World trip portraits

I got around to cleaning up a few of the portraits I did on my 2005 world trip. This is Eric, a French guy in Tahiti who ran his own tattoo parlour back in France. He looked a little intimidating and aloof at first, but turned out to be very easy going.

Becky was a Manchester girl who was travelling around New Zealand.

This guy hung around the campsite in Tahiti and was as strange as he looks. He would stare at people with a glassy expression and pad about the kitchen in his flipflops.

Florian (German in NZ), Elizabeth (English in NZ), Phil (English academic in Tahiti, cycling around the world).

Moleskine pages

A bunch of sketchbook pages. I often like thumbnails more than the finished article.

Copper book

The copper book, an old student project that still looks pretty good. It took about ten days to complete from brief to finish. I was more energetic then.

Postcard

One from ages ago that I still quite like. The old handwriting is fantastic - it doesn't really need anything else.

Messing around

Taurus

Frothy jazz

Some unpublished concept work for Guinness.

Vault

Cardinal

I did this many years ago and it kicked off an editorial style of ripped cardboard and splashy paint. I still get clients asking if I still do it, but it feels weird to resurrect something so old. This was never actually used, but I always thought it was one of the better ones.

Irish Museum of Modern Art

A lot of Photoshopping, a little drawing: IMMA's new poster. We had to approach the artists for permission to use their works in the bag so some nice elements had to be left out. It was fun to try to make all the objects sit together, but I'm not sure I'd want to make a career of photo retouching. I was happy with the stretchmarks on the bag though.

Guinness Boot Camp Ad

This was a recent one for Guinness Boot Camp. The brief was for a very stark, almost stencilled look, so we had graffiti sprays and runs coming off the main figure:

Here's the storyboard and final logo:


And here's the finished ad:

Guinness pint

I'm sometimes asked to do very detailed, realistic stuff. This all done in Photoshop. It usually makes me want to go off and make a big mess with buckets and tarpaulins, but I couldn't be bothered cleaning up after myself.

Alice Cooper

This became a real mask handed out free to advertise Ms Cooper's new radio show in Ireland. We had to make the mouth bigger to avoid people cutting their tongue in the hole.

Black and white visuals

A few more black and white visuals.

Cartoon styles

I sometimes get asked to do cartoons, but I don't have any one style so I have to show clients this sort of thing.

Storyboards

Here's what I do for a day job. Storyboards and visuals for advertising. Copy and paste the URLs below to see the finished ads.




To view the one above, copy and paste this url into your browser:

http://www.guinness.com/ie_en/ads/Starlight/Starlight+High+Quality.htm


To view this one, copy and paste:

http://www.guinness.com/ie_en/ads/Lost+Room/Lost+Room+High+Quality.htm

Pig

I gave out linocuts of this pig as Christmas presents. The blue water was added recently after seeing an amazing kids book cover in London that I can't recall the title of.

Museum drawings

The British Museum has loads of wonderful sculptures in the basement. One is an enormous half foot with gigantic toes. I can't compete with that.

Wedding

I'm getting wed soon. This is how we're telling our friends and family. It's a sort of cloth invite crossed with a hankie. I hope no-one blows their nose on it. And we can't decide on whether it would be best delivered by gilded pigeon or stuck to the back of a blind greengrocer.

Doodle time

Peacock Illustration

This picture was one of several I proposed to advertise an upcoming play at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin. They've chosen another route, so I might as well show the runners-up. I like what they chose, so fingers crossed (I should have that as my family motto).

Paper

Fake lino

I've been messing around with lino recently. This was an attempt to compose a three colour print in P'shop. Only trouble is, it became way too finished and I didn't feel like making the actual linocut version of it.

Travel excerpts

Here are a few sketchbook spreads from the world trip:

This is Lhamo, a brilliant Tibetan woman that I taught English to in exchange for home-made Tibetan food. She was one of thousands of refugees living in McLeod Ganj, the Dalai Lama's home in northern India.



Nyimatashi was a Japanese/Tibetan Buddhist monk.



I asked Rashid to sit for me in a Hong Kong park. I had to overcome my natural reserve about approaching strangers on this trip.



India:



Lunchtime in Hong Kong.

Well, for starters...

Okay, first attempt - let's see if this works. Ah, it does. Good. Like everyone else on their first blog, I have no idea what I'll be posting here. It'll probably be a dumping ground/diary/gallery of whatever work I happen to be doing, along with some older stuff. To kick off, here's some people I met on my year's travels. I drew Jun-ko in Bali, surrounded by locals from the scuba dive shop. She was my instructor. I intend to tidy up my travel sketches and journal sometime, but here's a sample for now.



These guys worked at a hotel in Siem Reap, in Cambodia:





Hong Kong Tai Chi people. A lovely sunny day in the park, skyscrapers all around:





Here's some recent life sketches. I've been going to evening sessions lately and reminding myself just how hard it is. The best work is usually done either at the beginning when you're loosening up on some one-minute poses, or right at the end when you're less precious.