Photoshoot

So it's been a while since I put anything on the blog here but there has been a lot going on in the background, so here's a bit of what I've been doing!

A few weeks ago two good friends of mine who are aspiring photographers came to visit me for a weekend and we did a T-shirt photoshoot.

We decided to take the photos outside up against the raw stone of a local Huddersfield mill, I think it worked well.

When editing the photos I wanted to do something a little different to what everyone else is doing and add my own edge to the photography. I decided to give all the models new heads, drawn in my style.

Thanks to Ben and Phil for your help!

Inkitout T-shirts are here!

Hi Everyone, I hope you all had a nice Christmas!

As some of you may know, Inkitout was recently successful with it's first kickstarter campaign. It raised enough money to get two T-shirt designs printed.

It's been a few months of hard work from the beginning but I'm happy to say that the T-shirts have now arrived back from the printers and they've done a brilliant job with them! I'm really pleased with the print quality and I'm excited to get them all sent out to the people who backed the kickstarter campaign. I couldn't have done it without you guys and I hope you are as happy with the final product as I am!

Here are a few sneaky peek photos for you.

I'd like to take a moment to thank all the individual backers of the Kickstarter campaign, So in no particular order, here goes!

Anton Babich - http://www.AntonAlexander.com
Orta Therox - http://www.orta.github.com
Matt Dutton
Stephen Hampshire
Ian Dransfield
Mark Hasell
Adam Hicks
Ben Cleworth
Adam Walker
David Roberts
Jo Robinson
Simon Fisher
Andy Shaw
Richard Badger McCullough - http://www.facebook.com/ThrillerBark
Ben Ambrose
John Pearson
Ash Kendall
Julia Tipton
George Grubb
Luke Allen - www.ekulproductions.co.uk
Senator Cybus
Jesse Gibb
Brad Garner
Vincent Krasauskas - http://vinnatron.wordpress.com
Philip Clayton
Judith Atkinson
Lucy Cox

Also thanks to everyone else who helped me promote my project!

I Hope i didn't miss anyone off!

I ordered extra T-shirts so if anyone didn't get chance to back the project and still wants one, get in touch!

I'll hopefully be sorting out a section to buy them off my website soon and they should be available at a few other places (More on that later!)

Have yourselves a happy New Year!

Pre-Order your Inkitout Threads Tee!

I've finally launched Inkitout Threads as a Kickstarter project!

I'm sure some of you have already seen this, and thanks to those of you who have backed the project! For those of you who haven't heard of Kickstarter, Its a crowd funding website that helps designers to get their project off the ground. Basically you get to sell the product before it's made, then use the money you get to actually make it.

I've been working on Inkitout Threads for a good few months now, here are the designs!

 

 

The designs

 

BearCode

At a glance you might just see three polar bears in front of a barcode but look closer and you will see there is much more going on. The three bears are actually walking through a vast snowy forest. Where are they going? Who knows but I’m sure there's some hot porridge waiting there!

Dinosaur Vs Robot

It’s all in the title really! An epic battle between two giants from different times. One is from the future, the other from the past. But who would win? Would it be the T-Rex with his powerful bite or the Robot with his Laser eyes? I’ll let you decide on your own outcome!

 

The project has been up for funding for almost a week and it's just about half way towards it's goal!

 

So help me spread the word and lets keep this momentum going!

 

For more information and to back the kickstarter project and pre-order your T-shirt you can visit the page by clicking here

 

Meet the sales team

A few months ago I received an illustration commission from the company I work for as a Product Designer. The MD wanted caricatures doing of some members of staff for use on promotional and marketing material.

They weren't the easiest bunch to draw!

The drawings have now been added to promotional flyer's and made commercial which means I can now share them with you guys!

Text and layout by Andrew Fowler
Marketing strategy by Sally Taylor
Sales Team: Louise Smith, Craig Morris, Adam Walker and Emma Chadwick

Morrissey portrait

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORRISSEY!


