"Headspace" Australian National Youth Mental Health Foundation Illustrations Part 2

So here is the final part of my illustration job for "Headspace," The Australian Government's Youth Mental Health program. The final illustration deals with self-harm. Obviously, this is a very difficult subject to deal with. And the illustration didn't want to show self-harm directly. No blood. So, instead, it was decided that to show a teenager somewhat isolated and withdrawn would be the best way to go.

SELF-HARM-

This illustration started out as five girls sitting around, chatting, with one girl different. Isolated. It was decided on draft two, that two of the girls should be boys. The brief stated that there should be a mix of ethnicities included.

The final illustration.

Detail of the self-harm girl.

Teenagers detail.

 Teenager detail #2.

The final illustration as used in the self-harm infographic by Lauren Hollern.

This was a really nice project to work on. The palette was limited, which was a bit of a challenge. And trying not to go all cartoony was also somewhat unusual for me. But for my first properly paid illustration commission, I really enjoyed it!

"Headspace" Australian National Youth Mental Health Foundation Illustrations Part 1

Okay, long blog title! So this is what I've been working on for the last few weeks. I mentioned last month that I was approached to do some illustration for "Headspace," the foundation that deals with youth mental health in Australia. I finished the project two weeks ago, and this long blog post is all about that. So... enjoy!


ANGER-

The brief for 'Anger' was to be a young man, a teenager, struggling to pull apart a wall, surrounded by debris of that wall. This was the original sketch for that piece-

After going through line work and painting with Photoshop, here is the final illustration. I was limited to a certain palette, and flesh tones, so what you'll see in these illustrations is... a limited palette-

A close-up of the dude's face. I was quite happy with the tip of the nose and the fingers... for some reason-

And the final infographic by Lauren Hollern, that was posted on the Headspace website, and their Facebook page-

SELF ESTEEM-

 This one started out as a male and female. One happy and outgoing, the other shy-

On the second pass, it was decided that both of the characters should be the same person, different personas, facing a mirror-

The final illustration-

And the infographic by Lauren Hollern-

So they are the first two parts of the project. I'll post the final part, self-esteem, next week, as it was the largest part of the project.

Me and the future missus invite you to a little shindig!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm getting married in 4 (jesus!) weeks. And part of my duties was to design the invitations for the day. I decided to go with a design inspired by Alphonse Mucha, using the colour scheme for the wedding. Here is the final design.

And here are the invitations after they were printed up on watercolour textured paper. They were printed by the great people at Daintree Paper in Dublin. Pretty pleased with how they turned out. Soon, I'll post a work in progress to show how I got to the final design!

Sketchbook... Part XII

So a couple of new double pages from the Moleskine. The first drawing is of one of my favourite aspects of New York City, the roadside newsstand. Small shops with shopkeepers who are jammed in, surrounded by produce, mags and porn!

For this drawing, it started off as the old lady feeding pigeons. Then, I was looking through the great website Humans of New York, and saw the dude with the dreads. Decided he might make an interesting counter to the little old lady.

Headspace, Australia

So I was contacted about doing a bit of work for Headspace, the National Youth Mental Health Foundation of Australia. My first, commissioned illustration gig. It's an ongoing project, so I'm not done yet. But it's nice to see my work actually put to use on the web. And for a great cause too. Here's the illustration-

Not the greatest drawing I've ever done, but everybody is happy with how it turned out, and if it helps somebody, it's totally worth it!

The Headspace Website.

Pages from my notebooks... Part XI

A couple more pages from the moleskine. The first is Hagrid and the baby Harry Potter.

And some sort of bored rabbit space pilot. Why? Why not?

Chimpanzen

I did a sketch recently of a chimp which I wanted to expand to something bigger. The pun came to mind, so it went from there. I had a bit of an idea of how I wanted it to look, but a this piece just sort of grew as I worked on it. I'll post a break-it-down at a later date!

Pages from my notebooks... Part X

Another selection of pages from my moleskine. The first sketch just started out as wanting to draw some sort of Aztec sun stone, and turned into something a little different. I'm working this up to a bigger piece at the moment. Not entirely sure how it'll turn out, but hey ho. That's experimentation for ya!

Got myself a bunch of Copic sketch markers recently. Decided to mess about with them in a designey sort of way.

About half way through this one, I regretted starting it. I haven't counted the zombies. I don't want to.

"Me And The Future Missus" Break-It-Down

So, as I posted a few weeks ago, my primary task for myself and my fiancee's wedding is to do the stationary. The invitations, save the dates, map, and whatever other bits of paperwork that need doing. So far, I've completed the save the date notice and about 80% of the invitation. I posted the save the date a few weeks ago, but also decided to post a couple of work in progress photos I took, so that you can see how the image came about. So, without further ado...

The first thing I did was a couple of thumbnails and small sketches. Once I was happy with these, it was a matter of recreating the drawings at double size. Not scanned and sketched, redrawn.

