New Website!
After lots of putting it off, and struggling with themes, my new website is finally finished! It contains lots of University work that never got posted up on here, so I heartily encourage you to check it out! If you hover over the ‘Portfolio’ tab a series of sub-menus will appear that will take you to whatever artwork you wish to view, whether it be comics, children’s illustrations, or fan art – many of which I’ve yet to post on here – be sure when scrolling down through the pages you give the theme time to load up all the images 
There are links to the facebook page and twitter page (to which I’ve relinquished control over to the site’s mascot; Cosmo Cat – be sure to follow him for arty updates from myself, and other artists I follow) as well as links to my deviantART, Instagram and of course, right here at Q.U.A.R.C.S! I’d like to thank all of you who have ‘followed’ me from when I started this blog back in 2009, your support and encouragement has been a great motivator so far, and any love for these new site’s would be gratefully received!
Cake!
I deliberately left out one of my commission pieces from my previous post because this one not only featured Lego, but starred on it’s own cake, and is therefore worthy of it’s own post! Edible art! I love it 🙂
Personalised Illustrations Christmas 2012
Those of you who are in my Personalised Illustration group on Facebook will have already seen these, but for those of you who aren’t, here’s this years batch of mini-commissions, some of pets, most of family members, and all helping me to afford Christmas – thanks for your support everyone 🙂
Tablet-style Menu Design for Tenpin Bowling
Well the title says it all really – I got commissioned by Tenpin Wrexham to design them an A4 sized menu that could be laminated and given to customers at reception to carry around with them. When I thought about large, thin shiny things that people hold in their hands the idea of an Tablet-themed design popped into my head, and when it was mentioned to the manager he loved it… so here it is:
Click the image to get a bigger, better view – the text looks small on screen, but I printed out a few prototypes to make sure it was readable. Obviously to create the tablet look from scratch would have taken me forever, and to be honest I’m not sure my technical skills are quite there yet, so I used a free template for the shell. The menu options are set up like ‘apps’, with an image representing the food or drink itself as an icon, and text describing what it is to the right of it. The images used in this are also free vectors, but that was due to time constraints – I think if I were to have designed my own, I would have gone with white silhouettes/symbols for a slightly more uniform look, but luckily because of the individual-developer-nature of apps it still works fine as a cohesive design. The back of the menu features other promotions that are meant to look like stickers that have been stuck on to personalise the tablet (like school kids might do with Hello Kitty or Pokemon stickers). I’m really pretty pleased with the overall design, and so was the client 🙂
I also did this little blackboard design for the shooters they’ve got available. Nothing special really, only took my a couple of hours, I used markers they supplied – it was quite fun actually. This is a bit of a crappy photo though – about time I upgraded my phone I think!
Disnefication Commission
Here’s the only commission I’ve managed to make time for during the gap between semester one and semester two – a Disneyfied version of a friend of mine, and his son (and his dog) – sorry to those of you who are still waiting, as soon as I’m not busy again (…) I’ll be in touch!
Personalised Illustrations
As previously mentioned on the We Draw Stuff blog, I spent December doing (mostly) small and (relatively) fast commission based illustrations in an attempt to earn some dollar, and thereby afford Christmas – and it went quite well! Now that the student loan has come in I can afford to take a brief break from it, and focus on the neglected coursework I SHOULD have been doing. That being said, there’s only SO MANY carrot’s in spandex you can draw before you start to go a little funny, so I’m taking having a quick breather, and using the opportunity to post them up for you to enjoy 🙂
For Me, a picture of Lucy in Black and White, Monochrome and Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: This was a promotional piece for the facebook page, showing the different styles you could have your illustration finished in (the page also features the original pencil version). The ‘Mrs Santa’ outfit was to help promote the idea of a Personalised illustration as a gift
For Corris, a picture of his friend Prout in Full Colour, sized A4
Special Requests: A formula 1 car sporting the badge and colours of the Everton football strip
For Tom, a picture of his sister and her boyfriend in Black and White, postcard
Special Requests: … anything?
