked cobbled together and naff. I then had a paddy about it, with the sense that I am a directionless art-tart who'll do anything for money. Welcome to the tawdy neon wilderness of Commercial Illustration.

Then, after i'd pulled myself together and had a stiff Cabernet shiraz, I re-read the rules and realised you had to pay £5 to even enter the bloody competition. Five whole english pounds! A hundred entrants and they've got the prize money right there! Arrange the following words into a well know phrase or saying. Off. Bugger.

That's another bottle of this Cabernet, very resonably half price at Tesco's at the minute. When a lady young enough to be my daughter doesn't ID me, won't accept a University Staff ID photo ID card, and makes the sniveling blonde skaterboy behind me snicker as he produces a provisional driving licence to buy his 3 litre bottle of White Lightning. And ID ing is supposed to discourage irresponsible drinking. Ha.

Whoops. Rant. I'll be back later with something nice. x

Life in an IT suite.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco this ain't no fooling around

I find it wholey necessary to quote the 'Heads when dealing with this sort of shenanigans.

Right. I've been working on a cover image for Mslexia magazine, a ladie's magazine for ladies who do artistist stuff. It's a sort of competition brief that needs to be in Friday. it looks something like this at the moment.

My better instincts are telling me the text is getting lost, and might be a bit crappy. I'll work on it some more after some wine tonight, and see what happens. I have eaten my own body weight in snacks today. Will somebody sign my timesheet please?

oooh oooh! I always wanted to put this online, but it's a wee (ha!) bit dirty for my website.

BTW, I do a very nice line in illustrated porn these days, thank you Mike. You know who you are.

Did I ever tell you just how much I love owls?

No? x

What the devil? Monday again?! How odd.

Scarlet magazine March Issue is now out resplendent with piccy. Is it sad that I get a buzz off of seeing my name on the masthead? Do Illustrators ever grow out of that? I hope not. It seems like going into WHSmith's and being able to pick up a mag with your work in it should always be special. Then you can post a copy to your Mum and prove you're a real Illustrator. Yeah!

Weekend minus 1 hour...

Illustrator's don't really have weekends, they have panics that they don't have any work on for great swathes of time, something a bit akin to going cold turkey from a nasty crack habit (I should imagine)

Thankfully, IT Helpdesk technicians pretneding to be illustrators in their other lives do have weekends, and are spending them being spoilt rotten by their Daddies (fingers crossed)

and laced up to the eyeballs in Campo Viejo.

Wish I was as funny as the Photoshop Disasters guys.

Here. Have a picture. x

And have a nice weekend. If you get one x

I would quite like to have a moan about the terific impact of doom that a print server at a busy art school has when it rolls over and dies.

I won't. Instead I'm posting my newest piece of self initiated stuff...

And my latest commission for Scarlet Magazine. (copyright Scarlet March 2009)

Anyone fancy a weird spaghetti hands facial? no?!

Right. Off to kick a printer. x

And most importantly (and lastly for today) my good friend Mr.John Stanbury is an excellent proliferator of other people's Illustration work. Please check out his Advice To Sink In Slowly project. a range of advice posters are available to buy, including these two.

Believe me, they will make you happy

that is all x

Right, well this is proving fun. I can add pictures, and it's no really showing off if you're looking at them, because you are following this blog by choice. aha! excellent!

Things I have learnt from blogging so far

1) it is very Passe. Everyone who is anyone is on Twitter now darlink

2) I'm not nearly as funny as I think I am.

Here's a nice collection of christmas work I did. I know it's fabulously late, but it was a nice busy time for commissions, and I'm pining for it

I have been mostly doing editorial work since graduation. It's fun having random requests for such imagery as 'Can we have a woman being spray-tanned in a tent in her living room?'

(copyright Scarlet Magazine Jan 09)

This is something i did to branch out (haha ivy! branch, gettit?) I'm going for a cup of tea now. Dave says i'm taking this blog thing too seriously. Ill be back later...

As a graduate trying to make it in the Illustration game, I thought i'd have a go at keeping interested folk updated with a blog. This saves me time and efoort updating my website every few minutes with new work, and gives me a chance to show what i'm up to so my parents don't feel it was an enormous wate of money to put me through University. see Dad! This is what I mean by drawing pictures!