Star Girl Reporter Alison Jane Reid (Ethical Hedonist)

I've worked with Alison at the Ethical Hedonist blog for several years now and she recently started work on creating short EBooks to sell featuring some of her favourite interviews. First up her interview wit the late Linda Mc Cartney. My brief was to create an illustration to appeal to men and women showing the sassy but serious journalist as her alter ego, on the way to do an interview. The book in available to download from Amazon.

Life's An Itch

I was contacted last year to create a piece of artwork based on psoriasis, an unusual and quite tricky brief in some respects as the idea was to get across the itch but apart from that the brief was very open. I decided to communicate the itchiness of Psoriasis by through my main inspiration of nature, turning my character into a sort of human cactus, surrounded by bees and hummingbirds that were constantly poking and stinging her. You can see other artists work for Life's an Itch website live.

I was also interviewed about my work by National Psoriasis Foundation (USA)‏ and the results are here.

Back Trip Festival

I created this crazy psychedelic, 1960's flavour design for Back Trip, a Grateful Dead inspired music festival in the USA. It was an ideal project for me, inspired by 60's hippy culture, nature and magical and mysterious elements and it was great fun making the design as weird and wonderful as possible. The brief was quite loose, based around the idea of an electric forest, although there were a few key elements I needed to include such as the Grateful Dead skulls, gnomes on toadstools and Jesus driving a hippy bus! I created the original collage and the agency (JCI Marketing, Redding CA) added in some photographic elements.

Magazine Illustrations for Dobbies & Inner Circle

I've had lots of new editorial illustrations published recently. The first 4 are for Dobbies Magazine (available in Dobbies Garden Centres now) and the article is to encourage children to get into gardening. The projects were easy to make and fun and I wanted this reflected in my designs by including lots of little creatures to keep kids entertained (spot the bees, cat and naughty caterpillar!)

The next illustration is the front cover for Inner Circle, a client I've enjoyed working with several times. The theme of the issue and illustration was technology, in particular apps, so we've got apps for everything from dry cleaning to space ships! It was a really fun project especially making technology out of paper! You can see the whole issue here.

Radio Times Commission

I was delighted to be contacted by the Radio Times a few weeks ago to create a quick turnaround job. The design illustrates accompanies an article on BBC Radio 1 & 1Xtra Stories: Chris Stark’s Dry Diary, as the presenter gives up alcohol for a month to investigate why more young people are abstaining from alcohol altogether. My design focuses on a young women stamping on some (rather scared looking!) alcoholic drinks and to emphasize the foot I gave the whole design a weird looking perspective!

Elephants & Zebras- Giant Animal Murals!

As you might know my elephant created for the Bangkok Elephant Parade is now up for auction online. She and the other eles are at their final exhibition destination at the Riverside Plaza until 15th Feb and is for sale online now. Hope she raises lots of money and goes to a wonderful new home.

I've also had some exciting news regarding another animal. I recently submitted a design to Zany Zebras, a parade of zebras coming to Southampton and organised by Marwells Zoo. My design Zebbie-go-round, based on a carousel has been picked from the submissions. Really happy to have been picked and look forward to seeing it come to life and raise money for the endangered Grevy’s zebras.

Wedding Illustration Private Commission

I recently had the pleasure of creating a bespoke illustration for a client whom I'd worked for some years back. It was a gift for her Mum and husband to celebrate their wedding in the summer. Always lovely to work on these kind of projects knowing it will end up on someones wall (plus the added pressure that it was just before Christmas and the piece needs to be just right!) As it turned out they loved it, so thought I'd share the results. If you are looking for a personalized illustration (from A4 size upwards!) please do get in touch. I've also included a couple more recent bespoke illustrations too!