Here's the final drawing of my character. Well, I lie. This is actually a drawing that got scrapped. When I got around to painting the skin tone, it came out too orange. I looked like an Oompa Loompa. The painting had to be scrapped and redone.

Stage one of Gill's painting. Pants, boots and top done. At this stage, I paused for about two days. Next would come the skin tone, and that stage always terrifies me!

Skin tone done! With a sigh of relief, this stage came off without a hitch first time.

This is the final painting for my character. I'd painted myself a bit longer and slenderer than I actually am, but I could make adjustments in Photoshop. Also, my head isn't quite that big in real life. Quite.

I was happier with Gill's painting. The skin tone came out slightly better and I liked her design more. I painted her dress with acryllic to give it a bit of texture. While this doesn't come across very clearly in the digital form, it's quite nice in the actual painting. Also, the colours of this image would require a bit of work in Photoshop due to the slightly red and blue hues that came out with the photograph. I'd prefer to have scanned the artwork, but I lack a decent A3 scanner. For now.

And the final image. The sunburst pattern and text were done in Photoshop. The flourishes, in Illustrator. A bit of colour correction and a bit of a colour bleed from the bottom corner, for no other reason than I wanted to experiment a bit.

So there you have it. I learned quite a lot from the process. Not everything was a complete success. But I took the lessons from it and applied them to the next project for the wedding, the actual invitations. They're looking a whole lot better. But alas, they cannot be posted for a while yet. But they will come eventually! 

Man of Steel

Just a quick sketch from the Moleskine, for the Irish Sketch Society. This week's theme, to commemorate the release of Man of Steel, is the Man of Steel himself, Superman. Have a lot of work on my plate at the moment, so this one just has to be a quick pencil sketch! Plenty more posts coming soon.

Life Drawing May 2013 II

As with the last post about life drawing, I was sans materials for these drawings. Being forced to use just a pen, I thought the drawings wouldn't be up to scratch. But wouldn't you know it, I did one of my favourite life drawings ever in this batch. I've never had a good time with faces or hair, but in two of these drawings, I was very happy with what I managed to draw.

Unfortunately, these are the last life drawings for a while. We're on summer hiatus. But hopefully we'll kick off with the life drawing classes again soon, and then there will be more. Enjoy!

Me and the future missus.

So I'm getting married in September and one of my jobs (the other being don't set yourself on fire before the day) is to do the stationary for the wedding. So save the dates, invitations, maps, booklets and whatever other bits and pieces are down to me. The rest, all the actual work is being done by my industrious, hard-working, and organised fiance, Gill. Here, is the sum of my efforts so far. The 'Save the Date' card. Soon, I'll post the process, where you can see there is a bit of work involved!

Life Drawing May 2013 I

The first of two batches of life drawings from the last few weeks. A bit of back-story as to why the drawings are the way they are. For the last year, I've gradually built up a little collection of materials I like to use on life drawing days. A palette of water colours, some pencils, conte sticks, compressed charcoal, a few pens and pencils. I kept these materials in a bag at my desk. A few weeks ago, life drawing day came around and I went to grab the bag. I grasped, and yet my hand met no bag. It was gone. Thinking I may have left the bag in the life drawing room the week previous, I sprinted like a man possessed to the room and searched like... a possessed man searching. Nothing. Nyet. Nada. Naught. The bag was gone.

From what we ascertained in work, we had a fairly crazy cleaning lady for a week, who would move random objects on peoples' desks. Things went missing, yet were found in unusual places. My bag of tricks? Nowhere to be found. So all I can assume is, the bag was mistaken for rubbish and went the way of rubbish. To the tip. So somewhere, a plucky seagul is learning to paint. Or a feral cat is trying his hand at charcoal drawings. So I like to think. The real kick to the nuts? The cleaning lady left my actual bag of rubbish by my desk.

So these drawings were made with the few materials I keep with me at all times. Pencils and pens. Although there are no pencil drawings in this batch. Ah, the roller-coaster life of an animator.

Pages from my notebooks... Part IX

A couple more pages from the Moleskine, more to come. The first drawing is just a quick sketch of everybody's favourite imp, Tyrion Lannister. The second was just a little experiment I conducted when I got a new brush pen and bottle of red ink. And the third was the sketch that lead to Where's Wall-E. There's more to come soon!

Patriotic Iron Man

This week's theme on Irish Sketch Society is 'Iron Man,' what, with the release of Iron Man 3, an' all. So, I did a quick drawing of Tony and his pal, Rhodey in their Iron persona gear. As a bonus, I threw in the line work too. Which I kinda prefer. Coloured with my brand-spanking new copic markers (thanks for the birthday gift, ma'!), pen and a drop of guache for hilights. 

Celtic Warrior

So this week's theme on the Irish Sketch Society is Celtic Warrior. Had an idea, so went ahead and drew it  up. I've been working traditionally for the last few weeks, but due to time constraints, I did this one entirely digitally. It'll be back to trad media after this, but always good to exercise the different media muscles!

I'll do a quick break-it=down on this one soon enough. It'll be a quickie, since it was all digital!