My background is advertising, I was an art director in various agencies in the North West UK. I’ve been involved in character design for most of my working life. Also working in the greeting card industry lent itself to a lot of character work. Some of the samples here are personal work, the coffee bar was for a USA magazine feature on the upsurge of coffee drinking. The rocket dog was for a client who wanted to use a character along the lines of Roadrunner for a very fast school whiteboard. The cow was for BT. The house, Rufus, was for a local council who dealt with re-homeing families. The space scene was for Wrexham swimming pool. The last three were for a client who wanted characters to show aspects of her business, creative, creative director and marketing.
A personal project that grew out of a book Iʼd been working on ‘Things To Do Before You Are Eleven And A Half
A selection of these images are available to purchase on Society 6 in a variety of ways, mugs, t shirts, phone covers, etc.
Every October, Artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing 1 day the entire month.
31 days 31 drawings. These are the best of the pieces I created.
All the samples here are personal work. In-between day to day business I call this my Saturday Morning stuff. I like to push ideas along, offer them as posters, postcards, greetings cards etc. 100% Squeezed, Dog Poo and Elephant In The Room are from a project called Political Cliches.
I’ve playing with Procreate the marvellous drawing app and the first few images here are recent pieces.
A great part of my professional life is working for educational publishing. I have scores of spot illustrations, some are featured here.
A personal project that grew out of two old ideas Fish Tank and iCod I wondered if I could develop this play on words further.
At the same time I was attracted to Letterpress as a printing form and based the designs on a two colour process.
The Pun: is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.
A Daffyinition: (derived from daffy and definition) is a pun format involving the reinterpretation of an existing word, on the basis that it sounds like another word a or (group of words).
Spoonerism: is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels etc, are switched. Named after the Reverend William Archer Spooner.
The remaining illustrations are from a series of designs called Halloween Types. I created characters using font names as a starting point.
Jukebox is a personal project based on records that meant a lot to me growing up. Before the Beatles and The Sixties started off big time.
I will return to this now and again with more of my original singles collection.
One of the areas that has grown for me in educational publishing are games. I love them! I’m always thinking of new ideas. Walkies is something I came up with a few years ago and I keep returning to it now and again. I have a dog Harry, a cocker spaniel and I get inspired when he goes the way he wants to go…
The remaining games are a selection of recent pieces for Oxford University Press.