For Claire, a picture of two of her friends in Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: Something cute and coupley, with a Christmas theme (yes I used the same figures as Tom’s – but in fairness he wasn’t very specific, and I think both work just fine)
For Alan, a picture of his girlfriend Rachel in Full colour and Black and White, sized A4, both framed
Special Requests: Needs to feature both her racing car (the mini) and her van with the design of her Graphics company on the front. She must be wearing her Alpine Stars racing gear, showing a bit of cleavage (it was a request!) and holding her racing helmet. Could feature a trophy somewhere. I added the red ‘X’ from her graphics logo, the flags and the wreath myself, for compostion value.
For Richard, a picture of his two children in Full Colour, sized A4, framed
Special Requests: Not too specific, the photo he supplied of one of his children featured this large ladybird-like toy, which i decided to feature as a mode of fantastical transportation. Once he had ‘Ok’ed the roughs, he only mentioned that I should include some ‘tinkerbell-like’ fairies, as they were the girls favourite 🙂
For Tara, a picture of her and Steph in Pencil, sized A5
Special Requests: When Tara initially asked me to do her a drawing, she asked me to do it in the same style I had used to draw a portrait of Steph years earlier. I told her I’m doing only cartoon work for this particular project as I thought it would be quicker, but when I actually got down to it, I went with traditional anyway, and it took about the same time as a cartoon!
For Hannah, a picture of her boyfriend Chris in Full Colour, as a gift card
Special Requests: Hannah wanted to be dressed as wrestler Brett ‘The Hitman’ Hart, vs Chris as ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage. As Chris and Randy are both hairy and beardy, I thought it best to include some ‘uniquely Chris’ features to help make it clear that I wasn’t just drawing a short Macho Man – I did this by including his ‘Come on feel the Illinois’ tee, and his t-shirt that features a bear (on the belt) saying ‘rawr’ (on the canvas)
For Emma, a picture of her friend Colette in Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: Emma said she wanted Colette drawn in an anime style, and that as long as she had bright pink hair, it didn’t matter what she looked like. This was a challenge for me, as although I love anime, it’s not my style of illustration, so for the figure I used some reference pictures, and then just had fun with the design. The black suit with the white hearts was a motif taken from the actual dress she was wearing in the photo – the other features were just my imagination in over-drive 
For Emma, a picture of her friend Jamie in Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: Emma wanted Jamie to be drawn as a hobbit, holding a slice of pizza – pretty straightforward 🙂 – first time playing with the grass-brush too…
For Emma, a picture of her friend Mike in Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: Emma wanted Mike to be dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of The Caribbean movie franchise. The black lines on this one seem particularly harsh – I’m not sure why
For Emma, a picture of her friend Rochelle in Full Colour, postcard
Special Requests: Emma wanted a Rochelle to be wearing a ‘Spaced’ t-shirt and have a speech bubble with the phrase ‘Hello Mr Pegg’ inside (features on the final print-out, but not here) the rest of the Spaced references were added by me, as I’m a big fan – see if you can spot them all 🙂
That’s it for now, time to get back to the much neglected Uni work – and because of this, my little ‘shop’ will be closing until February, but please feel free to message me with requests when that month comes around – remember, it’s not long until Valentines Day! 😛
Personalised Illustrations – where to find me:
Prices are displayed on the Facebook and Etsy pages * Etsy Page is currently under construction * prices differ slightly on both pages * Images of people used here have been approved of by the owners of the illustrations, please do not download or save these images without first consulting me * any reference made to existing characters by other companies (such as Hobbits, Jack Sparrow etc) are used in a fan appreciation format only, are used with respect and are not an attempt in any way to claim ownership of these characters or costume designs myself * original characters belong to their original creators *
Q.U.A.R.C.S 