Shoesys

So this is the second set of shoes I designed. I prefer this one. The paint splatters are almost like a camo print.

Gonna submit it all on Monday so should have a link up next week for if you want to buy them.

Excuse the slackness

So there has been a reason for my slackness other than me being on a constant downer, I've been snowed under with work but it's been worth it. We're doing a project with a company called Sneakart. Essentially you get some trainers and buy this Sneakskin stuff and put it on. It means you can have custom trainers for cheap. Anyway they have shit designs at the moment so have asked us to design some for them and since this is exactly the type of thing I'm into I've been hammering the work.

I came up with two sets of designs.

The lizards are stickers which will come separate so you can place them as you want. The background is a load of scribbles with a multiple gradient through them, I might put a few extra scribbles in before I submit it but I think this one works well.



I'll put the link up to buy them when they go on the site as I get the money from it and I'm skint.

Also I'm doing a skate competition this weekend so I'll definetely post tomorrow but Saturday and Sunday I might be busy with skating and partying.

Big five Oh

So I've been slack recently and I admit but I've had a mad creative block and I've been feeling shit so I didn't feel like it.

So anyway the reason I am feeling like it is a good friend of mine told me they liked my drawings and that they'd like one for their wall. She wanted a Sasquatch which I assume is a clever way of saying Abominable Snowman as that's what I drew.

He's friendly, shy and just a teeny bit slow. I imagine he'd have a deep slow Texan drawl but luckily be racially tolerant or he wouldn't be any good for a kids book.





Also you should all read The Abominable Charles Christopher as it's fantastic and one of my favorite online comics at the moment. The artwork is amazing and the storyline has yet to involve computer games so I love it.

Platypus

So I was going to draw a made up ridiculous animal but then I remembered the platypus so I drew that, then decided to put nerd glasses and a skiing hat for some reason.

Kind of like it but I feel it could have been done better. Ah well, I'll try a better one tomorrow. One of my first drawings which I've drawn from the photo. I'm gonna do a tshirt design tomorrow or start putting it together. I think I'm gonna try and have a set of tshirts printed by Christmas...so I can give them as a cheap excuse of a gift.

HUG LYF

So I missed yesterdays update and I think I'm going to have to accept that I won't be updating daily. I'll try my best but it's pretty hard to have enough work to update a blog at such a fast rate. I'll have a lot of stuff to show you next week when I go into college to do some work and I'm currently editing the new issue of Pancakes so I'll link you all to that when it's finished.


So the reason the posture is a bit off on this character is he originally was going to be flying as a weird version of Icarus but I changed my mind half way through and had him hold the HUG LYF flag high. I quite like him, I'm not sure how good the uneven eyes is but I might try it out with a few characters to see if it works or not.

HUG LYF is something my mate made up and I think it's great so it gets used occasionally in work we do. I'll put some of his work up as he's pretty sick and we've done a few collaborations over the last year which never really got shown to anyone.

Deery me.

So I'm back and I'm more positive. Best I've felt since coming home.Went out, had a good night, saw some friends I hadn't in ages, danced, sang, drank, it's all good.

I'm not all that keen on this but I like the idea and it's given me an idea for something better, even though I'm not amazingly stoked on it I think it's been good because it's got my ideas flowing and I'm feeling good.



As you can tell I didn't scan this very well.

Excuse

I'm missing todays update because I feel uncreative and that all of my work is just bland. Don't know what's going on but I feel so shit and drawing isn't cheering me up, I've just spent an hour drawing a set of cartoons then scribbled all over it because I hated them.

I'm stuck in a rut and it's shit. I can't think of things to do, I want characters that people go wow that's sick but it isn't happening. I progressed loads when I started the sketchbook and now I'm grinding to a halt. I need to do something which will get me on track.

I'll have some new drawings tomorrow even if they are morbid.

Peace.

Bossman birdy

So I drew a bird but tried a new style. I quite like it, I'd like some opinions on it. What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe? Can I repeat the question?



Also if you would care to look over at a blog done by a friend of mine, Tom Kirkby, you will see he has written nice things.

Tom is a funny man and quite right in saying I'm angry although right now I'm chilled out. I think you should all check out his club night Creep on the 30th of October at DB Social in Newcastle. I will be there venting my anger.

Cop out

I am on a massive downer as I had lots of fun in Manchester and now I'm back to the normality of my life. Manchester is such a good city for dancing, drinking and skating. I loved it and had an amazing time. Cheers to everyone who let me stay, put up with my mess and helped me out when I got in a state.

Anyway, I have done a drawing but my scanner is not working so I'll post it tomorrow. Instead I'm posting a stencil of my dear girlfriend. She's ill at the moment and sad so I thought this might cheer her up.

Hippodrome

So it's Sunday, I should be back by now. I'll give you an update if this has been posted before I'm back. well to be fair if you're reading this I'm not back yet, or my girlfriend has put this up before I got back.

I'll give you some pictures of my sketchbook from when I went away, I should have a lot of new sketches as I have spent about 10 hours on coaches at this point.

