Here’s a new poster design for Handm@de 2010. I may well try to do a screenprint version. If you want to know more about this excellent craft fair visit handmadewinchester.blogspot.com/

By the way, if anyone’s interested, my screenprinting endeavours are finally starting to come together after spending quite a lot of money and getting very frustrated trying to properly coat and expose the screens. I’ve managed to create four screens for the Chris Brokaw and Geoff Farina poster – one more screen to create and I can get on with printing it! So some photos to follow soon, I expect.

Except it will be after ATP Matt Groening and ATP Pavement as they are coming up in the next two weekends – yippee!

This is my new gig poster for Dick Dale at the Luminaire on 2nd April. It might be interesting to screenprint it – I will see how I get on with the Geoff Farina & Chris Brokaw one first! It would look lovely though, screenprinted onto this brown card.

For more details of the gig please go to DAMNABLY.

These are the first sample swatches of my fabric patterns! Our idea was for me and Raspberry to combine forces – I design some fabrics which she can use in her work (and also sell the fabric in fat quarters or half yards).

I’ve been taking a lot of photos of natural elements so I played around with designs using seed pods, window frames, tied string in fences, ropes on beaches, bits of wood, pebbles, barnacles.

The first two designs here are of beach worn pebbles and shells, and a tied string fence. The designs are 42 inches wide but these are 5″ square swatches to check colour and quality of print. They are printed by Spoonflower. I think I will also look to hand print fabrics myself in the future but we’ll see what happens.

So we think we will have some finished pieces and fabrics available pretty soon, I will keep you updated!

Here’s a new gig poster design I’ve done for Geoff Farina and Chris Brokaw. The poster will be screenprinted and digitally printed. I will be screenprinting the poster and will let you know how I get on!

For more info about the shows please visit damnably.

I’ve recently done this artwork for a Japanese only release for the band The Carletons, called “Out of Your Control”. You might want to check out the band – they are really very good. Hopefully I’ll do more for them in the near future (and maybe even get to see them play).

In the meantime, do please continue to contact me for FREE artwork commissions for gig posters, album/single artwork.

So here are the first two gig posters I was asked to create, for Tom Williams and the Boat, Jose Vanders and others. I am pleased with them but I think it’s just a start and I have much more to come. I’m hoping to screen print at least one of these posters.

In the meantime, I’m still looking for more gig posters and album artworks, t-shirts…any music related artwork. Still undertaken for FREE, so get in contact!

It’s been occurring to me more and more recently that I should actively seek to combine my love of music with my illustration and design work.

Maybe I should get a creative job in the music industry but what I’d really love to do is run a record label with someone, because it combines a great mix of disciplines: publishing, design, marketing, music, organising gigs.

In the meantime, however, I would like to continue to push my print design by undertaking creative work for bands in the form of gig posters, album artwork etc. So I’m after any commissions for bands for FREE (for the time being).

I am able to create all manner of special packaging for CDs and LPs, custom shaped cutters, special inks and finishes (my day job has been packaging design for the last 16 months) plus I use illustration, photography, 3D and type. Plus I’m doing screen printing now. I have created a set of covers/illustrations/printing on Flickr to give an idea of what I’ve done so far.

So get in contact and let me know what you need!

I’ve been recently learning about screen printing, which is something I’ve wanted to do for ages. I love the look of screen printed fabrics and prints on paper. My wife bought me a kit and I started off with a couple of prints onto paper which taught me quite a lot about how much of the various screen printing mediums to apply! I particularly wanted to help Lorna with her textile work by designing and printing fabrics which she could use in her work. The idea was this would give her unique printed fabrics and also the ability for us to design exactly the kind of things she wants to use in her work.

So for my third print, I worked with a photo of grasses I’d taken and produced a design in Illustrator (top left, above) which I was very happy with. This is my first print design to use colour to show a background and thus leave a negative space (the fluffy seeds around the grass heads). So I had two colours to print; the brown of the grasses and the blue of the sky. With my screen printing kit I had only screen drawing fluid with which I had to paint on the design and it took ages (a good week). I must get the photo emulsion stuff!

Anyway, with the screens finally finished (the two right hand photos, above) we printed four copies, two of which came out very well and two of which didn’t come out quite so well. We chose some fabrics to complement the print and Lorna worked her magic to turn them into two lovely cushion covers (bottom left in the photo).

It’m very happy with the final result and the cushions are currently available in Lorna’s Etsy shop. I have lots of new ideas for prints, so we’ll see what happens!

Seeing as I’ve mentioned my spare-time stock image creation, I thought you might be interested to see examples of my latest uploads to iStockphoto.

My “sketched earth” globes (top left) have been really popular with their flat paper-like people and objects on the surface of a hand sketched globe with painted sea.

Recently I’ve been really developing my ideas of 3D objects with illustrated graphical elements, as you can see with the microphone, computer network and stethoscope. I think these work well and allow me to really show a concept (like healthy heart) but I want to really push this a lot harder and play with the graphics flowing over the objects.

Eight felt marker brushes I needed for a project. Nobody seems to have created any so I’m posting them here in case they may be useful to anyone else!

These were created from real felt marker lines I drew.

Click to download Felt Marker Brushes for Illustrator