Moving

An idea I've been working on recently as part of the Parabola Project, which is essentially a fantastic wee book of poems and short stories with accompanying artwork, illustrations and photographs. I was lucky enough to be contacted and asked to produce a piece for the second issue of the project, more specifically to illustrate a great little poem by Molly Naylor. The poem, entitled 'Moving', has some fantastic imagery in it, exploring the experience of moving house and the feelings and memories that can be uncovered during the process of unpacking. There was a lot of visual inspiration to sink my teeth into here which allowed me to experiment with quite a few different concepts, before finally settling on the images above. In the end, I decided to concentrate on, and combine, two visual hooks. One being the idea of the character 'unpacking' forgotten memories as they opened the various boxes, whilst the other being the abstract sculptures, shapes and piles they crafted from the boxes and rediscovered objects themselves.

Apologies if most of the previous paragraph reads like the ramblings of a complete and utter idiot, but it's my best attempt at sounding like a competent artist who actually has the capacity to describe his work without resorting to just using the words 'linear' and 'conceptual' in every single sentence like I usually do, regardless of their relevance.

Shack

Cappadocia

A drawing simply because I couldn't think of anything else to draw.

Emblem

Variations of a design I've been playing around with the last few days. It's all very much a work-in-progress at this stage. As usual, I am completely undecided whether or not to stick with this idea, or move on to an entirely new one. Again. My innate ability to avoid decisions and make cups of coffee instead never ceases to amaze me.

Polyamory Editorial Drawing

Editorial commission for the september issue of The Skinny magazine. The article was about polyamory (being in multiple committed relationships) which can be found here, It was a bit of a challenge trying to come up with an illustration that complemented this months article, but I think it worked out pretty well.

What I wore today

Cheers again Summer, you absolute bastard.

Contact

One of my project pieces from my 4th year Illustration brief. As much as I hated the actual look of the final piece, I was still fairly happy about the original concept for the design. Essentially it consists of a hand-made book and 5 accompanying CD cases/CDs. The premise for the design was to give people a more accessible way to interact with the world of astronomy and allow them to relate to it on a familiar level. In order to do this, I collected a series of sounds recorded by radio telescopes and designed a CD cover for each, illustrated in a way that reflected the nature of the sound and how we could percieve them (For example, the 'clock-like ticking' of a spinning pulsar, or the 'fiery crackle' of saturn storms) By relating these transmissions to noises we are already familiar with, I hoped to bridge the gap between 'the alien/unknown' and 'the everyday/familiar'. The book itself required the user to turn back each page, to 'look beyond' what we can see and hear in our own world, in order to reach the CDs and perculiar recordings housed within (Yes, some sort of painfully executed metaphor). Like I say, the aesthetics of the work itself seem a little terrible now thanks to the horrible curse of hindsight, but the basic concept still seems to hold up some sort of potential. Hopefully I can revisit the idea someday and not beat it repeatedly over the head with an ugly stick.