Here's a drawing I did a while back of Morrissey which ended up never getting used for anything,
I quite like it though, so I thought I'd stick it on here since I've neglected the blog in recent months.

I went for a middle aged Morrissey, the man who seems to be turning more and more into his own caricature the older he gets, could those eyebrows seriously get any bushier?

He has a great jawline, stick a gimp mask on him and he'd make the perfect batman for sure... maybe slightly less athletic however.

I've been working on a lot of caricature/portraits lately and feel like I've greatly improved my style, specifically my colouring technique.

Hopefully I'll be able to show some of the other projects I've worked on soon once it's been used and made commercial.

I've also been doing a lot of work and research towards trying to get my Graphic Novel published, if anyone has any advice give me a shout!

Banner design for Mr Barneswell

I recently had a little wager with my good friend Ben (you may remember him from the sketchbook chronicles drawings)

The idea was brought to life after seeing a story on the Internet about a guy who made it his mission to do a back flip every day for a year. After realising neither one of us has the ability to do a back flip I bet Ben (AKA Mr Barneswell) five whole English pounds that he couldn't do a Rollie-Pollie every day for a year.

For those of you who don't understand the term 'Rollie-Pollie' and refer to it as something completely different here's a definition and a list of alternative titles.

"a gymnastic movement in which the body is turned heels over head with the back of the neck resting on the ground"

Also known as a 'Forward roll' or a 'sommersault'

I encouraged Mr Barneswell to set up a blog where he can upload video evidence each day and I designed him a nice banner to stick at the top of it.

Everyone is welcome to get in on the bet so head over to www.mrbarneswell.blogspot.com and bet him he can't do it.

I'd also like to encourage people to send requests in for him to do a roll in the most unusual of places, Let's make it hard for him guys!

Tv Monster

I've been reminiscing looking at images of Monster in my pocket toys that I used to collect as a kid. So I decided to draw some of my own monsters. In keeping the Inkitout style, my monsters of course will be a lot more harmless looking than their counterparts.

So here's the first monster, I'll probably draw more... I'm calling him Freeview and his special attribute is that he gets good tv reception and is really good at TV trivia questions on the quiz machine. His speech is completely made up from quotes and phrases from TV, kinda like Bumble bee from Transformers but with less metal and less explosions.

If you were wondering his screen is only 24" but it's LCD and full HD but not 3D or double D or DVD, Deeeeee?

He has two buttons, red ones... Don't press them!

It's my birthday next week and I'm having a party this weekend, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone! Let's see if we can top last years party... that's going to be quite a task!

2012 - Self Portrait

It's just over a year since I set my inkitout website up and started doing more drawing, Looking back I've achieved quite a lot and enjoyed it for the most part. I've made a bit of money, not a lot of money but it's nice to be able to sell your work. I've been published in a couple magazines/newspapers and websites, taken part in a few guest blogs, won two competitions with prize money and received a few nice testimonials.

Above is a self portrait I recently drew which shows all the strange creatures in my mind coming alive off the page as I draw them. I'm like a cooler version of that guy on Heroes that could paint the future only less dead.

That dude with the one eye, one tooth and the horns... I'm calling him Boris.

The blue furry snake worm things are a new creature I've invented, I'm going to call those things Snurms.

Drawing this has given me lots of new ideas and visions of a funky re-design to my website... something i probably don't have the time or expertise to do yet, but I will...you'll see!

In the meantime I have other things I should be working on and haven't been, I need to get cracking with a couple projects in particular.

I'm not sure what 2012 has in store for Inkitout or even where exactly I want to take it because I change my mind so much! One thing I can say however is that I'll keep drawing. Oh and I'll stop being rubbish and get my book printed since I finished it months ago!

...And you will buy it or I'm sending Boris and an army of Smurms round your house to get you in your sleep!



Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone enjoys the holiday season has a lovely time and gets everything they wanted.

Snowman Gang wars

Oh Its ON!