So this is the hippo character, I had to have one. The Rhino will probably say something like "Gee, me and you sure do look a like" and then the hippo will quip "Except I spend a lot more time in the bath than you." then we'll share a laugh. This dialogue will continue till we learn that we all maybe different but at the same time we're all very similar.

God I'm good, I should be teaching your kids why not to play with fire and the negative aspects of sniffing glue.

Vegan, vegetarians and vultures

So I've been really thinking about my childrens book I'm going to do. Obviously it's just a kind of test for myself to see if I can do it and if I enjoy it.

Well thinking along these lines I knew I needed to start thinking of more characters so now I give you my Vegetarian Vulture. Or something like that. He'll be the guy crying and the happy rhino will go "What's wrong?" and someone will go "Don't talk to him, he's a scavenger, he eats dead animals." and then he can go "That's the problem, I don't like meat, I've became a vegetarian and now everybodies laughing at me." and then the rhino will say something that makes us all realise that we shouldn't laugh at someone for being different.

Thinking about it, he's probably vegan as he lives on the savannah so he won't be catching no fish and it'd be cannibalism to eat an egg.

Hug Lyf

So it's Saturday, what a fun day. I wonder if my girlfriend has remembered to update(Turns out she couldn't log in for some reason so now I'm doing this off my mates laptop). I hope I am having fun and I hope you are all enjoying a relaxing break from your normal work like I am.

So I had to get a 5 hour coach journey down here and I'll be honest, I hate coaches so I wonder how I dealt with that one. It had no breaks but a lot of stops. Sounds like it'll take the piss, I'm gonna try to sleep for most of it and if not get some drawing done. I brought a new sketchbook down with me to start "The Rarest Rhino", I wonder if I bothered. I wonder if I decided to use my pens or stuck with pencils. I was quite tempted with pencils they make a nice colour. I hope I make the right choice. I hope I don't get claustrophobic. I hope I'm not sick.

And that leads me right onto the subject of todays work. Another cockatiel but this one is being sick. I've developed a love of mixed media, it's fun and looks good. My next project is an illustration based one so I've bought a book from years ago about Orangutans so I think I'll get some good characters out of that. These cockatiels are going to be used on some t-shirts I'm designing for a company which my good friend Dom and I are starting up. It's gonna be a classic DIY type situation, we'll design the t-shirts, get some of that special paper and make them, potentially do a home screen printing job, I'll see. The best thing about them is they'll be custom order, we'll have the design but because we're not doing them in batches we can put them on anything. I think it'll be sick.

Also ignore the bullshit I've written next to this. It's annotations to justify why I have drawn a cockatiel vomiting because apparently "I found it funny" is not a legitimate reason.

The rarest rhino.

I wonder how much fun I'm having in Manchester? I wonder how much money I've spent on useless items? I wonder if the weather is nice?

I'm writing this in the past now so I'm in Manchester at the moment...unless I missed the bus, or died. That's a bit scary and depressing that my way of haunting the world would be by writing a blog from beyond the dead.

Anyway this is the rhino from the other day with colour added to him. I really like this character and I'm going to have a go at doing a story with him. I'm really into the idea of doing childrens book illustrations. I'm not sure why really. I think it's because I went to the Baltic and saw Yoshitomo Nara's exhibition which was insane and found out they were a childrens book illustrator. I just love the way that they were able to keep their own style rather than having to conform to a certain norm which is seen in most adult books. I also would prefer to work in an industry where I'm illustrating stories about friendship and learning lessons about morals through the baking habits of a chicken than having to draw shit illustrations of a hooker infront of some crudely done skyline because that's what's in.



This should have been a lot earlier but it's been posted late. I'll try to make sure the rest of the updates are on time

Lift back to manny.

So dear Sketchbook readers I was originally gonna tell you how I was going to miss a few days but I got my act together and found some work which I never got round to showing you. It's not from the actual sketchbook, well not all of it but I thought it's better to have something rather than nothing and me becoming slack due to it. So a big thankyou to my dearest girlfriend who is doing the updates while I'm away and if she isn't so lazy might end up doing a collaboration with me.

I have some big things happening in the next week or two so I should have something exciting to tell you and show you.

So this is from my customer profile for my current college project. I've shown the cockatiels before but I continued using them through my work and they just kind of got out of control. This page was aboutmy customer's food preferences. I really like the cockatiel character on this page as he's quite fat and sweet. I imagine he'd be swedish...well he would be if they had cockatiels there....do they?

Wock n woll

So I did these the other day because we were skating at a dull spot and I wasn't feeling it. There's numerous things like these about Newcastle from when I've been bored or pissed with a sharpie on hand.

Rhite Whino

So I think I might have decided what I want to do in the future. Currently I'm loving illustration but I don't want to just do illustration so I'm thinking graphics illustration or childrens book illustrations. I dunno, I'm gonna try and draw a little series of the same character in different situations.

So this is a rhino I came up with before, I like him, I imagine he'd chew his grass thoroughly before swallowing it and make sure he washed behind his ears everytime he went in the waterhole.

His body is lacking and I'm not sure whether he needs a tail or not.I do know that rhinoes have tails I'm just not sure if you would be able to see his.

