Doodling Jim

Engraved Barak Obama

2012-01-23T18:06:00.000Z

Finished portrait in the style of Copperplate Engraving like on dollar bills depicting Presidents - Lincoln, Jefferson etc. This for me was a steep learning curve to create digitally. I tried the regular engraving plugins for photoshop but these fell well short of what I wanted to achieve. However photoshop's own 'Liquidize' filter worked well once I got the hang of it, using its brushes I

Ebook available free

2011-12-16T13:38:00.001Z

My Ebook for kids: Hello, I'm the Wide Mouth Frog and I eat flies Last month i got the great news that it's now out! It's available free to download along with about 150 other titles from: uTales.com You will need to Sign up there which gets you 15 days of free access to all titles (extendable by inviting others to join, or pay a monthly fee of just $9.99) Then you'll need to download-install

Pulp Detective update1

2011-11-11T14:38:00.000Z

Private Detective Henry Reed sits reading the newspaper's rising crime stats in his crummy little tenement office. He's about to find a whole lotta bootlegging trouble that goes all the way to the crooked mayor of Baycity and other low-lifes on the take when he's hired by the voluptuous gangster's moll and wannabe movie-starlet Dorah Farr. That's my opening pic to a well crafted short story

Detective 1930 era

2011-07-12T18:38:00.000+01:00

I was invited to submit sample illustrations for a new magazine venture. The first issue is scheduled for early 2012 and the target readership will be aimed at boys age 9 to 16. Can't give much away at this stage but it will feature a series of 3 illustrated Crime/Detective stories set in Prohibition era America 1930's - think: Gangsters, Bootlegging and you get the picture. The

kiddEbook

2011-05-15T19:50:00.002+01:00

Occasionally an opportunity presents itself. I got an email from Utales, went something like, "...create childrens ebooks using our new online platform..." Once more gripped with curiosity, I tried it and damn! if it didn't get me all fired-up with an idea to write and illustrate that classic joke about the wide mouth frog. Subsequently realized there's maybe 3 other versions as kiddy books

Hey, I'm on twitpic!!

2011-04-11T12:58:00.013+01:00

I'm a Twit - just added Twitter-picture-widget-thing to left column here (Blog) for no particular reason - just convenience i guess, as can upload my pics via email so.. far so why not !? Intime this maybe will become indispensababble ..!

Branding and Packaging

2010-10-15T19:19:00.003+01:00

Since my last bloggings, I've been so busy involved with design contests among the international, mainly German community of designers. All fascinating stuff but that aside, it's time to share with you some of my resulting eyecandy - My Battery idea for Coca-Cola's new Zero Sugar Can. Specifically had to be black colour and orientated at the male consumer in soft drinks market. .........

Greenpeace Logo concept

2010-08-17T21:31:00.001+01:00

I was too late to enter my logo into Jovoto's open graphics competition (read the Brief and stuff here.) I mixed up the deadline date with the 'vote by' date so instead I've posted it here early! - My idea on Greenpeace's Brief was to visualize the Energy Renewables Policy - as set out by the German Parliament, in the form of a simple and friendly graph, and for it to be the key Greenpeace logo

Book Jacket design contest

2010-07-03T13:50:00.002+01:00

Here's my artwork entry to design a hypothetical book cover of Tadeusz Borowski’s remarkable collection of concentration camp stories: 'This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen'. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by telling you but if you want to have a go at designing your own, here's the link to all the facts from where you can download a pdf of the contest rules which also

Portraiture and politicians

2010-05-07T12:03:00.007+01:00

The Great British Election of 6th May 2010 has now past into history and as predicted the inevitable outcome resulted in a hung parliament. We were all to some degree subjected to the media novelty of a TV debate direct from the three politicians. I had just finished my poster artwork in time and it's my humble puke on those candidates for leadership of the government. Central to my artwork

Flyers Leaflets - stuff U need advertising with a woosh!

2010-03-22T11:37:00.001Z

Dopey dealers at the Brighton Pier !

2010-02-22T19:29:00.001Z

Its them dope dealing Furry Freak Brothers. Legends of the underground comics press scene from way back in nineteen hundred and i can't remember when but was a great read back then, was illustrated by Gilbert Shelton and published by Rip Off Press Inc'. Imagine now in this socio-politically corrected climate, this fabulously incompetant trio together with Fat Freddy's iconic cat, as they

Cityscape and Character sketches

2010-02-04T16:01:00.001Z

Been a while since my last post. I'll start this Newyear with some recent illustration work. Firstly, a concept-drawing in response to an enquiry that briefly went like this - "... need a piece of artwork doing for a website, a kind of 3d image of a city from above, like the one you've created on your website 'Computer Games Global Industry Wars' We really like this. Wondering if you'd be

Storyboarding the Wannabeez

2009-11-26T18:51:00.007Z

I was recently emailed by - lets call him - 'wannabe film director'. He was infact a children's book writer for whom i'd put together a dummy book proposal. That was a very, very long time ago and all i could remember was the title 'Billy the Beast'. Well, out of the big blue surf he wants a Storyboard doing from his own screenplay for a new twelve minute short movie. There's no money in it, he

Poster-Prints new exhibition venue !!

