Publications Archives | Freelance cartoonist and illustrator

Mark Hussey classical guitar album

A very exciting commission came my way recently in the form of a classical guitar album cover with a little cartoon personality on the front.

This was a cartoon design for classical guitarist, Mark Hussey, who wanted to inject a little humour into his next classical guitar album.

The title of the album was ‘Laid Back’ and contains many classical songs played in Mark’s unique style.

So with a brief and a few quirky ideas in my head, I set about getting started.

The classical guitar album front

Having seen several of my cartoon artworks, Mark approached me to capture a version of himself, playing live on stage, in my own quirky cartoon style.

He wanted to reproduce his stage environment, with a backdrop of a red curtain and a single spotlight above him.

I created a sketch of Mark first, propped up on a stool with classical guitar in hand.

My first concept had a ‘concentrating’ face, but looked a little too serious, and given the name of the album he needed to look more ‘laid back’.

I suggested that we could also include a crowd of people watching him, but not simply the backs of their heads and there should be a range of expressions and moods.

The classical guitar album back

There was also the requirement for a back cover of the album too. This initially started out as a plain coloured background, with the list of tracks presented to the side.

I felt there was something missing, and seeing as I have a love for cartoon rats I suggested to

Mark that we include an additional cartoon on the reverse in the shape of a team of rats, scurrying off with one of his prized guitars!

Development

Mark also queries with the idea of possibly including an artwork on the disc itself, to continue the theme across the whole project.

This added another nice dimension to the project, as I was able to simply take the existing artwork of Mark and add his to the side of the disk.

Obvious themes like typefaces were carried across and also chose a nice, rich shade of blue to work alongside the red used in the curtains on the front (red, white and blue – see what I did there folks?)

There was also a small space remaining on the front of the disc, and seeing as the rats went down so well with Mark, he requested that we add another cheeky little chap in.

Outcome

In all, a very fun artwork piece to be involved in and one that I feel came out really well. The colours printed nice and strong and being that it was all produced as a vector file, the linework was very crisp and vivid.

Why not pop over to my portfolio and view the final album sleeve artwork?

Client Feedback

I recently challenged Nick to come up with a design for my recent solo classical guitar album ‘Laid Back’. Nick listened to my requirements, was thoughtful, timely and produced exactly what I had been hoping for, a great album cover. I could not recommend Nick more highly for his artwork and design skills. A very talented man indeed.

Retirement planning book hits the top spot!

Absolutely blown away to discover today that the retirement planning book that I supplied illustrations for has hit the #9 spot on Amazon and is officially a bestseller it its category!

Actually seeing the physical book and the illustrations inside is rather flattering and always exciting to see something you’ve done in print!

Also very touched that the Author, Hannah Goldsmith, also gave me a production credit inside the book, along with a link to this here very website.

Take a look at the book for yourself and order a copy here

Completed chalkboards

So, thats the chalkboard illustrations completed for the financial planning book completed and off to print – all 49 of them!

Very pleased with them though, as was the client and both feel that they’ll be perfect for the new publication.

Some of them presented quite a challenge, as there was a lot of text and small details to fit in.

Legibility was always paramount, and being that the boards take up only around 50% of the illustration, some of them needed a re-think.

I solved the issue by having a second layout, where the chalkboard was much larger and the avatar shrunken, so only head and shoulders were visible.

Retirement planning chalkboard illustrations continued…

Ok, so a week on and the chalkboard illustrations for the retirement planning book are going very well.

After last weekend, I had managed to complete the avatar of the client and also a blackboard illustration – both created as pencil sketches and then digitising them fully in Adobe Illustrator.

Next came the labour intensive bit… creating all of the chalkboard illustrations!

Chalkboard illustrations

This is where my Wacom tablet came in very handy, as I was able to draw in the diagrams straight into Illustrator.

I have a selection of chalk style brushes that I was able to utilise in a variety of thicknesses and colours.

As the client’s primary colour is a bright green, I used this for the mainstay of the diagrams, and used a pastel blue and orange tone for variation.

The great thing was that some of the diagrams were straightforward bar-charts and others had little humorous cartoon elements.

Nick and I made contact a few months ago. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I needed to engage with an illustrator very quickly to design a series of illustrations for my book ‘Retire Faster’.

Nick quickly grasped my ideas, designed an Avatar and created a sequence of drawings which have been downloaded directly into my book. Not only that he delivered them on time as promised and I am delighted with the results. Nick you were a pleasure to work with and I highly recommend you to others looking for an illustrator.

