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Challenge Yourself: The 40-Minute Illustrations
Art is a way of exploring your inner and outer life. At its best, making art helps people uncover and come to terms with problems in the way they’re approaching the world. Creating is, therefore, a deeply personal act, and this complicates the work of any professional creatives. How can I be expected to make […]
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Children of Alcoholism
Last week, I was commissioned to illustrate an article in The Psychologist. It’s on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and how the effects are poorly distinguished from the effects of childhood abuse and neglect. The article’s due to appear in their March edition. Leave a comment.
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‘Vaccine Scare’
I did a recent piece based on an article in BBC Trending, exploring the anti-vaccine movement in Kerala. Preventable diseases, like diphtheria, are on the rise, while much of the vaccine fear is being spread by alternative medicine ‘doctors.’ Thanks for keeping up! Thoughts or questions? Leave a comment.
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Illustration Friday 2 – ‘Nose’
I took part in Illustration Friday again this week – the prompt was ‘nose.’ Who has a bigger nose than a toucan?? And painted this week: This hill’s visible for miles around, nearly constantly shrouded in mist. I happened to be cycling by yesterday and stopped to whip up a sketch. Later, after the sketch and […]
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How I Use Custom Brushes to Create Rich Textures in Photoshop
I love simplicity in my work. I make it my goal to show what I need to as cleanly and precisely as I can. That being said, I feel something’s lost when you get too abstract. A lot of simple ‘vector’ style artwork looks lifeless to me. Functional, stylish, but lifeless. I try to get away […]
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Editorials – Cromarty Oil Transfer
A local issue, this time. Staying in Moray, I’m right on the doorstep of so many serene places. A lot of people move here just to neighbour the local dolphins. Unfortunately, permission is being sought to carry out ship-to-ship (STS) oil transfers in the waters nearby. STS transfers are particularly prone to spillage. If the […]
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Editorial Illustrations
What I love about good editorial illustrators is their ability to capture so much of a situation with so little – a single image. Over the past week, I’ve been testing my own simplification skills and building up a new portfolio. Coming at art from this angle is refreshing after so much landscape painting. The […]
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Profiling Oldmeldrum
I had the honour of illustrating an article by writer/photographer Duncan Harley. He’s writing a series exploring Scottish history on the small scale: ‘Our Town.’ It digs into the littler communities of Scotland, unearthing all sorts of stories nearly forgotten.