2009-09-07T12:50:00.000+01:00

I'm exhibiting signed Limited Edition Poster-Prints. Respectably framed in black and behind glass - includes an off-white mount-card suround too, and they're on permanent show at two venues here in sunny Brighton: Hotel Pelirocco and also now at new venue as of September'09, The Park View pubYou can purchase them - straight off the wall framed for £70 if you happen to be there. Or perhaps take

Brewery's 2nd label design !

2009-06-03T11:42:00.006+01:00

The Humpty Dumpty Brewery was very pleased with my previous design for the BAD EGG label - specifically refered to as a 'Pumpclip' in the pub trade (see previous post.) Its new beer is going down faster than they can brew it, which is nice. So again Stephen called on my illustration services, this time to re-brand their regular flagship brew 'Humpty Ale'. His brief was for a label with a

Beer Label

2008-12-09T13:41:00.006Z

I got an email enquiry from Humpty Dumpty Brewery asking for a totally different label design from the usual, for their new beer launching Easter '09, called 'BAD EGG' (odd name for a beer!?) The partner-director of this 'Micro' Brewery was inspired by one of my T-shirt designs here and seized the initiative to commission me. His vision was for an egg-shaped Humpty character pictured on a

Saucy Seaside Postcard

2008-10-21T12:06:00.011+01:00

I saw this posted on the local web - "Illustrator Wanted for Cartoons ... I am looking for an illustrator to produce characters to represent the gay community 'By The Seaside' in a slapstick manner, the theme is to be that of the 1950's cheeky postcards ..."This post went further to state that 12 charactors are needed, which then have to be combined into 4 illustrations. The finished art should

Global financial crisis

2008-10-16T18:38:00.003+01:00

Inspiration for this picture of Fat Cat Stock Trader Man came to mind while listening on the radio about the current 'Economic Depression' being potentially as serious as the crash of the 1920's. Apparently my super-safe triple 'AAA' junk billions are being resecuritized as a new government backed packege of financial instruments. Its all exotic voodoo futures to me as i'm a very time-rich

Maybe i'll do Retro style ..?

2008-09-20T17:17:00.005+01:00

This is some mucking about with retro style. Am thinking i should do more bollERX like this. Maybe there's an imaginative Art Director out there who's looking, eh?

A bread and butter job

2008-09-04T14:53:00.005+01:00

Finally received the last pay-off for completing 2 commissions involving 4 projects to provide over 100 b\w illustrations for Oxford University Press ELT, which has been trickling along since last May. "Thank you for acting so swiftly, they are looking very nice. Thanks again for all your work on IEK3+4 Teacher’s website" said the Art Editor. Always a pleasure, I thought as I signed-off with the

Cameron the Fuhrer

2008-08-20T22:00:00.006+01:00

Tory twit David Cameron. What's he about? Well this ain't no political blog and i couldn't give a flying salute - I was goofing around the net finding about twenty pictures of each charactor - Cameron and hitler, with the idea in the back of my bacon sandwich about how similar they look, like father and son!? -I Then played with the pics in photoshop and, well to cut'n'paste a long story short,

its Archy & Tex !

2008-07-30T19:37:00.014+01:00

Two comic charactors of my own creation that featured bi-monthly on the back page of The Right Angle ( architecture magazine now defunct. ) The editor \ proprietor gave me full rain to invent the script, simply throwing me a loose theme to chew on for the forthcoming issue. This 'Fast Supper' appeared in the Jan \ Feb AD2000 issue for which i conjured up a story placing Archy & Tex at a time -

Schematics

2008-07-29T16:35:00.011+01:00

Fusedmarketing (advertising agency in Hove, E Sussex) were re-designing all publicity/marketing materials for an international paper manufacturing company in Germany. They commissioned me to provide all the Information-Graphics and Schematics, mainly becouse i happened to live locally so could be relied on to deliver artwork on an adhoc basis till the job finished several months later. Here's a

So what's INFORMATION GRAPHICS ?

2008-07-23T14:59:00.004+01:00

Answer: Boring information like statistics presented in a graphical form to make said info seem more interesting than it actually is, i should think. Examples are: Graphs, Pie-charts and Diagrams.I was contracted to provide 'Information Graphics' for two Training and Awareness CDs by Posturite(UK) Ltd. - 'market leader in ergonomic workplace solutions.'Here's four examples from the 1st