Iconography

I've discovered I love designed icons. I've been doing loads of them for the day job. I prob shouldn't name the client or say what these icons are for as it isn't live yet; so you'll just have to guess. Or simply enjoy their gradienty splendour. Mmm... icons...

Squidge Alert

Now I think you should know the answer to this question, but: HOW CUTE IS MY NEPHEW BRODAN? Squidgy Scrumptious.

What a Nightmare

Actually, misleading post title. This was actually a pretty painless job. Here be the latest Noir poster. This year's Halloween club won't be restricted to Glasgow. The guys are taking the show on the road to Edinburgh and London too. This poster will double up for the Scottish leg, but a new poster may be required for London. We shall play it by ear!

I used both hand drawn and photoshopped elements in this one and I quite like the combination. Pencil line scratchiness meets slick looking photographic bits. A new technique methinks. Some recycling may occur.

The Halloween club is always massive, so see you there?

I have the best friends

It was my birthday this weekend, and aside from receiving lots of lovely messages on my facebook page, I also met up with two of my very favourite people and did lunch and cocktails and cava and dancing in not-so-sunny Edinburgh, and received the most wonderful gifts.

I'm always a bit surprised when people get me birthday presents. Its genuinely a part of the birthday process that I forget about, looking forward instead to having a boozy giggle in a pub somewhere. However, when you have friends as thoughtful as mine who know me so well, the gifts they give are really really touching and I completely adore them all.

My mate Lizzie found this completely glorious vanity set - something I've been idly looking for for years and never found one in quite the right colour/condition to merit buying. She found the most perfect one possible in an antiques shop in Peebles and delivered it up to me as a 29th birthday present. I nearly cried.

My other bessie mate Viv gave me a whole series of beautifully wrapped little trinkets. Not least of which was this stunning pillbox she found in a flea market in Spain. This photo really doesn't do it justice, and my shots of the other two completely gorgeous tins she got me (of paprika and violet lipbalm) are equally shoddy so you shall just have to trust me that they are gooorgeous. She also got me a lovely little purple babushka Russian doll who now lives on my mantlepiece.

Yet another bessie mate Sarah, who lives in New Zealand :-(, sent me a bloody brilliant button eyed rag doll who I have named Vern, which she bought while on a shoot in Singapore and who is going to come live on my desk at work. She knows I love crazy little characters, and florals and teal/turquoise so Vern is my new favourite mascot.

I'm a lucky lucky bugger.

Knew that would come in handy...

See? Even if a job doesn't work out, you usually find that in the process you have discovered a new style or technique that can be recycled in another job. No work is a waste of time in that respect. So even though the Smart car thing didn't work out, developing that style of illustration meant that I saved time when it came to doing this job for a very good friend of mine.

A mate of hers is getting married (seems to be all the rage) and she commissioned me to do her a series of illustrations as her wedding gift. This is the first. They are all of a theme; that this friend of hers is always throwing herself into whatever she does. At men, at the bar, out of planes, etc.

Time pressures meant that I couldn't do my post-production photoshop texture bit, as in the Smart car job, but she was very very happy with the result and toddled off to get it framed.

Style-recycling. Its the new plagiarism.