Horse Portrait- Ella

A recent horse portrait. Acrylic on board.

TASCHEN Illustration Now 2014 Calendar

I received my contributor copies of TASCHEN's new 365-day tear-off desk calendar for the coming year. It features a few of my images. The illustrations of mine are taken from the Illustration Now book that was published a couple of years ago, so they're rather old images. But it's a lovely object, with some cracking artists inside.

Look out for me on Christmas Eve-Eve 2014.

Japanese Eki Stamps

A few ink stamps I collected while in Japan this summer.

Train stations in Japan each have an identifying ink stamp (an 'eki' stamp) that can be collected by those passing through. They're also found at temples, bridges, towers, parks, - more or less any 'destination'.

This is a pretty pitiful haul, though my girlfriend's brother Beam has an incredible book full of them.

Here's a good blog post I found discussing Eki stamps: http://denshadejapan.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/the-eki-stamp/

Round Round

Added a touch of animation to a picture of mine.

Authors 2

A couple more authors.

Philip Pullman is often asked what form his own Daemon would take (for those who've not read His Dark Materials nor seen that weak Golden Compass film, a Daemon is effectively the physical embodiment of a person's soul, taking the form of an animal). Pullman replies that his would be a magpie or jackdaw, a bird attracted to shiny things, like the nuggets from which he weaves his stories.

This last one is Hilary Mantel. I simplified this one down more and played with the colours a bit. It's perhaps less successful, but I'm attracted to this slightly less literal route.

Authors

The first two from a series of portraits of authors, working on a cleaner and quicker technique for illustration work. I've been using gouache lot more than acrylic recently. The opacity is really refreshing.

These first one here is Jack Kerouac, the second is Thomas Keneally, the Australian author who won the Booker Prize in 1982 for Schindler's Ark.

Thanks for looking!

Queen's Wood

Queen's Wood in north London is an ancient remnant of the Forest of Middlesex, which once covered what is now the north of Greater London. The forest passed into private ownership in the 13th Century, and was gradually deforested. A few small isolated pockets remain.

You can feel the age in the looming oak and hornbeam trees. It has that deep fairy-tale forest feel despite never being more than a big stone lob from roads and houses. The diverse and aged canopy supports a wide range of avifauna too- nuthatch, sparrowhawks, jays, parakeet, goldcrest and all three British woodpecker species.

With the sudden burst of foliage in the past few weeks, the wood is now rich with the smells and saturated greens of spring. Gorgeous in the dappled sunlight, though it's harder to see the birds.

Queen's Wood

Forest of Middlesex 

Rose Hip

Our small back garden is pretty devoid of plant life, other than 

a big rose bush that flowers all through the decent months of the year.

Owl Candle

Of my eye

Gonna get back into the ol' blogging game. Here are some still lifes. The second one is an apple.

Boston Globe Illustration in the Flesh

I received this in the post at the weekend. I was fortunate that a friend over in the US was able to pick up a copy of The Boston Globe from a few weeks ago with my illustration inside. So here it is. Turns out the picture eventually ran in black and white (I had to provide a colour and a B&W version). I think I quite like it in monochrome.

First post of 2013, so I should also add- Happy New Year!