My first gallery exhibition!

Okay team,

I have a LOT to catch you up on!


I'll try and speed through as quick as poss, everything has changed since we last spoke! Everything from my socks to my artistic style. We have moved forwards guys!


Right, so a while ago I was offered a chance to exhibit my work at the prestigious North Street Gallery located in Ashburton!

A wonderful duo named Emily and Chris found me at the Plymouth College of Art summer show 2015. (Yes I know what you are thinking, Jack that was 87 years ago and you are very far behind! You are not wrong!)

They were hosting a best in show event for some of the students at PCA, I was lucky enough to get chosen.

Now I want to throw in a little disclaimer, I went on to have 2 more shows at the same gallery, so I will talk about all of them here. The below photos show me at my first gallery show where I got to co exhibit with the amazing Lee Hodges ! 
SPEEDING forward...

Here are some photos of the evening!

There was a lot of tweed going on!


And here is another of me at the following event (the best in show student version!)

Not much changed, my beard got a little shorter?



My third and final show was something special, I was invited to come back as part of a collabrative event which featured EVERYONE who had exhibited at North Street over the last year or so!

The collective theme was "Dogs", perfect!

I did not manage to capture many photos of the evening as I became far too involved with the prosecco that was doing the rounds. I did manage to get a pre gallery print shot of my image though!

I call it, the Scurvvy Doggs!
(I also spell that differently every time I write it!)

To conclude,

The guys at North Street Gallery now turned Joy Therapy  are amazing people, they made me feel incredibly welcome whilst I exhibited there. The Ashburton family are amazing, was great to be a part of something awesome!

Characters for Oxford University Press

I got the chance to work with another amazing client from OUP on some character designs for a potential project, below you can see my first initial concept. Brain characters? 

I then moved forward and wanted to offer a larger range of characters. Neon characters in bound! 

These guys turned out to be some of my favorite characters to date! This was a great exercise for me because I have not really explored simple characters in this way before, was super fun and they were well received by my client at OUP. 

Working with Oxford University Press - part 1

Okay so off the back of new designers last year I got to meet with some of the awesome art directors from Oxford University press! They were interested in my characters used in my children's book Invent with Ivan - How exciting right!? 

The first contact from OUP wanted me to illustrate a book cover for a new children's story coming out soon. This was super exciting and I got straight to work, they sent through a transcript so that I could get a feel for the characters and so on. I worked on various designs which went back and forth over the coming weeks. Eventually I sent through what was to be the final draft for concept before I went in with the final artwork. Below is my final draft design for the book "Grizzly Dadams".

This project unfortunately ended for me at this point as they went with another illustrator who had already worked with the writer before. This totally made sense and they were super gutted that they could not continue working with my illustrations - I felt the same, none the less they are super awesome people and I hope to work with them again! 

I learned a lot about my style during this project, my typography and characterization got a lot stronger and really played to the style of the book. A great experience! 

Update Numero Uno - part four!

The quest for the ultimate Thai street food continues! 

So after completing the logo for Supha's I was then tasked with creating some interior visuals for the walls. After seeing the logo I got super excited to see other work blown up to that scale, keen was an understatement! 

This was actually one of the first illustrations that I had done for Dan, it went on the back burner for a while whilst I worked on the logo but it soon resurfaced after. It ended up being a huge part of the interior decor and being blown up to something crazy like A0-2 or something like that. Excuse the lighting! 

Skipping forward a few months, Supha's officially opened a few weeks ago and has been buzzing since. Feel free to have a look on their Facebook page to see some wonderful photos of the private view. I was so happy with the interior choices as it all seemed to perfectly match my logo, even the floor had beautiful streaks of orange! 

Check it out here SUPHA'S

I am currently working on some collectible herb sheets for the restaurant so I will release photos once they have gone to print, they are looking pretty good at the moment! 

 I took my parents to Supha's the other day and we had some incredible food. If you are in Plymouth and fancy something totally different, perhaps a pleasurable assault on the senses, then I'd totally recommend Supha's street food emporium! 

Update Numero Uno - part three!

I met an awesome guy named Dan at my summer show who was interested in opening a new food emporium on the Barbican in Plymouth. I had a few initial meetings with him whilst I was working at the Pub, started to worry a little about the workload at this point.

When we first met Dan wanted me to work on some posters for him, I was totally cool with that, a little further down the line however he decided that he wanted me to work on the branding for the entire restaurant.


