Widgets
Check out this little rascal for the upcoming Paperfox Press website. He's a little illustrated fox to go with the twitter feed widget. More details on this project coming real soon.
Flat on the Floor
If only I had somewhere to go this Friday evening. Very hard and satisfying week and I'm deliberately winding down for the day now.
I've been working on some little characters for a quarterly e-newsletter I plan on sending out to promote myself so here we go.
Other adventures include a stack of greeting cards created, preparation for the Paperfox collective website, 10 pages of the St. Georgia comic drafted up, a 5th dummy book of a kids started, a new Night Draws In comic strip almost done and I finally got to grips with InDesign.
Clap clap me. I'm going to go see if anything lives inside a tree (gnomes, hattifatteners etc).
Renmen Project
Hallo there,
Its a pencil.... with birds on it.
Here is some blurb about the project...
'Renmen' is the Haitian word for Love, the bird in the logo is the Hispaniolan Trogon, the national bird of Haiti. 'The Renmen Project' has been brought together by the team at Thunder Chunky and Ben The Illustrator in order to raise funds for UNICEF's Haiti Appeal.'
So we can see the birds, having a canoodle on top of the pencil, as birds tend to do. The pencil itself is in the colours of the Haitian flag and then we have the name of the project down the side. The 4H is a nerdy touch and can mean "for Haiti". Yes!
Then we have a little heart where the exposed pencil usually is.
To all you artists and illustrators, go send your support.
Lint in stranger's pockets
I've never met, or spoken to Nick Dewar but he has been an artist who frequently revisits my attention and his passing has come as a shock at his young age. Along with Paul Blow, Stephen Collins and A.Richard Allen, he had become one of my favourite contemporary editorial illustrators, with work that demonstrates an admirable intellectual passion that stands out above even his excellent line and colour skills.If any Illustrator ever wonders if their work will make a lasting impression then take this as an example. Nick's work demonstrates real dedication and love for his craft which has been inspiring to me over the past few years as a young, developing Illustrator. This is a man who I only know through his work, and his passing has still managed to have an effect on me.
We should all honour Nick as fellow Illustrators, and do him proud, by making sure we put as much thought, creativity and heart into our work as he did.
All Towards The End
An editorial illustration commenting on Bipolar disorder.
Omar goodness
A bit of a departure but I've been working on a picture of Omar Little from The Wire for a friend. It's been a nice little exercise for me so it's incredibly frustrating when my posh Epson R2400 decides to be a dick and have a mind of its own. Either that or the screen is all off, meaning more money shall be shed on a colorimeter. Here is a snippet of said image...
As for other news, a second wave of postcards is on its way later in the week. I've ordered some custom made stamps from the English Stamp Society to smackdown on the envelopes so as soon as they arrive from the Stork they will be forcefed to the postbox.
Robin Boyden Illustration will be continuely changing in content over the next couple of months as it fast becomes the stuffy older brother to its bratty new (and still nameless) sibling.
I've been working on a lot more narrative work recently and producing a lot of inking heavy landscapes which have been pleasantly enjoyable thus far. Expect a post soon.
That's about it. It's incredibly muggy so I might sleep in the fridge tonight.
Twitchy Scribbles
I should be asleep by now but I stayed up to watch Nick Cave on BBC. However I missed it by perusing scribbles on the internet. Here we have the result of one of the roughs below and a rehash of an old piece about Scotophobia (fear of the dark) which is now in it's third incarnation.
Over the next few months I will be creating a new portfolio to run alongside my current one. I've been caught in two minds for a while now about the content and visual style of my portfolio so I've decided to produce two and become a schizophrenic illustrator. RBI will shoot off into a more 'mature' realm that will be focused more on editorials and publishing with the style reaching for a 'faux' woodcut finish (faux in that it will be heavy and thick penmanship that strives for that look).
The nameless portfolio 2 will focus on more commercial work, mainy looking for prospective advertising clients. This will be bolder in colour, vector based and *gulp* devoid of outlines. It's also a quicker method of working for me and a good space in which to confess childish and ill informed ideas.
Now all I need is a name for this portfolio and maybe a physical disguise.
Maybe a trunk.