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. 

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!

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!

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.

AD33 - Making a business card

I started off by sketching out my design for my business card, I knew I wanted it to be square and was also quite keen on having a crazy self portrait so this is what I came up with.

I then went straight in with shapes and stitch lines, this one did not require as much pre planning as some of the lager illustrations, this one was quick and to the point.

Even though the business card would be small I made sure to pay extra attention to the small details, If I can notice them then so will a client.

Here I have thrown in my logo and dropped the opacity down so that I can see how it will sit in the final image, this way I can dedicate shadows and other things to that space before the high res logo goes in.

Just adding in some final touches before I start adding in heavier textures and colour tones.

Here I was planning on adding the ghosting effect that I had mentioned before but it became a little disconnected so I decided against it.
It looked cool for a little while like this though!

And here is the finished image, I threw a texture layer on top of his nose to darken it and I did include some ghosting around his nose. The bow-tie fits in nicely although for this version I did take the text from my logo and add a white texture across it to bring it out from the background as it did blend in a little bit before.

This is the first template I made for my business cards, the interior is completely hand rendered but some lectures argued that it should be a lot simpler because of the busy image on the other side.

I went for something a little more like this and that was a lot better in my opinion, I changed the type face to suit my style a little more and I replaced the phone number with my email address. The final card design has been included in the sketch folder so feel free to have a ganders!

AD33 miscellaneous experiments and doodles

Whilst I was working on the two big projects I did a lot of experimental images, most of them were for fun but some were spur of the moment gifts for people and I am pretty happy with some of the outcomes.

Some of them proved very useful when it came to the bigger illustrations, perhaps one of the textures I used worked well and could be applied to others, or maybe the colour palette I chose would work with another image.

The first is this valentines card I made for my girlfriend, I liked this one because of the ghostly edge I created using the original pencil work. This was one of the first textured images I made in the third year and I liked how gentle it was.

This is perhaps one of my favourite images that I have done this year, it started off as a collection of fish, I started painting them on some graph paper with acrylic, I was just making random shapes for fun and it started looking good so I carried on. I then used a light box to add in some facial features and then it all went into Photoshop for some additional textures and colour tweaking.

This was a digital sketch I created after making the devil screen prints with Tom, we both really enjoyed making those prints and I made this to celebrate a job well done on both of our behalves. This image was then made into a digital print and sold at the Illustration auction where I was lucky enough to be auctioneer. GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE!

Finally I created another card for my girlfriend, this one was for her birthday however, she is quite partial to a cat and enjoys gifts (who doesn't) so I blended the two together for this neon - chalkboard themed birthday card. It is weird because this illustration inspired the cat that is in the Activity book and the colours are essentially the same as the main colours from the book. I would like to do some more neon - chalkboard themed illustrations in the future.

AD33 - The mock book

I knew that for the deadline I wouldn't be able to get a professional printed version so I thought I would make a dummy book just to see it fully completed. After the deadline I could then get the feedback I need and make any minor changes and send it off so I can have a copy for New Designers.
It was so nice to see my book in real life, it looks so convincing and I am really happy with the outcome.

Now since this is a mock the paper quality didn't have to be ultra high quality which did sadly mean that there were some pages that came out a little rough around the edges, for examples sake it doesn't really hinder the piece at all.

I even managed to get some green thread that matches the green in my book for the stitching, it was a nice little touch.

Every illustration seemed to bounce off of the last and the consistency was really fluid throughout the entire book.

I really like this spread, the empty space is just begging to be coloured in!

Another good spread!

These pages came out ever so slightly darker than I originally intended but that will just be a case of lightening the document for the final print.

I did add in page numbers but because of the creep, they slowly get pushed outwards about half way through the book, so that is also something else to consider, I can either nudge them inwards a little more or maybe centre them at the bottom. They are a little unorthodox in the top left and right hand corners.