Tapir Birthday

If there's one thing Chris likes, it's Tapirs.
(There are actually lots of things Chris likes. Seals, political slash fiction, Agatha Christie, faking wikipedia facts, giving Alex ridiculous Unstruck questions, assuming multiple identities and shouting about swans being just some of them)

Me and Alex had grander plans for his birthday, but as it often the case with these things, it all got a bit last minute, and I ended up spending a lunchbreak creating an alphabet out of tapir parts.

 "Create tapir alphabet" is actually something which has been on my to-do list quite a while. Chris promised me that if I create the entire alphabet, he will create a rhyming couplet for each letter. This is but a teaser for the full version, which I will hopefully one day create.

Anyway, here's the birthday card in the hand of the birthday boy!

Beginnings and endings

Well, it's been rather a long time since I've updated this blog, which I feel a bit guilty about - there's no good reason for that guilt, other than my own desire to keep a regular blog, but anyway, here I am now.

This has always been a blog which I've wanted to be about my own personal (and work related) creative projects, but in all honesty, my central focus for the last few months has been LIFE, and again, I feel some guilt about that, because I want to focus more on creating, but somehow a lot of things have got in the way. Good things, for the most part.

I have plans and hopes for my creative future though. My day job is still fulfilling to a great extent, but doesn't really result in me producing the kind of work which I want to share here. There are plans in the pipeline (which I initially typed 'pieline'... yum) for a zine created with my two good friends Rosie Rogers and Hannah Brookes - however, all three of us have found LIFE somewhat getting in the way of that getting started, but hopefully soon we'll all be able to focus our energies onto it again.

In quite a different creative route to normal, I'm also hoping to learn to sew and make my own clothes, which is something that really excites me. So far I have succeeded in blowing up my sewing machine, and created precisely NOTHING, but it is very early days, and operation skirt begins this Tuesday evening, at the excellent MIY workshop.

But back to illustration and graphic design, I still keep my eye out for nice freelance jobs, or favours for friends, and recently had the pleasure of creating two rather lovely wedding invites - this border for my friends, the aforementioned Hannah and her partner Tristan (which they filled with their own text for printing)

 

And this piece for Tom and Jo - Tom had basically already designed it, but I created the illustration.

And then, of course, there's the ongoing creative force in my life - Alex's Unstruck project. And truth be told, that's the main reason I got round to writing this blog, as I'm sad to say that Alex has decided to bring Unstruck to a close.

He has reached 500 questions answered, and now seems like the time to stop.

Adam, one of the other illustrators, put it like this, and writes it better than I ever could…

"I found out tonight that Unstruck is ending this week, by Friday it's going to be at 500(ish) posts, and that's it. Personally, I think Unstruck has been crucial in my development as an illustrator. But I really think that its significance is huge, for me at least it has acted as a tangible network of creative people who've been brought together, really by the focus and dedication of one person, to create something that's incredible and beautiful and collaborative in the truest sense. It's been an amazing experiment, that I feel lucky to have been involved in, hopefully I'll manage to squeeze in a final illustration before the weeks over. Hats off to Alex. Looking forward to the next project"

And he's right, because there is another project coming, something which lots of the illustrators will hopefully get involved with again, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

I haven't really mentioned it on here, as this is my 'creative' blog, but me and Alex have been somewhat romantically entangled since January, and in June I moved in with him. He is a wonderful, beautiful, creative person and I'm very lucky to have him in my life. In some ways the Unstruck project drew us together, and it will always have a very special place in my heart.

Here is Alex, sitting in the window of an apartment in Cologne - we holidayed there recently, and I meant to blog about it at the time, but... LIFE, and that.
 

Anyway, here are a few of my recent and final contributions to Unstruck. As always, it's a hit and miss process, but it forces me to use my creative brain and that is always a positive thing.

Check this out. You win five million dollars from the Publisher’s Sweepstakes, and the same day that that big Ed guy gives you the cheque, aliens land on the earth and say they’re going to blow up the world in two days. What do you do?

 

What is the best weather?

Which is more significant, being or doing?

What’s your solution?

What are the essential elements of a legal system?

If you could invent a new orifice, what would it do and where would you put it?

What can change the nature of humanity?

Before, after.

Just a quick one for today. As it frequently is, this is about one of my contributions to Unstruck, Alex's nearly-daily question and answer blog. In case you're not aware what the project is about, there's a bit more of an explanation here.

This is slightly different to the normal stressful half-hour deadline though.

Coming up later this month, Alex has been invited to take part in a small exhibition at the Brighton Jubilee Library, as part of the May Fringe Festival festivities.
As it's in the library, he's decided to choose a small selection of Unstruck pieces which specifically relate to reading, book and/or libraries.

One of them is this piece, which I illustrated.

However, annoyingly, this happens to be one of my 'bad days'. Actually I found the piece very inspiring, and had a pretty strong idea immediately of what I wanted to do, but that day I was up in London until late in the evening, so didn't have a free moment with my pens, laptop and scanner to produce an illustration in my usual way. Generally, I try and keep to the rules of the project and produce my illustration on the day I receive the piece, so on the train home, I got out my phone, and used the 'Brushes' app to produce this.

I was pleased with it considering I did it on a shaky train with dwindling battery life and poor lighting, but unfortunately, it looked substantially better on a tiny screen than it does full size.

Now that this piece is going to be going on display, and my name is going to be attached to it, I've decided to redo the piece as I originally invisaged, to the standard I'd want. It's still not my favourite thing I've done for Unstruck, but I'm a lot happier with it now.