I joined forces with my friend Ben again for more sketchbook fun, this time something a bit more seasonally themed. We ended up with two Rival snowman gangs going head to head.

Rules? of course we had rules...

1) We each have a side of the page
2) Take it in turns to draw a snowman each
3) Each build an elite team of snowmen
4) Eat 16 Chicken Nuggets each

Once it was finished I inked all the lines and added some colour and shading on photoshop. My guys are the ones on the left sporting the blue and yellow winter wear. Ben chose red and Green for his guys, just think of all those great teams in history that wore red and green... yeah I'm struggling too!

The big guy on the left with the pipe, I named him Bubba, he's my not so secret weapon and kinda makes up for the alcoholic snowman (he's just a decoy, a distraction for the enemy)

Ben's little chav kid snowman looks a bit threatening though, the leprechaun guy looks mean too.

I'm not sure wether theyre about to have a Snowman dance off or a big snow brawl!

Who would win the battle? You decide!

Post-it note Comic and Christmas Jumpers

Following the success of last weeks sketchbook chronicles drawing look what happened... I teamed up with my friend Ben once again in another sketchbook joint effort.

The rules were simple:

1) The drawing will be a comic with a short story

2) Take it in turns to draw a panel each with no conferring

3) The story takes shape as we draw it, it isn't pre-decided

4) In keeping Christmas spirit we have to wear Festive style jumpers

... Ben broke rule number 4 but he still kept his head in the game so I forgive him! I however sported a lovely patterned cardigan number that would surely win me a casting in Bridget Jones's Diary.

I started first by simply drawing a man with a moustache, every one knows all great story's start with a man and a moustache right? Ben followed with Beardy boy bitches and everything took shape from there. We tried to keep it a simple art style so we could get our drawings looking similar and add a bit of flow to the story. Once we had finished I inked the lines and added a bit of colour making the boxes look like post-it notes stuck on a wall.

Good times, Great memories, Great success!

More people should get creative with post-it notes...

Sketch Book Chronicals - This City

This happened in my sketchbook... A joint venture between myself and my new friend Ben.

A bit about Ben.

Ben likes Rugby and plays in a 'Rugger' team scoring lots of 'Rugbhys' However when he's not playing 'Rugger' he likes to be creative, eat Beef Jerky and design things. For this reason we decided to make a challenge for ourselves, a sketchbook challenge.

These were the Rules

1) One person starts of by scribbling some colour on to a blank sheet of paper.
2) After this no more colour can be added.
3) Take it in turns to draw one building or landmark each until we have a city.
4) One person Ink's over it all and details it up.
5) Both people eat Beef Jerky

I did the inking at the end and we were both pretty pleased with the results. We tried not to worry too much about scale and perspective in the drawing, we thought this would give it a bit of quirkiness. The addition of the buildings being from all different time periods side by side helped give it the strange look we were after.

An enjoyable challenge of which I'm sure there will be more. We're already planning to have 'A Owl off'.... Make of that what you will!

Thankyou, Here's A Owl!

Last month I entered a T-shirt design titled 'Bear Code' into the All Tropical weekly competition. The design was also showcased on the Blog feed on Creative Review which I was delighted about, I've tried before and it's very difficult to get your work on there among the hundreds of submissions they must get each week.

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce as some of you already know, the t-shirt design won the competition and will be printed and available to buy in the All Tropical store in the coming months. (I'll keep you updated on that)

You can see the design by clicking Here

I'd like to give special thanks to everyone that voted and say Hello to any new readers that might have found their way here through Creative Review.

I apologise for how quiet things have been on here recently, I'm still here! My time has been spent working on other projects but with the Christmas break approaching I'm sure I'll have time to get lots of drawing done!

I already have one commission to get cracking on with and just like last year I'm now available for all Christmas commissions.

If anyone has a special gift in mind for someone please get in touch.

In the mean time, I leave you with a drawing of A Owl... wearing a stripey jumper!

