Catch Up

My day to day blogging is done on my http://artistsquest.blogspot.com/ blog. So I really have neglected to keep this up to date. Here are my recent illustrations for Macmillan Books:

New Commission On The Horizon

I had a call from my agent about a possible 30-40 page full colour illustration commision. It is not until April but I will be given some idea of what's expected soon.

I will be working on a new look to my characters over the next few weeks. Perhaps a change to the button noses. I'll post up my progress on here. My workflow needs improving if I am to keep to the deadlines so I am going to have to look at the modelling, photography, and software involved.

I was trawling the net seeking the general consensus of how next year looks in the Children's book market. It seems the Americans have vowed to spend less on young fiction. I'm not sure if this includes picture books, but nethertheless books will be sold, and I intend to have my illustrations in them:¬)

Also in my travels I looked in on the publisher who gave me my first break: Mantralingua Books. I discovered that two of the interactive CD ROM's featuring had won Silver medals in Multimedia awards! One in 2006 and one in this year. The CD's featured my models and their giggery-pokery. It would have been nice of them to mention it to me.

Here's a link to the publishers page:

http://www.mantralingua.com/pages.php?pageid=6

My New Blog

I would appreciate it if you could link to my new blog where I will be posting regularly.

http://artistsquest.blogspot.com/

Thanks. Hope to see you there:¬)

The Lap Of The Gods

That's where my illustration career is at at the moment. Nothing new there:¬) I'll be posting on my other blog for the forseeable future unless something else illustrationwise turns up.

This is the last illo of the current brief: Clara Dreaming from the Nutcracker. I had to make her look pretty and that is quite tough with plasticine. I hope I managed it.

I want to finally start work on some sculptures, so will be posting sketches and marquettes on the other blog. I have been putting this off for far too long, maybe five years or more. I want to know if I can make it as a sculptor.

Making a change

I will be posting my illustration work here as and when I do it, but I'm going to posting more on my 'personal blog.' There I will be following another path. Hope to see you there:¬)

Time Is Up!

Well it was for me at 2am this morning. so here is the last of the Red Riding Hood illustrations. Can't say I'm over the moon with them, but the briefs and timescale made 'perfection' a little harder to attain.

I won't bore you with the details but the elements required in some of them made composition tricky.

My favourite clay smoothing silicone tool is a casuality of the frenetic activity, as is the softbox collapsible shooting tent, (portable photographic 'studio'). The steel frame snapped. There are countless decapitated models lying about, like a defeated army on a battlefield.

I have five flashcards of farm animals to finish for the 31st, but other than that I don't know what the future holds.

I will be posting some thoughts on where I am going to go next on my Artist's Quest blog. I want to make this blog show what really makes me tick. At the moment it is just the bare bones, but I want it to reflect my interests in sculpture, the human form, nature, Celtic and Nordic mythology, Pagan and Buddhist belief, spiritual healing, Tarot, Runes, fantasy. I also want to actually produce things that people can own so theris a direct connection between them and me.