two illustrations of hands doing things

This pair of illustrations are to go on signs (which I will show you when they are signed off for verily I am very happy with them!) for the Clore Discovery Centre at National Museum Cardiff. The first is about putting things back where you found them and the second illustrates handling with care.

hand holding ammonite

hand holding ammonite

cupped hands

cupped hands

 

It’s a dog’s life (and other clichés)

As part of their Wolf Inside exhibition about the origins of domestic animals (for which I also did this lovely thing) National Museum Wales asked me to do some simple line illustrations of a wolf along with various dog breeds for a children’s workshop. I gladly obliged. Here they are! As per usual, the dogs were drawn in pencil (copied from an enormous book on breeds I got from the local library), inked up, scanned and cleaned up. The dogs are daschund, standard poodle, chihuahua, West Highland terrier, greyhound, jack russell, and old English sheepdog. You can click for a bigger version.

dog breed illustrations

a wolf and its strange descendants

Dino delights!

So, I heard some rather exciting news a few weeks ago. Those of you who “like” my Facebook page may have seen that a workshop what I did the illustrations for aaaaaaages ago (old blog post featuring illustrations here check out my old hair cut) is being made into a book, and the children’s workshop (called Sounds of the Dinosaurs, written by Grace Todd) which has been presented at the museum zillions of times to the delight of children and teachers alike, will be presented at *gasp* Hay on Wye festival! and the book will be sold there too! Here’s hoping I get a ticket to that…

Anyway, as part of the publishing-in-a-book thing, Grace asked me to do a couple more illustrations for her. One has yet to be signed off, but t’other is a size comparison chart showing the differences between the various critters featured in the book – alamosaurus, tyrannosaurus rex, hadrosaur, pteranodon and frog, along with a camper van and some children. Each gridline represents one metre. You can click on the image for a bigger version.

dinosaur size comparison chart

dinosaur size comparison chart

Sometimes I get a bit overexcited by the fact that I get paid to draw dinosaurs and I have to have a little sit down.

Wolf Inside exhibition quiz

Happy new year! I have lots to share with you so this will be one of many blogs in the next few days, January having been full to the brim with work and February having been half full with a kidney infection (I don’t recommend them) from which I am nearly 100% recovered.

Anyway first up is this cheerful leaflet what I designed and illustrated in English and Welsh for Gareth Bonello at National Museum Cardiff. They’re having an exhibition about the origins of domestic animals called The Wolf Inside and Gareth had mocked something up in Publisher which he wanted me to design. I came up with this:

 

leaflet in English

Family trail – design and illustration – for National Museum Cardiff.

Ac yn Gymraeg:
wolfinside3.indd

And here are some close-ups of the illustrations I did for the piece. As usual they were drawn in pencil, painted in Indian ink and then scanned in. I cleaned them up, converted to Bitmap Tiffs and then drew simplified coloured boxes in InDesign behind them to give them their colours: grey for the wolf, orange for the chicken, a pale gold for the sheep and white for the skulls.

wolfinside3.indd wolfinside3.indd wolfinside3.indd wolfinside3.inddGareth said, “mae e’n edrych yn wych!” (it looks great!)

(If you’re wondering how long I spent trying to think of a pun title for this post based on Wolfie Smith, the answer is about two minutes.)