"Once upon a time, there were three bears..."

I've designed a new t-shirt which is up for voting in the weekly All Tropical design competition.

My T-shirt is titled 'BearCode' ... Clever eh? No? Ok.

So my thinking behind this idea other than sticking some bears on a barcode and calling it bearcode is that I could make the lines resemble trees. The lines end at different points at the bottom giving the impression the bears are walking through a wooded area, maybe in the snow.

This design is now up for voting, if you like it please go to this page http://alturl.com/fqja6 and vote for me. The winning design will be screen printed and available to buy on the websites store.

I did another version of the shirt in different colours which I decided not to use although I'm sure opinions will be split on which is the better design!

The good and the bad



So it's been a while since I updated here, A Lot's happened but Inkitout's been pretty quiet. In this time I've had some great times at a festival and been on a fantastic holiday in Greece. Myself and my girlfriend visited the island of Samos and had a nice relaxing time.

Above are two drawings I did taken from some of my favorite photos from the holiday. I had a go at using some textures, I think it's most noticeable on the straw hat. I'd like to try this more on different items of clothing.

The only bad thing about going on holiday is having to come home... and go back to work. I had a shocking first week back, wishing i was back on holiday then a friend of mine sadly passed away.

The next day I got food poisoning...

Things are looking up now though!

I have plans to work on a large scale mural in my good friends new home in the coming weeks so hopefully I'll have some new work to put up here soon.

You trying to mug me off?

I was thinking about having these mugs made, I'm not sure how many people would be interested in buying them though. I know of an online shop that said they would sell them for me... for a margin ofcourse, so maybe I will do it...

The Inkitout blog has been a bit quiet recently and I think updates will be pretty scarce for a while! I've got some real life big boy stuff to think about and it's a little hard to concentrate on drawing at the moment.

I do have some projects running in the background however, hopefully I'll be able to get a bit of work done on them and return with updates and good news and other marvelous things.

Until then I'll leave you with links to two friends blogs who recently did updates about ME!

Simon Fisher - Cool Warhammer person man:
A Taste of Musk

Michael Barnes - Twitter friend and Graphic Novelist
Elblondino's Workbench

Wedding Commission

Here is a commission I did last month for a lovely lady named Sandee a contact made through Twitter. The brief was to use a poem she had written to create a piece of artwork to be presented at a wedding. Sandee would be giving the drawing to her friend as a wedding present in a frame and possibly reading the poem out at the event. I had to incorporate an illustration of the couple looking like Lego men into the drawing, this would be a constant theme at the wedding.

The pink and blue colours represent the coming together of masculine and feminine, the couple are stood together at the beginning of a path ready to take the journey of marriage together.

A fairly large piece of around 10" x 10" which I really enjoyed doing.

I hope everyone had a lovely day and I wish the couple all the best.

Fear Me!

My good friend Simon did me a favour recently and apparently i owe him a blog post in return, so here it is! Simon likes warhammer, so i thought I'd draw him as a warhammer soldier thingy, he's like totally mean and stuff.

If your interested, Simon keeps a blog about warhammer and such things which can be found here:

http://simonfisherlol.blogspot.com/2011/05/wrack-and-roll.html

Like a vampire in a hall of mirrors!

Here is another joke that I have illustrated for comedy writer Bernard Morris, hopefully we will find a publisher for this one too after our previous success!

fingers crossed

Guess what I'm thinking

Here is a new avatar that I made for myself last week. I wanted to try out a load of new photoshop techniques I'd been trying to learn, this is what I ended up with. I wanted to make myself look cartoony and almost pop art Esq. I also added scratches and a photo frame to age it slightly, just an excuse to use the tools to be honest! I quite like it though, maybe I'll try changing the green to a different colour.

I've been added to the list of contributors as a cartoonist on the comic bible website along with Bernard in anticipation of the September issue we will be in. I used this picture to go along with my bio, although they seem to have sized it strangely.