this northern boy

Illustrations for an imaginary age

Tag: thisnorthernboy

November 20, 2016

Isometricness III

It’s been a couple of weeks since the end of Inktober and, despite my computer’s hard drive failing, I’ve finally got all the images scanned and cleaned up.

The month was rewarding for me in terms of my drawing, I definitely think I improved from week to week. It was also great in terms of marketing me as an illustrator. Over the course of the month my Instagram followers increased from a little under ten thousand, to over twenty thousand – I haven’t been able to work out quite how that happened. Every one of the isometric drawings sold, and I got another 15 illustration commissions on the back of that.

My next blog post will be about social media, so I’ll discuss a little more then about Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Here are all 31 of my isometric Inktober drawings. Do you have a favourite?

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Day 1.

 

Day 30.
Day 29 of Inktober. 4112 likes on Instagram.
Day 28.
Day 27.
Day 26.
Day 25 of Inktober. 4674 likes on Instagram.
Day 24.
Day 23.
Day 22.
Day 21.
Day 20.
Day 19.
Day 18.
Day 17.
Day 16.
Day 15.
Day 14 of Inktober. 4537 likes on Instagram.
Day 13.
Day 12.
Day 11.
Day 10.
Day 9 of Inktober (my favourite from the month). 4375 likes on Instagram.
Day 8.
Day 7.
Day 6.
Day 13.
Day 12.
Day 11.
Day 10.
Day 5.
Day 4.
Day 3.
Day 2.

 

31

Day 31. All done.

Thanks very much to everyone who liked, commented, shared and retweeted my posts throughout October – and a special thanks everybody that bought one of my inktober illustrations.

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October 13, 2016

Isometricness II

A little update on this year’s Inktober project. 

As I mentioned in my last post I’m drawing a month’s worth of little isometric buildings for this year’s Inktober project. I’ve started off with some medieval / fantasy type buildings, and I’m planning to delve in to sci-fi, WWII, and perhaps Victorian eras too.

Here are the first 13. All my Inktober illustrations go on sale as soon as they are posted on Instagram (a couple of these first few are still available) for the price of £31 (including UK postage. Overseas will be a little extra).

I’ll be drawing each building on Daler Rowney cartridge paper, using Rotring Tikky and Copic Multiliner pens.

Follow me on Instagram if you fancy owning one of these.

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October 6, 2016

Isometricness

As I mentioned in my last post I’m drawing a month’s worth of little isometric buildings for this year’s Inktober project. I’ve started off with some medieval / fantasy type buildings, and I’m planning to delve in to sci-fi, WWII, and perhaps Victorian eras too.

Here are the first five. All my Inktober illustrations go on sale as soon as they are posted on Instagram (a couple of these first few are still available) for the price of £31 (including UK postage. Overseas will be a little extra).

I’ll be drawing each building on Daler Rowney cartridge paper, using Rotring Tikky and Copic Multiliner pens.

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August 6, 2016

August blogfest – day 6

Every week, usually at about 7.30pm on a Thursday, I Skype my friend – and fellow designer – Jon Elliman, and we record a podcast.

North v South, a podcast about but not about design, has now reached episode 24, and I bloody love doing the show with Jon. You can read a little about how and why we started the podcast here.

Episode 24 was probably my favourite yet. We had a book of the month – In Praise of Shadows by Jun Ichiro Tanizaki – that Jon and I both really enjoyed reading, and I think that comes through in our discussion. As always we end the show with a pie review – Jon and I both eating pies live on air, discussing their respective merits and scoring them out of ten, usually washed down with a beer. This week one of our listeners, Stuart Weston, sent me a pie to review. I say sent, actually his wife Kate hand delivered it! That’s the standard of listener we want more of!

If you’d like to listen to the show, it’s on iTunes and Soundcloud.

Every week (since episode 9) Jon and I take it in turns to design a new image for the new episode. Here are a few recent ones.

Episode 24
Episode 14
Episode 13
Episode 20
Episode 22
Episode 11
Episode 18
Episode 23
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August 3, 2016

August blogfest – day 3

A productive day.

The tattoo commission was finished and posted off to California (not Connecticut like I said yesterday).

I worked on some logo designs for the branding project, put together a presentation and emailed that to the client.

On Twitter I ran a quick giveaway for some of my badges and stickers. Three, very quick-off-the-mark, people should have their goodies tomorrow. It was a nice, fun little thing to do. I’ll probably run something similar again soon when I get some postcards printed.

Tomorrow I’m helping Steph out on a wedding in the morning. If you don’t know, Steph (my wife) is an amazing wedding florist, and I sometimes help her setting up weddings if I’m not out working at a client’s. Once the wedding is sorted I’ll ink the sketch for the Californian client – I’m looking forward to that.

IMG_6827

Commission ready to post

IMG_6829

Badges and stickers giveaway

IMG_6833

Detail of a logo design

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February 12, 2016

Of Pies and Men

North-V-South-pamphlet-cover-idea

My friend Jon Elliman and I have recently started a podcast – North v South. Episode 2 was recorded and released last night (thank’s to Jon’s amazingly quick edit), and it’ll be a weekly schedule from now on.

Jon and I met while working at the same design agency in St Margarets and got on very well right from the start, particularly the chat that designers enjoy (sometimes endure) across the top of an iMac. As Jon and I both freelance from home now, we realised how much we missed that aspect of working in a studio, so the podcast is an attempt to replicate that feeling. The title of the podcast, North v South is an allusion to the fact that Jon comes from the southern shires of England, and I hail from the north.

The first episode finds me chatting to Jon about how I got my start in design, after a couple of false starts, and about my move in to illustration. We discuss the merits of the iPad Pro and Pencil for drawing, which sketchbooks I use for what purposes. We also talk about pies.

In episode two I turn the tables and quiz Jon about how he went from being a scholar of medieval literature, to running his own design studio. Jon also explains the story behind his epic WWI historical project – Frank Crawshaw. We touch upon Russian prison tattoos, office pets, and we, once again, talk about pies.

Future topics of conversation in the podcast are:

Fighting Fantasy Books

Tools of the designer’s trade

Einstein’s Cross

A history of pies

Pen Talk

The U.S. Ghost Army

Blitz-stricken, London-dockland, epileptic, bipolar depressive

and…

Procrastination.

You can find the North v South podcast on SoundCloud and on iTunes.

 

 

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