The Guardian

From last Saturdays Guardian

Morris

Above is the latest cover for my mailout book, I try and do a different cover for each batch I send out. (So art directors can collect them all! ) This was inspired by Morris Dancing often the subject of much ridicule, but I think in the right context there is a strange other worldliness to the ancient dances and costumes. I wanted to try and get that feeling across in this illustration. The hobbie horse/unicorn in the picture was inspired by Westminster Morris' dancer. The picture below was taken of him the weekend before last at the Day Of Dance in Trafalgar Square. CLICK HERE to see the horse on some film I took of morris men at the same event this year and in 2005.

Frankenstein for The Independent

After a few months of being very busy things have got a little quieter, so I have some time to do things like update my blog. The above image is one I did for Susie Feay's column in The Independent a couple of weeks ago, it was printed in black and white so I thought I'd post it in colour here. I've been doing a lot of kids work and I'm hoping I'll have some time to do some personal stuff now, experiment a bit.

Childrens Graves

A small panel from an on going personal project/comic about the search for my roots. Caroline Sherwin was my Grandfathers cousin. On news year eve 1929 she wrote down the family history on one sheet of paper, this was my starting point, so she crops up a lot (or will). Some of what she wrote down was correct and some of it wasn't. This particular bit is about the grave of the little children, which I found at Christmas when visiting my boyfriends sister in Derby. I want it to be as much about the present as the past. It is taking a long time to do, I think I need to be a little bit less precious about every image and concentrate more on the story as a whole.

A Space To Talk

This was for an article in Computer Active magazine about keeping children and teenagers safe on social networking sites like Myspace.

The Wurstminster Dog Show

This was my entry to the Wurstminster Dog Show run by the Wurst Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Artists were invited to reserve a dog breed on a first come, first served basis. I was a bit slow on the uptake and ended up with the Welsh Terrier. I don't know a lot about dogs, and even less about the Welsh Terrier, so I had to do a bit of research to find out about his characteristics.

Reinventing The Wheel

I haven't posted on here for ages mainly because I don't have a whole lot to show. I've been working on two large projects, which has meant that most of my days are full and I haven't had much time for personal work, or the type of stuff I like to stick up on here. Above is an editorial job I did recently based around the idea of reinventing the wheel.

The Independent

This was for the Jenny Colgan column in last Mondays Independent. The piece was about living in Holland. After if was printed Jenny emailed me and asked to buy a copy of it, which was really nice. I'm busy with two children's projects for Cambridge University Press at the moment, my website is badly in need of an update, but it may be a while before I find time to do it. In the mean time as usual I'll post anything of interest up here.

Boxers

Some boxers for Cover Magazine, I already have some boxers on my main portfolio site so I thought I'd post these here.

Wicker Man

I'm a really big fan of both the (original) film and the soundtrack of the Wicker Man, so it was really great when Plan B magazine asked me to do an illustration for them on this subject. The sound track is one of the reasons why I'm so much into old english folk music at the moment.. beautiful, ancient, scary. It was good to draw all the people as well, looking forward to seeing it in print.

Strong Man

Like most illustrators I send out postcards to prospective clients, but to try stand out in the slush pile I also make up little four page booklets. Every six months or so I change the cover. This is my most recent effort. I decided to go for something simple as previous covers have been quite busy. I've stuck with the green background though, as I recently bought a load of light cyan ink cartridges that this colour just chomps through on the printer.

Fairground

Every year Carters Steam Fair comes to Clisshold Park, and every year we go and take photo's of the rides, play on the slot machines, and go on the dodgems. I have quite a collection of photos now and wanted to do some images inspired by them. Initially this had a lot of type in it, but after a lot of playing about I settled for a more simple image.

Beer Mats

Tea and Coffee beer mats for self promotion.

The Rev John Bakewell

Not a lot to say about this, other than it's another panel from my 'work in progress' comic about my family history.

