Happy Christmas!

Time for my annual treat for the few of you who ever bother looking at my blog!

This year I'm dedicating it to all those new friends we've made this year, especially those who we found in the most unusual places, who've brightened our lives up and made us look at the world in a new way.

The star of my cartoon is Miss Rosie Muhlbauer, one of several dogs rescued from an unethical back yard breeder in California this June. Despite having many congenital health problems caused by inbreeding, Rosie stole everyone's hearts thanks to her fighting spirit, happy personality and unconventional cuteness and now she has over 32,000 fans on Facebook.

So here's Rosie enjoying her first proper Christmas, being spoilt rotten as well she deserves!

So a big Happy Christmas to all of you I'd never heard of 12 months ago but now couldn't imagine living without.

• You can learn more about Rosie's story from her website and her Facebook page. Follow the progress of the dogs rescued alongside her at the Help Still Needed CA Hoarder Facebook page.

If you want to see my other Christmas cartoons, here's 2010 and 2011.

Join me back here very soon when I'll be kicking off 2013 with a MASSIVE new project launch!

Merry Christmas!

Following in my long tradition* of Christmas cartoons, here's a little offering to wish all my friends and followers a very happy Christmas.

However you mark the festive period, I hope it's a happy and fun time for you. Sadly that's not the case for many people so please take a moment to spare a thought for those who find it stressful, lonely or who are feeling the loss of a loved one.

My best wishes to everyone who takes time to look at my little ole' blog, thank you for your support and I'll see you back here very soon.

(*Est. 2010)

IOU 2 Illo's

It's December (you might have noticed). Being the case, I'm holding my breath every time I turn on this computer because, for the past 2 Decembers, my darling laptop has broken down. (Excuse me as I reach for the nearest wooden object and give it a quick superstitious knock.)

The first time this happened, the blog was in its infancy and I'd just embarked on an ambitious festive project, illustrating my own daily advent calendar. For 2 of those days I could only run on the battery and just had enough power to make a plain version of the graphics, with the intention of completing them later.

It hardly seemed appropriate to post Christmas graphics at any other time of year but, last winter, I was without my computer for over 3 months so I totally missed that window. So now, a mere 24 months late, I'm very proud to present the final 2 illustrations of my 2009 advent calendar!

This time, if you click either picture, you'll be taken back to the December 2009 archive. I've checked all the links out and updated a couple that no longer work, so click away and explore all the fun Christmas surprises I found for you.

2011 - The Story So Far

Yo blog, long time no see.  How's things?  Crikey, where's the time going?

4 months into 2011 and this is my first post of the year.  Stuff has happened in that time which has forced my hand professionally but hopefully in a good way.

For family health-related reasons, it's now no longer a good idea for me to be out of the house doing a 9-5 job.  I could see the day coming and maybe that's why I've been a bit reticent about throwing myself into applying for jobs.  So I'm no longer prepared to compromise, it's becoming a home-based freelancer or nothing.

Money has always been the stumbling block stopping me from going for it.  Hopefully that's about to change as the government is about to introduce an updated version of the old Enterprise Allowance Scheme (which helped me start my first business in the late '80s).  This should offer more of a financial cushion to support me with materials, marketing, etc, if only for a few months.  The trouble is nobody knows when this scheme's starting or exactly what it's going to offer!  So right now I'm badgering the Job Centre every time I visit and I've been booked in with a new business support group who will hopefully be more use than all the other idiots I've been shunted off to see over the years!  Ah well, we'll see.

In the meantime, I'm giving my online shops a spring clean and over the next few weeks I'll be adding new designs and products for your purchasing pleasure.

First up, I've taken some designs I originally submitted to T-shirt design competition site Allmightys and added them to my Zazzle store.  They're inspired by 3 of my favourite animals and are bound to turn heads as part of your summer wardrobe.

(The following images are mock-ups.  The finished products are available in a variety of styles and colours although I have presented them on the colour I feel suits them best.)