Financial services cartoons…

So, a most unexpected request landed in my inbox today – a LinkedIn connection of mine, who works in the financial services sector, is working on an exciting new book.

Unfortunately, at the eleventh hour, she’d been informed that all of the images within the publication couldn’t be used!

So after a brief discussion, I set to work on some ideas for the illustrations – the bulk of which were financial services diagrams.

Now here’s the downside… I only had about a week to complete these illustrations, so between us we decided that the best, and quickest course of action would be to have a illustration/avatar of the client stood in front of a blackboard.

The blackboard would then have chalk drawings of the diagrams upon them. The advantage to this would be that the avatar and chalkboard would remain static and only the diagrams would change.

Initial sketches and ideas

So setting myself a deadline of the evening, I set about sketching an avatar of the client, dressed to impress in a smart suit and with an outstretched arm, that could be altered depending on the height it may need to be.

Once the sketch was completed and approved, I went about fully digitising the outlines. This is advantageous as a vector illustration, as it allows me to iron out any parts of the pencil sketch that may need improving or re-sizing.

Lastly, I went about adding in the base colours, and in this case I chose a nice mauve colour to contrast against the clients blonde hair and also the dark green of the chalkboard.

Pirate Lettering

Now we’re heading towards getting all of the cartoon pirate characters completed for The Pirate Deck game, I need to begin work on the packaging.

Most of this will be created elsewhere, but the task has fallen upon me to create dome pirate lettering to be used on the packaging.

This will form a kind of ‘logo’ for the brand and needs to reflect the look and feel of the game.

Creating the pirate lettering

The first step when creating my lettering was to select a sturdy typeface as a starting point. I wanted something to reflect the rough and ready feel of something that had been around for some time and had a worn or burnished quality about it.

For this purpose, I chose ‘Leander’ as this has a very quirky and broken feel to it, with lots of twists and uneven features – perfect for pirates.

So as a starting point I began by simply writing out the name in Adobe Illustrator and then separated all characters before converting them to outlines, which essentially makes them all separate vector shapes to work with.

I then began arranging the letters into some compositions that could lend themselves to the logo being cut from a rock face or similar, trying where I could to lock the two words ‘pirate’ and ‘deck’ into each other.

Adding some Col-aaaargh

As far as colours are concerned, this lettering will be used on a variety of backgrounds, such as wooden style decks and also deep blue seas.

So have decided that I’ll need something that will contrast well, and so will use a variety of earthen tones for the lettering and have them graduated from light to dark tones. I also experimented with a more ‘orangey’ tone in the palette, but not sure if this is a little too bright and strong.

I’m also feeling that a bold dark surround will also benefit the letters, enabling them to stand out nicely.

So in order to accomplish this, I layered up three copies of my lettering – a first with a gradient colour fill, a second with a fine earthen outline and then a third, comprising of the bold, dark outline.

The reason I added in the middle ‘outline’ layer, as opposed to adding a stroke onto the first lettering is that the typeface has some fine cracks and details and found if I added a stroke, these details were lost.

When these three versions were then stacked up, they create the final multi-depth artwork.

Other pirate themed details

In order to give the logo a kind of ‘seal’ quality to it, I also played with the idea of having one of my gold doubloons as a backdrop to the lettering.

I also had some palm trees on file that I’d created from some earlier work on this pirate project and decided to try and incorporate these, although as a silhouette instead of the original, full-colour artwork.

My only concern with these is that they give the piece a more ‘Tarzan’ or ‘Lost World’ quality, rather than pirates and high-seas, so I’m thinking these might have to be omitted.

The other obvious concern with this layout and design is that a round logo like this won’t work so well along the ‘letterbox’ shaped sides of the box and so was abandoned in favour of something much simpler.

Furth-aaargh development…

Ok, so now we have the colours and basic arrangement in place, it was time to fine-tune the composition.

The biggest issue was of course that when the letters are arranged, they have adequate spacing between them. When the different coloured layers are placed on top of each other, everything looks a little ‘cramped’.

This was overcome by (painstakingly) taking the first layer, arranging the letters and then creating the three layers and their colours as before and overlaying them and repeating the process until I was happy with the result.

The positioning of ‘the’ also needed some consideration, so that it looks part of the logo and not just ‘stuck on’.

As you can see from the example above, the right-hand versions of the logo have a much stronger outline than those on the left and really helps to lift the logo off the page.