Continuing on from my last post about animating things, I've just finished a commission for Red Box New Media (view site here), a UK digital creative agency based in Oxfordshire, to create a series of artworks to celebrate Valentines Day on the AOL web portals in Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, and Sweden! This is very exciting stuff indeed, and you can view the finished features here.

Just finished a big job for Koi Carp magazine too, so look out for the March edition to see 10 glorious full colour illustrations. Whilst you're in the newsagents, check out the next issue Building Design Magazine's supplement - on sale from the 15th Feb for a rather spiffing title illustration. Other news as it comes in.

Well, it's been non stop action. I've got a feature in the latest issue of Advanced Photoshop Magazine - view here - (APM website here). I've got an illustration in the latest issue of "Best of British Magazine" - (BOB website here). ITV got in touch and I've been working with the very talented Darren Walsh, a Flash animator (website here), creating some Flash promo's for potential future gameshows, Supersize Saterday, Love is a Game, and The Fuse. And lots of other things!

Other news, I've made a compilation of lots of old surfing magazine artworks here.

*Peep Peep!*

I've been invited to feature on the the superest website. A continuous online game where you invent a superhero that beats the previous person's superhero somehow. Here's my superhero complete with sidesplitting double entendres, plays on words, puns and visual jokes....

I've also been invited to submit some artwork to an online arts magazine called Magnus which showcases all sorts of creative bits and pieces, so check that out some time soon.

And right this moment I'm working on a series of drawings for Country Life magazine, which are coming along swimmingly.

Things seem to be kicking off a lovely rate of knots now, which is refreshing, hard work, enjoyable, and rewarding all wrapped up together. I've got a couple of text books on the go, have been busy with some magazine articles, given suggestions for new works, lost a couple of projects on the way, juggled a dozen things at once, and hopefully haven't left anyone or anything behind, made some new friends, updated all my online bits, pieces and portfolios, drank a lot of coffee and done my best to make as few mistakes as possible (which is frankly not possible!). I've even managed to do some work of my own, but not much. Anyway, it's good to see the fruits of my labours starting to ripen.

Just discovered a splendid artist in America, called Kevin Cornell, check out his stuff here

*Phew* what a time. Busy busy busy, contacting new clients, marketing and promoting myself, I barely seem to have drawn anything in ages. Just finished my new book, just about to start on several more, only just have time to fit in the occasional Linesman Society picture.

Blimey. Non stop action!

A super weekend celebrating Stevie's birthday, (which isn't actually until next week), so we've been getting some practice in. A night here in sunny sunny brighton, and an evening of chaos in Portsmouth. What fun! I recieved my new business cards in the post and have so far managed to give out about 7. I somehow need to meet approximatly 993 more people who would be interested in taking a card off my hands. I think that'll be my new challenge. Aparantly the clocks have changed, but as it's grey and raining here, i'm unsure as to whether they've gone forward or back. I'll have to check. In the meantime I've made a picture of spacemen and aliens playing golf in space (click thumbnail on left to view), from a suggestion by my chum, Chris. Now, I'm waiting for a lovely sunday dinner. Yum.

Morning - Yesterday I started work on a selection of drawings that I'm going to make into prints to sell. The first one being of Brighton Pier. It's nice, but I don't think it works (see the pic in the thumbnail - left). So i'm going to readdress that and come up with a different approach. I've been doing some life drawing, and er... that's about it really. It took hours to do the pier picture as i drew A3 size. Oh well, you live and learn.

Morning - A bright sprightly start to the day, and off at a cracking pace with another picture in the series I'm organising to get my friends portfolio up to speed. Having not heard from him for ages, I've no idea whether he's getting down to these drawings or not, but I am. This drawing is from an interesting story I found on the BBC News website (here) about a chap in Sao Paulo who's build a Gaudiesque house in the middle of the slums. There's my version on the left. I've been out and taken a load of reference photos of Brighton so I can get busy making a series of prints to sell. I've started drawing my first (fairly obvious) picture of the pier on some very nice paper. Sadly the local art shop has just closed down, so i'm starting to panic about where to get some new nibs for my pens from when the day arrives and i've run out... My Facebook group now has nearly 300 people in it too! This is ace! Spread the word and all that. Dad's van is coming on nicely, the roughs are all drawn and are looking rather nice I think. Onwards!

Things are ticking along nicely. I've gambled fifteen quid on a nice set of business cards to hand out to people, with my logo being the flapjack swallowing seagul (see image from news 11th Oct - below). They're nice and simple, clean type and all details (hopefully) correct! I've started work on my new book "Dad's Van" - some pencil roughs here. The cover's been sent off for approval, and i've done a selection of interior pages. All good. I've also been helping a friend of mine kickstart his portfolio building in to gear by suggesting an Aesop's Fable for him to illustrate. I chose "The old man and Death" - you can read the fable here if you wish. I figured it'd be good to get my hand in on it too, so did my own version. I've been spending a lot of time purely writing people and promoting myself, so really had the need to get busy with a pen again. Other news is my Facebook group about my drawing now has 125 members, woo! Hmm, gotta go, i'm being harrassed by the cat. Which cat? This cat... See ya.

Morning - I'm slowly learning about how to promote myself via the web. It's very complicated and i'm not entirely sure what bits i'm doing right and what bits i've completely missed out, but it would appear that i'm slowly getting there. I've created a number of online portfolios in various places which seem like a good way to spread the word around a bit. I've also finally been doing some drawing!

Evening - I think i've done enough optomising now. I need a few link exchanges with some big posh well established sites and that should be a nice catylist to get things rolling. I've also created a facebook which could well be useful, we shall see. Spreading the word and all that. Next up is some character designs for "Dads Van" which will be fun. Incedentally the illustration with todays news features a seagul caught in the act by an old work colleague swallowing an entire flapjack in one fell swoop. I was terribly impressed.

Exciting news of the day is a commission to design some new Psycadelic Drapes for a club night some friends run in Oxford called "Baraka". It's been going for years, so they want to freshen it up a bit with some new bits of artwork. I'm on the case, what a lovely departure from the usual, I can't wait to see them up and on show.

Well, so far I've had a lot of really positive feedback from my mail outs, which is very good. Keep up old chap, there's a few miles to run yet, etc etc.

Currently I'm the top news story on the Cartoon County Website which is ace! I've been helping a very talented friend of mine create a new portfolio, so hopefully he'll be out in the big wide world some time soon, doing all manner of good illustration work.