Draw North West

Last Tuesday was the first Draw North West meeting, and was a successful evening!

Draw North West acts as a chance for north-west based illustrators and creatives to meet up for a chat, a few drinks, and general networking and business card comparison like happenings. (oh my god it even has a watermark...)

Heres a photo taken on the night, in Cord bar in the Northern Quarter. (Thats me in the white tshirt, I am ofcourse doing some serious networking.....perhaps...)

(photo donated by Megan!)

It was really good to meet some new faces, as well as having a chat with some familiar ones and finding out what people are up to. There was a good turnout of people, and I can only imagine that as word spreads more and more people will come along in the future!

I definitely recommend getting involved, so here's a link to the Draw North West facebook page, and also the Draw North West twitter! See you at the next one!

Manchester and Salford Illustrated: Exhibition

(photo borrowed from FriendsofWoodSt flickr here!)

On Thursday, the first exhibition of the work submitted for the Manchester and Salford Illustrated project was held in Manchester.I managed to go a long for a little bit and check out the work that was on display.There were 30 different professional illustrators on display, and there had been 30 prints of each piece made, that were being sold to raise money for the Wood St Mission, a Manchester based charity, and I think that prints will also be for sale on the MASI website at some point if you want to purchase one. The exhibition is on now, Mon - Fri 9.30 - 5, so go down and check it out, and maybe purchase a print!

I also heard on Wednesday that my tram submission was also selected as a runner-up for the student competition, which was cool! So I've posted a few examples of work that was on display below, along with my piece...again...

Chris Howker

Mark Mottershead

 

Alan Dalby

Chris Madden

Barney Ibbotson

and my student submission again....

Manchester and Salford Illustrated

Recently I submitted an illustration for the Manchester and Salford Illustrated competition. The brief was to submit an illustration of something to do with Manchester, answering the question, 'What does Manchester mean to you?', so for example, it could be a building, a person, a place or anything to do with Manchester.

The competition was organised by Wood Street's Creative Friends, a group of creatives who have banded together to help and raise money for the Wood St. Mission, a Manchester based charity that works to help local people and families in poverty. Earlier in the year I went to visit the mission, along with organisers of the event and some other illustrators, and we were given a tour round and were able to see first hand the work that they did, so it was definitely something I wanted to be involved in.

There will be a MASI exhibition at the end of this month, where work from local professional illustrators will be exhibited and sold, and there was also a student category for the competition, to which I entered my piece. Check it out below, as well as a little rationale about my design.....

I decided to illustrate something that you can never escape when visiting the city centre; the trams. Manchester has such fantastic transport links, but trams are a form that you just don’t find in every city. I think that it fits the brief because it shows something that I would call an icon of Manchester. The style of tram with the black, white and turquoise colour scheme always represents Manchester to me, and you can’t visit the city centre without seeing one! You almost forget they are there until you hear the loud BEEP! ‘s. They are as much a part of the city as the buildings and people.

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Graphic Guru Event

So yesterday afternoon, our Stockport College 'Graphic Guru' event took place, where some successful illustrators that had graduated from Stockport in the past few years, returned to visit the 3rd years to have a chat, give some advice and talk to us about their experiences as working illustrators. The illustrators involved are Liam Bardsley, Chris Madden, Ben Jones, Rose Lloyd, Natalie Wood and Pete Adlington.
I really enjoyed having the opportunity to go around and have a chat with each of them and have a look at their work. Even in just the short amount of time we had with each illustrator, they were able to give us some really good tips and tell us about some of their experiences when it comes to art directors, portfolio visits, etc. We have also been put into groups of around 5 students and allocated an illustrator who will act as a kind of mentor for us throughout the year. After meeting them all and seeing their work I would have been happy to be placed with any one of them, and I've been given the talented Natalie Wood, which is really cool. The idea is that we'll be able to contact them throughout the year for advice or to chat about work; here's hoping we don't annoy them too much with questions!

I have shamelessly stolen the event poster image above from off the Stockport Illustration blog. Cheers Ian. The poster looked ace in print and was designed by Natalie Wood!

Album Designs

These are a couple of unused album cover design ideas that I did over the summer, and even though the project didn't go forward, I quite liked working on these and I might try and incorporate some of the ideas into another project in the future. Playing cards and radio towers....a title for an interesting new projects perhaps?....not...

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8x8 Book Launch

Last Thursday was the launch for the 8x8 book, a collaboration between illustrators at Stockport College and creative writing students from MMU. The event took place in Didsbury as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival, and as well as having the book for sale, we also had all the images on display for people to see. There were also readings from some of the authors, as well as questions answered by both the authors and the illustrators about working on the project. They also showed my little dino/man animation, as well as the comedy 'duck' version. It was good to have everyone together and meet up with the writers again, and we've still got some black and white copies of the book to sell, so get in touch if you want one! They are also up for sale on lulu in full colour here, but cost a little bit more. 
Posted some photos of my image in the book below. Enjoy.....