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! 

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!

Raising money to get us to New Designers - We had an auction!

After all of our hard work leading up to the final deadline and with the great success that was the summer show we were all feeling pretty good about ourselves.
We then started our road to New Designers in London which would ultimately give us the best start into the Illustration industry as it would allow us to meet some big name clients as well as exhibit our best work to thousands of people.

One of the most successful schemes was for us to host an illustration auction, we were to have an event which would feature rare prints and one off originals which we could then auction off to raise money. We got very lucky and the student union allowed us to co exhibit in the canteen with them and their P.U.B event which meant that there would be alcohol in the mix! That could have only ended well!




I donned my best Neon green bow tie and stepped up to the challenge of being auctioneer.


I had two main assistants for the evening without whom I would not have remembered the current bids as I got so excited with the festivities at hand, I may have also been a little bit drunk.

Time for a little bit of cheeky promotion on their behalf.

Firstly thank you to Suzanne Sharpe - A wonderful decorative illustrator click me for portfolio site!

Secondly, thanks to Leah Trengove - Another illustrator who is absolutely dotty click me for portfolio site!


And thirdly thanks to my third helper on the far right, Meghan Hill - A delightfully delicate illustrator! Click me for portfolio site!

The event had a great turnout and people were literally fighting over the artwork, it was a wonderful moment and everyone was so enthusiastic!

I mean look at this turnout! this was wondrous indeed, it was good to see a mixture of students there also! 

In the end we made nearly 600 pounds and we all went for a well deserved pint after the festivities, not like I hadn't already hand enough mind!

Great effort from the entire team and it was not possible without every single one of you!

I made a website!

Okay so in the past I posted about the process of making a website and things but it wasn't until the final months of my third year that was website actually started looking nice and full. It is now fully updated and ready to go.

You can view the full site HERE

Still a little more work to go but it's looking sharp!
I want to change the links so that it is written in my own font, that will hopefully happen sometime this year.





Another screen grab of the site, after three years it is honestly satisfying to see all of these tiles filled with my artwork. I was an aspiration of mine when I started first year to have a nice and consistent web gallery, now I have one. May it continue to grow and evolve!