New collaborations...

With Alex's Queen writings over, as a couple, we were lacking a collaborative project.

Now this is clearly far from an essential part of being in a relationship, but still, it's nice to be creative together, and Alex has been keen to continue writing, and I (when I have time/motivation) enjoy doing random quick editorial style illustrations, so we're keeping up a similar approach to the Queen blog, albeit less frenetic (I hope).

The first of these new writing projects is Tactics and Tactility, in which Alex writes about boardgames in great depth. So far for both projects, I've basically just been taking comissions from Alex, who says things like 'maybe draw me drowning in a pile of poker chips' and I oblige. I quite like a good firm brief and then testing to see if I can make it a reality.

(Read about Splendor here)

We actually started working on this blog together quite a long time ago, but my initial illustrations were lacklustre at best, mostly because I was already drawing upwards of 10 Queen illustrations a month, on top of my day job and freelance work, so my motivation was somewhat lacking. (i.e. don't scroll back too far, guys)

We've both come back to it fresh though, and I'm trying harder now...
Others include...

(Maria)
("Possibly a little statue of Maria Theresa's head, only it's fallen over and top's cracked open and loads of playing cards are falling out???")

(Terraforming Mars)
("I reckon this wants a simple picture of Sputnik with plants and flowers (abstracted or not) bursting out of it.")

The other project we're working on together is Alex's second new blog about perfectly crafted pop songs, called 'explodeypops'. I wholeheartedly do NOT endorse that name, while (so far) wholeheartedly endorsing the content.

Pharoahs is a banger, and for it I created Alex being poured into a Martini glass.

Like I say, I quite enjoy quick standalone little editorial illustrations, and this is a good chance to flex those muscles. (Although I do sort of feel like I should be getting half of the Patreon income [side-eye])