A mean-looking red deer stag confronts his opponents with his vicious antlers, ready for the rut.  Shirt available in light and dark formats.

Hundreds of individually-drawn feather details on this glorious peacock, strutting his stuff for the hens.

A salmon makes a death-defying leap up a raging waterfall to reach its ancient spawning ground.

The shirts cost from $22.95, giving you a practical, hard-wearing garment and also a unique piece of artwork you will never find anywhere else.  So if you enjoy reading this blog or my Scrapbook, or if you like to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, please do what you can to support my shops and spread the word to new followers.

Next in my shop spring clean I'll be adding new products to my Café Press stores, putting some of my Zazzle designs onto new items and also unveiling some new additions to one of my ranges.  Watch this space!

Last Post In Time For Christmas

Well it's been a tough few weeks with my darling iBook being poorly.  Apparently it needs a new DC-in board which I haven't dared price up yet.  I've just managed to borrow a PC so I can get some internet access, more than the couple of hours a week I'm allowed at the library!

Of course with my Mac out of action I can't do any artwork, which scuppers my plans for world graphic design domination somewhat.  So please accept this Olde Skool scribble as my little Christmas card and thank you for following me this year.  Click on it to see it in all its glory.

If you want to check over at my Electric Scrapbook in the next few days I'll post you up some nice goodies to see you into the New Year.

However you're spending the holidays, have a great time, don't abuse your liver too much and try not to get into too many family squabbles.

A Post That's About Time

When I've been creating my Café Press shops, the software works by automatically adding a default image to all the products. That saves a lot of work, rather than having to do everything manually, but it leaves a little something missing when it comes to the clocks. Namely numbers!

A lot of people actually like minimalist clocks and it certainly hasn't stopped me selling any. Nevertheless I've decided to make them more usable and create some special clock designs for each store (except the Christmas images which will be added in the autumn).

Café Press have a free clock template to download, which allowed me to get the size and number positions spot on. I looked at how best to showcase each image on a clock and took every one as a different challenge rather than apply a "one design fits all" approach. How should the image be positioned? What font would complement it? Would it need a new background?

The apple, being the most solid design, benefits from being large and in the centre. A strong font in matching red makes this a bright, fresh clock that would look great in a kitchen.

I contemplated having the beachball large and centred too, but I also liked how the stripes framed the chosen font, so that's the look I went for here.

All the animals worked best just on one half of the clock, rather than being skewered by the hands! I chose a font with a lot of character to show off my cheeky cat.

For the dog I decided to have a bit of fun and created Roman numerals out of bones!

The elephant is accompanied by a font that matches its shape and colour.

A similar approach for the giraffe, with a font evocative of tall African trees.

My two aquatic animals called for an underwater theme. The goldfish has a lively, wavy, bubbly background.

The octopus gets a graduated dark blue to reflect its deep sea home, with a curly font to match its tentacles.

Hundreds of hearts come together for this big romantic explosion.

Each clock comes in three diameters, a 10" Wall Clock at £10.50*, a 14" Modern Wall Clock (£31.50) and a 17" Large Wall Clock (£28.50). The Modern Wall Clock has an aluminium body and glass cover, the others are edged in black plastic.

To see the clocks on the Café Press site, click on the design you like using the buttons on the left hand side of this page, then go down to the Home & Office section.

(*Prices are set in US$ and converted to other currencies, which may fluctuate due to the daily exchange rate.)

The Sunday Head****

Some innocent-looking photos of buildings for you today - a house, a café and a shop. Of course, there's more to them than meets the eye and if you click each photo you'll find out what the twist is.

The story behind the delicatessen strikes a chord with me because I make no secret of the fact I'm out of work and struggling. I live just outside Wolverhampton, which was recently named as one of the worst cities in Britain for boarded-up shops.

In some places round the country, however, councils, arts organisations, entrepreneurs and the unemployed have been joining forces to bring empty shops back to life, if only on a temporary basis.