I'll possibly post again about the exhibition... Alex will be selling prints of all the featured pieces, featuring both the illustration and his text, with 2/3 of the profit going to the illustrator, and 1/3 to him. They'll be very reasonably priced (Probably around £5), and hopefully lovely looking. I have been called upon to design the prints and make the text and images work well together. I have nice plans, and am looking forwards to getting started!

In the REAL WORLD!

So, as the (in)frequency of my posts implies, I do actually have a real job. A job which pays me money to sit in front of a computer all day and arrange words and pictures on pages in a manner which is hopefully pleasing to the eye.
I like my employer, they (seem) to like me, sometimes we have biscuits, sometimes we have cakes, they're taught me the difference between hyphens, en and em dashes — I'm basically living the dream!

Not least because it's varied. I work in-house for a group of international colleges, and we're a fairly small team, which means we get to dip our fingers into absolutely all aspects of promoting and running the colleges. We have the big job every year of producing large brochures, but this time of year it's often more about beautifying the colleges themselves.

I've just recently completed a rather lovely task, which involved a brand shiny new halls of residence for our Bournemouth college. The halls are a beautiful conversion of an Old Post Office building, and it's been done really well. Inside the halls, we needed a good strong signage system to direct people around. Me and my senior designer worked together on this, but he was also keen to include some large decorative (but still representative) graphics for certain doors.

I took over on this bit, and they went down really well, so rather excitingly, I got to actually see them get used in real life.

I've worked in this job long enough that seeing my work in print is something I've got used to (although it still excites me), however, seeing my work go up in such a permanent manner is just brilliant. Not only that, but I got to go and supervise the installation, AND was entrusted with a big technical camera to take pictures of the new residence for our promotional materials.

So here are a selection of (not so great) pictures which I took on my iphone showing the signage I designed...

And here are a selection of marketing photos which I took on the big intimidating camera...

Some things which make NO SENSE (Vol II)

More for Alex's Unstruck project.
Every Friday I receive Alex's writing in an email, freak out and think "I have no idea what I'm going to do for this!" Then somehow, by the end of the day, manage to create something. Some are good, some are terrible, but it always forces me to think more than I otherwise would have done. And that's got to be a good thing.

What is the great motivator? In other words: why existence?

Who should be the “highly prestigious” Celebrity of the Year?

Is it acceptable to wear odd socks?

Should we be recording the sum of our knowledge onto something more lasting than digital media?

Does IQ bear any relation to a person’s ability to function on a day to day basis?

What would Britain look like under a utilitarian government?

When should you forgive?

Is Stephen Pinker right to say that the world is becoming less violent?

Wolves

Well, Friday comes around, and for me, Friday means Unstruck day.

For those of you who are reading this because you helped me out today, allow me to explain what Unstruck is... (And for those of you who already know, have patience...)

My friend Alex writes a daily blog. It's an exercise for him in making sure he keeps writing, because writing is something he's passionate about. In order to give him a subject to write about every day, he accepts random questions from friends and strangers, reads them first thing in the morning, and spends his first waking minutes answering the question as best he can. He limits himself to half an hour, which means the writing is free, uninihibited, sometimes successful, sometimes not. But that's all part of the fun.

Once he's done writing, he sends his text to an illustrator. Some, like me, are regulars, others occasional volunteers, or one offs. Much like for him and his writing, it's a chance for illustrators to test their skills and do some work unrelated to either the 'day job', or any other personal projects. The only rule is not to spend more than half an hour on it, although I think most of the illustrators occasionally bend that rule.

I generally find my efforts a bit hit and miss. Some weeks are dreadful and make me ashamed to call myself any sort of illustrator, but some are good, and either good or bad, they encourage me to do something a bit creative outside of work.

Anyway, this week was a particularly special one, because my friend Hannah was the one asking the questions.

A couple of weeks back, she found this adorable tutorial, and asked me if I could somehow twist my illustration for that week to include a cheeky wolf. Alex turned that around and said I could only do it if she did the questions next week, and made the Friday one about wolves.

And so... here we are.

I was interested to see what other people's interpretations of wolves were, do we still see them as evil? So I decided to ask for some extra help with today's illustration... I started by getting my senior designer, the company photographer, and my boss to draw me wolves.

It turns out that Wayne, our photographer, is really rather good at this kind of thing (no reference used)...

James insisted that he couldn't draw, and took a cunning graphic approach.

Andrew, my boss, was confused by the entire charade. I actually think this one is one of the friendliest, most adorable wolves there.

At lunchtime I asked for volunteers on facebook, and quickly the wolves came flooding in. Before I knew it I had a fairly respectable pack!

In the office, everyone made a point of not using reference photos... I'm guessing some of the people who drew them for me did, but that's fine too. It's all about how we perceive them, and the people who have drawn them in a realistic style were clearly automatically drawn to that. Perhaps other people think of them in a more fairytale like, or cartoon like way.

Once I had all the wolves, it took a while to decide how to display them. After much playing around, I decided all the wolves deserved equal prominence, and with an appropriate quote from Alex's text, I created this delight... (Click to view full size!)

So, to everyone who helped me out today, thank you! I hope it bought a bit of entertainment to your Friday morning. I really appreciate that you were willing to spend a little bit of your day indulging my creative whims.

You can view the image in context here.

THURSDAY OFFICE PARTY

Sorry for a lack of creative updates.

This is not going to break that trend. Why would I do drawings when I could be dancing?

Made using Kinotopic app for iphone.