Bear man

So I decided to redo the bear but as I drew him he changed dramatically so he now doesn't really resemble the original one. I like him except for his left arm which is wack and his ears which also doesn't look very good. I like how he's changed and I might add more to him at a later date.

Bears

So this is another day of blasts from the past with the family of bears. I haven't had time to do anything new as my parents just got back from there holiday and I've had to tidy the whole house all day and then go meet them at the airport and it's been a bit of a stress.

Hoowever here are some characters which have never made it properly to the new sketchbook and I'm not sure why.

I quite like them and would like to develop them so maybe I'll do them again next week.

Who is it?

So this is more of a concept thing than a proper page. I'm gonna do a mixed media canvas and I wanted to see what a lizard character would like in this kind of perspective. Hopefully it's going to look sick when I get it finished.

After this sketchbook I'm going to change it to updating with a different art related thing everyday.

Alcafrol

So there was no post last night because I went to the pub and planned to finish the drawing when I got home but sadly I worked out how to steal drinks so I got back at about 1 and was horribly drunk and the idea of holding a pen was beyond me. I'll have it up in a little bit.

Cockatiel brah,

To I didn't do anything in the original sketchbook but I've been stoked on my mixed media ting so I'll post a few of these for a while. Or maybe I'll just post this one, I don't know.

So I was bored doing this sketchbook and felt it was a bit dull so I thought to jazz it up I'd go to a charity shop get some old books and cut and paste. Just grabbed the first four I could find for £1 and came out with a book on Photography from 1946, a book on Gerbil care, a book with words which had been changed to put the word cat in along with a poor illustration (Catifornia) and a book on Cockatiels. Some how I've ended up using the cockatiels and my project now has loads of these characters in.

These are the first two I did and probably my favorites. Ignore the text it's just annotations to justify why I'm using cockatiels in a project based around Street wear.



Also if anyone knows where I can get the letraset paper I've used hear. Transparent with green dots all over it, I believe it to be made from acetate.

Anyone who can find me a site where I can buy it I'll send a pretty picture to.

Why so sketchbook?

So this week hasn't been all that great for proper sketchbook work. I think it's because of college work and having to put more creativity into it because of the brief. Like normally there's a set thing to do to get the grade like Research a topic, develop your version of their final product then produce it digitally. Now don't get me wrong I try to be as creative as I possibly can and put as much illustration in my work as possible but it's still a set amount of creativity while this project they've given us a sketchbook and said "In two weeks time you have to design an all over print for a shoe but for now you need to fill a sketchbook with work based around the client you want to do it for." This is the best thing ever. It's mixed media so I'm doing stuff I normally don't get a proper chance to do and it's working really well and getting new ideas flowing for other side projects. But it does mean I don't spend as much time on the sketchbook as I would like because I'm putting all of my energy into the other one. I think I'll put things from that up as well as the original sketchbook because the work in their is getting me stoked and I think other people would enjoy seeing it.


So anyway this character is another lizard but more of an attack on every moron who is doing a stencil of Heath Ledger's joker. Maybe in 30 years when noone can remember it so well it might work better, but seriously, it's almost as lame as wearing those VOTE FOR PEDRO t shirts.

Hey puto

I drew this far too small so at some point in the future it will be dfawn again and done with a better colour way. I always do this. draw something and think that's alright then don't think about the actual colours on it. I mean It'd be very easy tp just search Mexican Bandit on Google images but then again I don't have the benefit of hindsight. Ah well, live and learn.

But where is it's you know what?

So this isn't a page from the sketchbook I've been posting on here but it is from a college related sketchbook and I am rather happy with it so I thought I'd post it and in a few weeks when I post something else you can see what started the idea.

Whitey

So there wasn't gonna be a post tonight but I decided that I needed to keep going daily just so I don't become slack.

This is one of the new lizards I've been doing as stickers. Might get some A4 paper so I can print them and have more consistency to them.

Late nights in winter

So this is late being posted as I was planning on going out for a few drinks tehnc oming back to work but ended up going to a mates house and having a very bizarre night of break dancing and playing with swords and guns. This sounds like one of my elaborate lies to humiliate someone who believes me but it's true. We were there just watching tv having a few drinks when I got confused which cupboard had the drinks in it and opened one which had an old school sword and shotgun in it. Needless to say there are now numerous photos of me attempting to shoot and stab people.

Anyway this is more of a concept than an actual idea. I'm going to do a big version of it on a wall with my girlfriend who iss also an artist. She does more traditional styled work so she's going to do the tree and I'm going to put some character round it. Might do a second one with one of my trees mixed with her illustrations.

Ahoy

So with great scanning comes great composition.

I'm gonna need to make sure my illustrations are in the middle from now on or the scanning is gonna make some of them look shit.

This is Captain Plughole and his galleon.

Lion about.

So this is that lion who was a bit of a dick then ended up with a thron in his foot and had to come crawling back.


Also better quality with the ol' scanner so no more relying on photos. I have started a new set of stickers which are out and about in Newcastle so if you're from here you may seem them.