Empty retail units have been turned into community galleries, youth art centres, shops and workspaces. This has allowed people to put their creative skills to good use, start up businesses and generally make their High Street a more attractive place.

This has the knock-on effect of deterring crime and vandalism, giving hope to local people who are jobless and promoting the town centre as somewhere vibrant, willing to tackle its problems and worth investing in.

I've never been interested in retail before but I would love to get involved in a project that could give me the chance to get myself back on my feet and also work like a support network where a group of us could create something together, make a living and get that all-important confidence boost.

If you would like to find out more about the Empty Shops Network, this is a good place to start.

Dusting Off The Archives

I've got artwork floating around on various sites around cyberspace, so this is a good place to pull them all together, either linking to them or reposting them for your benefit.

You'll notice I've added a DeviantShare widget, which you can see scrolling away on the left of the page. This has samples from the college work I've posted on my DeviantArt portfolio. Click on the widget's link and you'll be able to see the rest. It's a great showcase of the different styles I can create and I've added quite detailed descriptions of my working methods. You can also buy many of the images printed onto canvas, mugs, mousemats and other products.

I also have some personal projects archived on my cobwebby old MySpace page, so I'm bringing the best of them across here. A group of them are T-shirt designs, which I'll keep for their own post. Here are the "bits and bobs", personal projects and one-offs.

WATERGLADE

Photo restoration - personal project

Adobe PhotoShop & Nova Art Explosion clip art, 2003

I was lent this postcard by my auntie in 2003, who had been quoted a small fortune to get it restored professionally.

It shows an allotment by a local pub called The Waterglade and is dated 1911. The woman and the man on the right are my mum's parents, and the baby is another one of my many aunties.

Tatty, torn, faded and stained by old Sellotape, the only way to rescue it was to hack it to pieces using PhotoShop (I think I was running version 5 at the time) and recreate it in the spirit of the original. The sky, path and bush on the left hand side were taken from clip art and blended in.

The postcard was a black and white photo hand-coloured in a limited palette. Therefore I had to reduce the image to greyscale, brighten it up and colour it all in again. The colours had to be a flat wash of one shade, matching the original palette as closely as possible.

Minor creases were easily ironed out using the Clone tool and the text was recreated over the original.

The final piece was printed on good quality photo paper, framed and hung with love on my auntie's wall. :)

415

Illustration - online art project

PhotoShop & Bryce, 2008

In April 2008, a guy named Adam Box launched The Count High Project, with the aim of making a film. It was to consist of illustrations of numbers, running sequentially from 1 up to however many submissions he could collect in exactly 12 months.

Anyone was welcome to have a go. All you had to do was Email Adam and he would send you your number (issued in strict first-come-first-served order). You could then illustrate it any way you wanted - drawing, painting, modelling, photography or just scribbling it on a piece of paper. Talent wasn't the important thing, he just wanted to see the variety of ideas and people (from professional designers to schoolkids) his wacky project would attract.

The target was 100,000 but I don't believe he received anywhere near that. Indeed the website disappeared before the 12 month deadline expired. I still like my contribution though, so here it is.

I was assigned 415 which, when I researched it, turned out to be a very boring number! The most interesting thing I could find out was it's the telephone area code for San Francisco. So somehow that led to this earthquake-inspired illustration.

I created the ground and sky in the Bryce 3D landscape generating software. I'm not an experienced user though and I couldn't find my manual. I'd forgotten how to import a greyscale image and turn it into a landscape, so instead I did the 415-shaped holes in PhotoShop. Adding graduated browns and a grain effect gave a convincing 3D appearance.

HUNGARIAN PULI - A BEGINNER'S GUIDE

Personal bit of daftness

PhotoShop, 2007

Finally for now, something I did in one of my silly moods! I'm a bit obsessed with Hungarian Pulis and I found this amazing photo on Wikipedia. I thought people might like a bit of help working out what it was!