Old Blog, New Blog

Hello there.

I recently made a rather overdue move onto Tumblr for my main blogging purposes. In doing so I left this blog neglected and abandoned like a year-old mobile phone. It was a rather less elegant transition than I had hoped, for which I apologise. I may attempt to use both concurrently for a bit until I settle into something that feels comfortable.

My Tumblr is www.benjamintmills.tumblr.com - please come and follow me over there!

Massive thanks for every peek and view and read and kind comment I have received on here over the past few years.

Ben

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!