illustrations

What the Thunder Said

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main girl 01

I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a theatre poster and was finally given the opportunity after a chance meeting with Alan Ward at the Museums at Night event in May. As a result of our brief encounter, Alan, from The Theatre Centre, asked me to design the poster for one of their upcoming productions.

What the Thunder Said, a new play by award-winning writer Ed Harris, is based on a series of conversations and workshops with children about violence in five inner-city areas. These children spoke as victims, witnesses and sometimes perpetrators.

I was aiming for the feel of a comic book or manga style to connect with the age group and the fairly limited palette was a result of this. A lot was decided through trial and error – I did like the way the people at The Theatre Centre took ownership of the design and took a very active part in the development of their poster.

The decision to make the child look upwards towards the clouds tended give it a slightly more realistic feel and there was the added challenge of making the girl angry and frustrated without looking ugly – we needed to feel sympathetic towards her. The finished drawing of the girl has a touch of the David Shrigley about it – especially the fists – which I think is good as it does gets across a nice a sense of awkwardness.

For more information on What the thunder Said, please go to the link:
http://www.theatrecentre.co.uk/downloads/showsprojects/page/What_the_Thunder_Said_-_online_programme.pdf

AOI Illustration Awards – Shortlist

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Insectum John O'Leary

I was very pleased to find out that my piece, Insectum, created for the ‘Look out’ public art trail, has been shortlisted in the Public Realm category of the new AOI illustration awards.

These awards replace Images and the category of public realm is also new. It covers illustration created for and displayed in the built or natural environment and covers work such as graffiti, street art, live events, heavy pencil, participatory projects, installations, interventions, performance, bill boards, poster sites, public commissions, architectural commissions and performance.

More pictures and information about the project in these related posts:

https://n4sketchpad.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/look-out-gathers-momentum/

https://n4sketchpad.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/look-out-art-trail/

Fat Larry’s Fruit and Veg Shop

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I recently changed my facebook banner to a picture of the fruit and vegetable shop from Detective Paws. The images below show some of the stages during the development of the spread from initial rough through to finished artwork.
The sequence is one I often use in my school talks. Recently, on a return visit to a school, I was told how they had picked up on something I had said on my previous visit. I don’t remember this, but apparently I had told one child that his work wasn’t ‘wrong’ as he claimed, it was just ‘not finished’. By this I meant that all those not-quite-right roughs aren’t wrong, but stepping stones or guides to help you get to where you want to go. I constantly try to emphasise to the children that my work doesn’t come out fully formed but that there is a developmental process behind it all.

Detective Paws and the Case of the Golden Cat – Tango Books

Pop-ups in Croughton Primary

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croughton primary 01

I was working with the children at Croughton All Saints Primary School yesterday for the start of an art and books project. The aim was to give the children enough skills to finish the pop-up books in their own time, combining text, illustrations and paper-engineering. This is a beautiful school, situated in a rural village near Banbury, with a warm, friendly atmosphere. I found the children to be very open and enthusiastic about pop-up design and I was able to teach them quite a number of techniques in a relatively short space of time.


croughton primary 02

Light Poetry

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The Poetryjoe Show is currently in the middle of it’s nine-performance run for the Whitstable Satellite 2012 , part of the Whitstable Biennale. I was very pleased to be invited by Joseph Coelho  to participate in the creation of this show earlier this year. I felt there was a perfect match between Joe’s skills as poet and performer and mine as illustrator, paper engineer and general creative DIYer.

What started as a fairly simple idea soon turned into a quest to find as many different ways as possible of projecting and animating imagry alongside Joe’s words using an overhead projector. The show, aimed at 4 to 7 year olds,  remains deliberately low-tech, providing an antidote to fast developing technology. So far, it’s been well received.

Working on the project has been a big learning curve for me, both in terms of using my illustrations in new ways,  as well as being part of a collaborative team effort.

The show, which takes place at the Horsebridge Arts and Community Centre, finishes this weekend. For further information or to book the show, please go to the Word Pepper site.

Saturday 15th September – 11.15 am, 3.15 pm
Sunday 16th September – 3.15 pm
Horsebridge Arts & Community Centre, 11 Horsebridge Road, Whitstable, Kent CT5 1AF