Murals at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London

I was recently commissioned to produce two large scale mural works to go on the side of a new purpose built cinema for patients in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital by the CW+ Charity. I was asked to create two colourful murals on either side of it that would be uplifting for the patients to see. They feature lots of local landmarks to spend time looking at and are in the shape of animals. The patients and staff at the hospital helped me to come up with ideas for the places to include and which animal shapes to choose. On one side of the cinema there is a mother and baby rhino made up of buildings such as the Natural History Museum and the Albert Hall and on the other side is a leaping fox made up landmarks from Fulham, Earls Court and Battersea. Below are the digital illustrations of the Rhinos and Fox and also the building sketches I made in researching the pieces along with two initial design ideas.

We. Are. Back.

This is the very latest piece of artwork I have done - 'Bristol Blue', mixed media on paper based on a feathered raptor type dinosaur. It will be on sale on my shop soon. It's unusual in that I'm not doing dinosaurs now.....and I also don't do blog posts now! I just checked in on here and noticed that I haven't posted since 2011. My art has changed a fair bit since the last post, so thought it would be good the put something current up for people to see if they come here. I seem to remember I stopped doing this blog as it was taking too much time. Sizing all the images, writing all the stuff and publicising all the things I was doing was getting on top of me and getting in the way of doing the actual artwork. I think that also social media like twitter became a faster way of putting news out there. These days I tend to share an image on Instagram via Twitter and Facebook and that's it - job done. Is that enough though these days? Are there people not on those networks who don't see any of this? Does anyone bother much with blogs these days? It might very well be another two years till I post on here again, so in the meantime might be a good idea to look me up on the aforementioned social media sites. Signing out...... Andy

Print Signing At Niche Frames, Bristol Saturday 21st August

I be doing a signing of his new illustration 'Planet Bristol' at Niche Frames in Bristol on Saturday afternoon. The print is an edition of 100 and features lots of Bristol type buildings and landmarks. Who knows, maybe your house is on it?

Planet Bristol is for the Bristol Green Doors event which is about domestic green refurbishment throughout all areas of the city. All profits from the print sales go to the project.

Come along and check out the work up close, have a chin wag with me and maybe purchase a print. It will be a truly memorable occasion....

There is a facebook event page here. Below is a pic of the extra gert large version of the print that is in the window of Niche Frames at the moment and the notice about my in store signing.

Meat Market

Another thing I did a while back now was some more illustrations for Russian magazine vokrug Sveta. The last illustration I did for them was of a British pub, which was fine by me as I love pubs. This one was more tricky as it had to be of Smithfield meat market in London. Tricky because - 1. I live in Bristol and 2. I don't eat meat! Errm, I got a friend of mine to take research pics to work from...

Planet Bristol

This is Planet Bristol, my illustration for the Bristol Green Doors event. It's a kind of a more complicated version of the Green Globe illustration I did last year. The event is about domestic green refurbishment throughout all areas of the city, so the illustration features lots of Bristol type houses and landmarks, installation of solar panels, insulation etc and people getting together and communicating. More information on Bristol Green Doors here.

The piece was as you can imagine very complicated to do and a bit of a headache. Needless to say there was lots of swearing in its creation. I started off by sketching out the various different types of housing around Bristol based around reference pics that Stu from the project sent me.





Then it was a case of placing all these buildings into a globe along with parks and landmarks roughly positioned to be in where they would be in North, East, South and West Bristol. I did this by tracing off a globe shape with perspective lines A2 size on my lightbox. I then worked over the top of this putting in key points and roads. This took several attempts and quite a bit of guess work. this first rough looked more like the Death Star.



I had to scrap bits and start again, eventually came up with this rough which I then went on to add more detail with in pen and colour up using the limited colour scheme that I was given to work with.



All in all, its a bit of a beast! There should be Ltd edition prints available to buy of it soon. A bigger version of it where the details of it can be seen better is on my Flickr.

Piece Of Cake

This is my poster design for Play It By Ear club's 2nd birthday and possibly my last poster for them (maybe).

Similar in style to the Fab lolly poster I have done before and features some of the same ants again.

I think this one is back on form with the posters, I wasn't feeling the last couple I did much. I like cakes and think I might explore this theme further...Research trips to my local bakery ahoy!

Illustrations For Secret Firmy Magazine

I have recently worked on a couple of illustrations for Russian magazine Secret Firmy. I like the pieces I produce for Russian publications, seems to take my work into other unusual directions.



The first one shows the process involved in the production of milk based product Kefir.

The weirdest part is when apparently the milk goes to a fermentation lab which only three employees have access to. They turn out kefiric ferment from skimmed milk at its interaction with kefiric fungi. These are live organisms, which react to weather change and even the mood of the specialists on fermentation. If employees are in bad mood, kefir can have slightly bitter taste!



The second one is for a feature on learning languages and communicating with people. It is a modern tower of Babel type thing. It goes from the bottom level where there is a language gene that people share with Chickens, Crocodiles and Cats to the top where people are able to communicate by reading each others thoughts! There is a slightly bigger version of this pic where the details can be seen better on my Flickr.

Latest posters for Play It By Ear Club

I'm finding it a bit of a struggle at the moment to keep on top of all my projects and making time for my family, so blog posts are going to be few and far between and short and to the point. There are quite a few things I need to post about right now, but priority is family and actually doing artwork. I hope to be able to get out and paint on a wall soon and make a start on all the canvases I need to get done!

Anyway, here are the two latest poster designs I have done for Play It By Ear club, Camden, London. As always, the imagery is kind of inspired by the band names. Both posters have a space theme. I think the Rocket is the stronger of the two. I'm not keen on the colourways on the buggy.

Pond Illustration

Thought I would stick up this pond illustration I have done for North Somerset Council. It's for a nature reserve information board at a place called Locking Castle. It's quite a straight up illustration job, but I am pleased with the end result. Nice Carp!

Play It By Ear Xmas Poster

Christmas special poster for London club nite Play It By Ear. Noticed that there were a couple of bands in the line up with the words 'Kill' and 'Killer' as part of the names, so thought that I would draw a kind of tree of death.

I replaced baubles with grenades and stars with Ninja Stars. All the presents around the tree are lethal weapons.

I was hoping to capture the gaudy feeling of decorations at Christmas time. I quite like the tacky visual overload of it all. Especially after a glass of Port or two.

www.playitbyearclub.co.uk

Shantysaur

This piece is, as you might have guessed, on cardboard. I used a combination of spraypaint, chalks and acrylics.

Shantysaur is based around shanty towns and Favelas. It is my submission for this years Cardboard Shelter exhibition.