An update - yes I am alive!

Right, just so you guys know I am planning a mega update on my social media approach and things. This blog was a massive standing stone for me and it helped to get my feet off the ground. I plan on giving it some well needed maintenance but I do have 10,000 things going on at the moment.

If you are interested in my journey and current work then please have a gander at my Instagram, it's updated every week with new content!

Check it out HERE

Speak soon beautiful people!

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. 

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 - 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!

Summer show time!

After the final deadline we were then tasked with setting up our summer show which was only weeks away!
There was painting to do, posters to hang up, promoting to occur and much more before I could even think about having a celebratory end of course pint!
Each student was to be allocated a space on a table as well as a wall space for their images to be showcased. I was lucky enough to score a wall partition which meant that my work would stand alone and away from a wall, only 5 other students got this opportunity so I felt very honoured.
The table had to include our portfolios, a copy of our CV, a quick description about out work and some business cards and postcards, the rest was up to us.

Above is what I went for. Additional things included:
- A copy of my children's book
- A double fold out post card set complete with perforated edges for easy tearing
- My fully functioning children's menu from a previous project

And this...


Is my wall space!




                    

I even got to include some large character cut outs from my children's book.

AWESOME RIGHT?


It took a lot of moving around until me and my lecturers decided on the pyramid shape. I was overjoyed with the way it turned out.



Next up: Private Viewing!

So... I finished my degree!

Greetings all.
I just wanted to make a brief announcement, I have now officially finished my degree and this blog has played a huge part in my journey. It has acted as my virtual sketchbook and it really has racked up the views! I wanted to thank anyone out there who has stumbled across my blog, either by accident or on purpose, it really helps!



SO...

What now?

Well I wanted to continue this blog and update you guys as I venture into the world of freelance illustration.

And in true Jiant fashion I will write in hindsight,

Lets skip back a few months...


Enjoy and thank you for staying tuned!
          

This is from what I remember the first image I created after handed in my final deadline, he is going to be part of a crazy bird series I will work on through the up and coming months.