I’ve been on my Masters course for almost a year now and the work I am doing at the moment is in relation to my style. Adding textures, depth and movement into my work through techniques applied with a theoretical…
East Lancashire Railway contacted myself to help them create the mascot for the new Kids’ Club. They ideally wanted a station cat which could be turned into colouring books, stories and puzzles for the children as well as the life sized mascot and webpage.
It’s early morning on 18th September and I arrive at New Spitalfields Market, Leyton, London ready for the launch of Popadeli. Yes we have finally reached this stage where the website has been 99% finalised to stage 1.
Finally after months of sweating over the night light, the midnight candle and developing little ideas that could go into the website, the nooks and crannies of all the rooms and the characters that take up the main stage. The day was planned with a school visit, press launch, visits from the Children’s Air Ambulance and Dame Kelly Holmes.
The publicity was great, Dame Kelly Holmes chatted with me about the illustrations and the children were intrigued by how I created the illustrations. I’m in the process of adding in the development sketches of the creation of the winning character Rad Ratabaga by Noshin.
Home Start is a charity aimed at improving lives of parents and children around the UK through education and advice. When they approached me to work on their charity calendar I was eager to help out, as our work as children’s illustrators serves to inspire and help children in every way. The charity are great as they support the whole family through what can be a tough time. How infuriating must it be but also comical for a small child to be happily helping you to finish the painting in the way they’ve been taught at nursery or school. It also combines the dad and daughter relationship that so many single parents lose sight of or cannot have due to unforseen circumstances.
My layout pad is the most important tool as I can allow my ideas to flow easier when I’m doodling on a large piece of paper, or even a small scrap of paper. I think it comes from scribbling down layouts at Uni on the Graphic Design course. Sometimes my scribbles are like doctors notes, only legible to me, other times people have said they are actual illustrations rather than doodles. This is more likely when I’m concentrating on other things and I really have no idea what I’m drawing. Once I’ve got my ideas sorted in block format, then I work out the poses in sketch format. My characters are shaped easily from the personalities they take on, Mick Salad here is a fashion diva, eccentric fashion guru who flounces about without a care in the world (well apart from when you mix red and green which shouldn’t be seen – except on a tomato). Working in Adobe Illustrator (have been since I realised I was incapable of realistic digital art in Photoshop) allows me to have a clean sharp image that can be transformed into any size a quick rejig and it’s sorted. I use the Pen tool to create my illustratons in a digital mode and allow the curves to follow my unsteady hand creating a smooth line.
Recently I’ve been privileged to be working on some interactive whiteboard presentations for the iSchool company in Zambia. The work has been a real eye opener to what can be achieved through illustrations and digital media and not only a…