The next few blog posts may be slightly inaccurate as a lot of these things were happening at the same time!

Okay so this is the logo that I came up with for Supha's street food emporium!

The eye shape in the background is supposed to mimic an abstract lemon being sliced in half. They wanted me to really capture this idea of "fresh" and "clean" street food. The vibrant colours are used to reference the bright and colourful streets of Thailand.

I was pretty happy with the logo and could not wait to see it go into print!
I was informed of how big roughly this logo would be when it went to print but I had to actually see them in person to believe my eyes!

I walked up to the restaurant a few weeks before it opened and saw these bad boys! Massive things! 

More info on how the project unfolds coming up next! 

Update Numero Uno - jobs part deux

Okay so I got the chance to create some test cards for Woodmansterne, I got the chance to meet up with a wonderful gentlemen named Lee to whom I complimented on a wondrous pineapple shirt. 

Any how, Lee was interested in my characters from my children's book and wanted to see how that style would transfer to greetings cards. 

I came out with a few initial ideas for Christmas themed cards, have a gander! 

This was my first try, I was really chuffed with the robin and I think that he looked fairly commercial which was a step in the right direction! 

I then had a pop at this neon Santa which I may have preferred! I sent both across and unfortunately neither took the company's fancy so they were not used in the end. Great opportunity though! 

Update Numero Uno - The jobs, hold the sobs

Okay so my immediate plan after returning from London was to get a regular job as I was considered to be as they say "SKINT". One of my little aspirations in life was to work at a bar, I always wanted to work in a nice family value pub, serving drinks to the locals and meeting some interesting people.

This was my initial plan and I was lucky enough to get an interview at my local pub! Happy days. 

After a wonderful interview I got the job in the nick of time as my bank account was about to start a physical fight with me.

I looked like a bit of a pirate when I started which apparently went down well with the locals, I went on to earn names such as "Salvador", "Sparrow" and "Catweazle" I did not ultimately take to Catweazel at the beginning but it grew on me, just google him. 


I was totally into the barman role, look at me!

I was multi managing things whilst I was working here as I received a few interesting bits and bobs from new designers which was super cool, more on that in a sec!

Update Numero Uno - Jobs, sobs and bits and bobs.

Okay so the last time I posted about myself and illustration I was talking about the summer show. So that happened, it went incredibly well and I picked up some amazing opportunities, which I will talk about later!

Anyway, the next step was for us to take the show to London for New designers 2015.

This was my space at new designers, excuse my Gomez Addams holiday realtor get up, we went to London during the hottest time of the year and I nearly melted.


My table set up was very similar to what I had at our summer show. Demo below

I had a lot of interest with my kids book which was great and it was a good shout that I made a lot of business cards as they were swept up quicker than I could say Bonanza. I saw some amazing artists whilst I was at the New Designers show and I had my fair share business card swiping for my collection.

Top client meetings included - Oxford University Press - The Science Museum of London - Tiger print - Hallmark - Little Tiger and Woodmansterne cards.


We had a little bit of a rough week whilst we were in London due to some complications with our living arrangements. That was probably the most PG way to put it. Let's look at it another way, if I were to say that Tom hanks in "Castaway" lived in better conditions than we did during that week, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration" Rant over. 

After the eventful week, we packed up and left our quarters, we felt like new men on a new journey for greater illustration enlightenment.

Cheers London, Sincerely, the PCA illustration class of 2015.

A new blog for Short courses

As part of my crazy year that was 2015, at the end of the year I got the chance to teach the Illustration short course at the Plymouth College of Art. How awesome is that? 

I was nervous at the beginning because I had never done something like this before, but I am currently 6 weeks into the 10 week course and I seem to have found myself, everyone seems keen and there are always plenty of questions which is good!

Anyhow I have made an additional blog which will follow myself and the students journey. If you are interested then please do have a flick through!Doodles, scenery and Photoshop wizardry.
                                                     
                                                      Updated every week. Hopefully. 


                                                http://jiantshortcourses.blogspot.co.uk/

I am still alive ladies and gentlemen!

Greetings from the past and welcome to the future. I am aware that I have not posted on here since last October! I know! 

Rest assured this is because I have been super busy and I have so much to update, a lot has changed in this time and I want to keep you in the loop!

Over the next few weeks I will be trying to release some of my updates from last year and that will hopefully bring me up to speed.

In the mean time however I am fully active across my social media sites so please have a browse and follow my journey!

Thank you and much love, team!