3D

The weather has been unbearabley hot, we are on the top floor in an attic flat and the heat just rises. It has been quiet on the work front, and I needed to do something to fight the heat induced apathy that was threatening to set in. I decided to take an illustration I did last week for a postcard mail out into 3ds max. I haven't used the program since I quit the games industry a year and a half ago, I also haven't done a lot of rendering in it (games stuff is all real time) but I think I managed to get the wonky out of focus effect that I was after.

unbearably
unbar ably
unbar-ably
unbearable
invariably
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razes
rices
rises
Roze's
Rice's
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something
smoothing
soothing
somethings
slothing
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apathy
spathe
Agathe
Apache
apartheid
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something
smoothing
soothing
somethings
slothing
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Sherwin Comic

Some panels from the comic I'm working on. It has been an interesting process for me, I've had to draw a lot quicker than I usually do, and try and not be so precious about every image. It's likely that I will go back and change some of the colours on this though. I've been trying to focus on the story as a whole rather than the details in the pictures. My other concern is holding the readers attention, as my family history may seem fascinating to me, but the average reader isn't going to be nearly so intrigued if they are not related to the people involved. I need to work hard to make it something other than just an illustrated family tree.

I do have some more of this but I'm not quite sure how I want to present it, I'm thinking of giving it its own web page and updating it fortnightly. I'm not working on it chronologically so I'd need to get the beginning done first if I'm going to do this.

More Prince Benji

The illustration above is a double page spread from the picture book idea I have been working on. Prince Benji a large spoilt Persian cat falls off his balcony in the suburbs, and ends up getting lost in the city. As you can see in this picture he gets caught, and taken to the cat pound. It is a simple story with very little text, I wanted the pictures to tell the story as much as the words. In fact on some pages (the picture above for instance) there are no words, but details and signs/sign posts with in the picture give clues to what is happening.

I've had a rest from the illustration and spent last week in Derbyshire doing family history research. In the local records office I found a will from my earlist known ancestor John Sherwin who died in 1777. Unfortunately his date of birth is not on the parish records so it seems unlikely that I will get much further back than this. I need now to go back and modify much of the comic book I have been working on.

Son Of Rambo

This is my final illustration for the Son Of Rambo project. For some reason my name isn't up on the title page, but you can see my image if you flick through from the start. I was trying for a more interesting composition with the boy close up and the viewer looking down slightly from above. The film is set in the 1980s and I hope I managed to get the feel across of one of those long hot school holidays - where you stay inside watching TV rather than going out in the sun. I'm old enough not to look back nostalgically on the 1980s really - it was a dreadful time to be honest.

My work is now up on my agents Arena's website here.

Caroline Sherwin

More personal work for the comic about the search for my family tree. This is my grandfathers aunt, Caroline Sherwin. On the first of January 1928, (in Eastbourne) she wrote down a brief family history -it took up one sheet of paper- and I used it as my starting point. According to Caroline the silver cup on the table was given in exchange for a horse and wagon to my 6th great grand father by The Young Pretenders army (Bonnie Prince Charlie) when they reached Derby in 1745. The army stayed a couple of days in Derby then retreated to Manchester. My relative followed them, and while they were resting in Manchester market place took back his horse and a cart.

All this is written down in quite a lot of detail, and I wonder how she knew it all, for instance the cart he brought back from Manchester belonged to a Mr. Bailey of Breadsall Derbyshire. I have no idea how to prove any of this, though according to the IGI there was a Mr. Bailey in Breadsall at this time.

Not everything she wrote down was correct; she has a couple of fathers and sons mixed up, and a wedding date that is definitely not right.

Caroline Sherwin died way before I was born and there are no photos of her either, so this picture is completely imagined. Caroline and her two sisters never married, and according to my mother lived in Eastbourne becasue they looked after a wealthy American woman.

Benji's House

This is where Prince Benji lives, a sort of castle-style suburban house over looking the city. You might recognize the hill from the animation on my website. I didn't quite get the city how I wanted it. I was trying to get a sort of water colour shimmer to it. I've been looking at a lot of Peter Firmin's work.