Hi Diddly Dee, The Freelance Life For Me!

I did it. I went freelance professionally!  Fed up with the lack of time and focus having a full-time job left me for illustration and design projects I went and quit my job in the name of love (of drawing).


Exciting as this is, I must also stress how... stressful it is.  I, luckily, found part-time work at a bar in my first week so at least the bills will be paid, but living in Brighton provides more than its fair share of expensive distractions; it's a daily challenge to not spend my days in coffee shops and buying art supplies.  The summer helps by adding more equal opportunity distractions such as the beach (yay!).  But I'm not complaining, I just have to learn some self-discipline!


I've tasked myself with increasing and improving my portfolio first with a new website in the pipeline too.  The biggest challenge right now is to get out of the mindset that working involves being sat a computer all day and freeing up the A-roads from my imagination to my drawing hand.  I've started with some portraits but my sketchbook is filling up nicely with all sorts, from typography to characters to patterns.  


I'm loving having the time to work on ideas and have also decided to offer social media consultation as part of my skill set, having come from a varied marketing background and established myself as a social media expert in my previous full-time role, it seems a natural step and it's something I really enjoy.


I'll leave you with one of my recent sketches which I plan to develop further so here's an exclusive guys!

Patti Smith, the 'Godmother of Punk'

Waste of Space Gets Going

You may have noticed from postings on my Facebook and Twitter pages over the last few months that I have been involved in organising a wonderful project that starts with the Brighton Fringe Festival but opens a whole world of future collaborations.  


Waste of Space is the culmination of five collectives including ours, C'LECTIVE.  The project uses empty shops and spaces to create pop up galleries and arts events, drawing attention to the potential of the spaces outside of retail and finding a purposes for them in our community, especially in this time of high street decline.


Our first venue, 99 Church Road, Hove, opened with the start of the Fringe festival and has seen high turnout across all the weekends so far.  It's an amazing project and it feels great to be exhibiting with the whole team.


Come down and say hi before we close on 27th May, there's other venues to visit too so follow the trail and experience something a little different this festival.

My work at 99 Church Road

What's Your Type Competition

I entered a competition at the end of last year run by @ohmommauk.  The subject struck me, it was to design your favourite letter.  I'd been meaning to work on some typography so, le perfect excuse, non?  So I went about my process and came up with this:

I was pretty pleased with it but something was eating away in the back of my mind.  Anyway, months later here I am, going back and realising that there's something HUGE missing from it - it doesn't glow!  Alas, I've been playing...

Now, tell me, is there ANYTHING that can't be made better with neon??

A Little Something for C'LECTIVE

A little something I knocked up for our new collective - C'LECTIVE.  The idea was to show that this is a collective across the arts disciplines.  A massive ven diagram, if you will.  Visit C'LECTIVE on Tumblr.

Doodles #19 & #20

Meet Ne'er Do Well.  Despite mostly being made of legs, hovering is his main mode of transport.  He has two eyeballs in one eye socket, enabling him to keep an eye on everything.  Ne'er do Well likes reading Judge Dredd and one day would like to be an executioner.  Or a judge.  But not a jury.

Mrs. Rushaluff is very busy, she's even grown extra arms to enable her to multi-task.  Who said evolution doesn't work?  Mrs. Rushaluff lives in a sea cave but collects discarded trinkets from passing boats to decorate her home with.  It's a neo-colonialist/Edwardian classic.  When she's not scavenging, Mrs. Rushaluff teaches at the local school and volunteers at the shellter charity shop.

Doodle #18

Just a quickie!  Couldn't help myself whilst catching up with Q.I.  

First Published Illustrations

It's been an exciting few days, working on illustrations for Amelia's Magazine and seeing them published.  Makes me realise how amazing being an Illustrator is and how I've chosen the right path!  Thought I'd show you some images from the process, a good ol' pen and paper, scanner and PhotoShop job.  The images are based on the menswear shows for Trine Lindegaard and Posthuman Wardrobe at London Fashion Week A/W 2011.  Great fun to work on and the lighting on the catwalk is perfect for picking up shadows.

Firstly, I drew the images in pen based on photograph's provided by the magazine, I then scanned these in.

Sketch of Trine Lindegaard A/W 2011 Collection
Read the article in Amelia's Magazine

 Once in Photoshop, I experimented with the shadows and colour, taking care to match the colour as closely to the original as possible.  It was interesting to see how the digital colours interacted with the hand drawn images.  I hope you like them.

The finished image of the Posthuman Wardrobe A/W 2011 Collection
Read the article in Amelia's Magazine