Happy World Book Day Yesterday!

 

Yea I know I’m always a bit behind on stuff but still, happy world book day yesterday folks!

World book day is a charity that celebrates books and reading, every year millions of children are given book tokens to spend on new books and are encouraged by schools and libraries to come together in reading and enjoying books.

I think it’s an absolutely amazing thing as it gives kids a chance to own their own books as well as find out about other new and exciting material.

Anyways, I got a lovely email the other day from the teacher of class 5/4 at Camstradden primary school in Drumchapel.

As part of world book day the class project was to make their own bookmarks about what books mean to them based on my Pushpin bookmark design. Look!

 

How cool is that?! Needless to say this totally made my day. My original design (below) was me trying to illustrate what books mean to me and how they can take you to amazing far off lands and plunge you into adventure and it’s just so nice to see another person’s take on that.

 

The original bookmark is available for £1 from Pushpinzines.co.uk .

In the meantime keep reading everyone!

Neil

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World Book Night! What’re you reading?

Hello everyone!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last update! I’d like to explain why but it would make for a very boring read (basically I moved out then all this stuff happened).

But you’ll be glad to know I’m still working on bits and bobs, I still do the weekly Jonbot vs Martha Webcomic and update my Tumblr with odd doodle that’s not quite blog worthy.

ANYWAYS. It’s World book night tonight, which I guess is a night dedicated to sitting down to that book you always meant to read or finish and blasting through it.

I’ve never been a great reader in all honesty. I remember trying to read Star Wars novels when I was about ten or so and found myself having to re-read every paragraph only to find that at the end of the page I hadn’t taken any of it in.

In the past year or so I’ve tried hard though. I’ve always wanted to be a reader you see, so after watching the first few episodes of Game of Thrones I’ve spent the past year ploughing through the books and look! They’re huuuuuge!

And just at the start of the year I finished ‘A Dance with Dragons’ the 5th book and at just over 1000 pages I was mega proud of myself!

But enough of my Oprah-worthy struggle story. Let’s just talk about what I’m reading and that is ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’ by Micheal Chabon.

The book is set mostly in New York in the late 30’s early 40’s and follows the exploits of two boys writing a comic book. It has tons of action, adventure and suspense whilst lovingly going into detail about the early beginnings of comic books. I’m afraid I can’t properly articulate actually how much I’m falling in love with this book but if you’re interested definitely go read some reviews or flick though the first few pages in your local library/book shop.

And in typical Neil fashion here’s a picture of the main comic character in the book, he’s called ‘The Escapist’ and he’s just done escaping from stuff!

Wow! So what’re you reading just now? Can you recommend me anything?

Right I have to go now but we should talk more yea?

Take Care!

nx

A Week in Pictures

This week kinda started out like this…

But it was cool because it ended like this…

I guess the best thing to do when you’re stumped is to just work through it till something happens. I’ve actually been getting a lot done recently. I’ve started a couple of new paintings and I’m just about finished illustrating the book I’ve been working on, here’s a peek of one of the mock ups but don’t tell anyone you saw it!

:) see ya soon!

nx

They Lived in my Head

Hello readers,

Yesterday I did something amazing, something I have only done a handful of times in my life. I finished a novel.

And it was great. The novel was ‘Super Sad True Love Story’ by Gary Shteyngart, and it looks like this…

I can’t really describe the book other than a dystopian love story set in a grim yet frighteningly believable future (basically right up my street).

Anyways I’m not going to actually review the book because I’d be totally crap at it, I’d just like to talk about some of the characters.

After I finished the book and thumped it shut (I think that’s the universal gesture for finishing books) I felt a little sad, not because of the ending or anything, it was more because I had left the characters. And since it takes me months to get through a single novel, I had spent a lot of time with these people floating around my head waiting to speak whenever I opened up the book again.

Like most people, I gave them faces. I imagined what they might have looked like if I met them, although the book does describe their appearances I’m guessing everyone’s picture in their head would be different.

So as a little homage, and a drawing exercise I decided to put their faces onto paper.
This is Lenny, I guess you could say he is the main character, his diary entries make up half of the book and from them you can tell he’s a bit of an old hat in a new world, in fact he’s one of the few people he knows that actually still reads books or ‘printed bound media’ as they’re refered to. For whatever reason I imagined him to look a bit like Paul Giamatti.

Next is Eunice

Eunice is kind of an ambassador for this future world, being all media and up to date. She is also Lennys love interest. Her side of things is also accounted for, except through the media of emails and in some cases typed conversations like you’d see on msn messenger or facebook chat(quite an interesting way of seeing a story unfold).

So yea, I highly recommend this book if you’re into the same things as me.

I guess drawing these people was my own little way of giving them a send off.  I’m starting to think I need to get out more.

Well thanks for reading!

Take care nx

Sketchbook Entry 12/11/10

 

So I got home from work today feeling a bit creative, but only having an hour or so to spare before I went back out. I thought to myself ‘maybe instead of doing my usual faffing about with computers or flicking through tv channels I’ll set myself a little challenge?’ like making and finishing something within the hour.

It was originally made of 2 or 3 different pictures but I ended up cropping it lots as I like this composition better. Anyways, It’s about me fancying someone.

In other news I have recently acquired a new robot, I think he looks like a Percy, wouldn’t you say?

As always, any feedback on my work is more than welcome!

take care nx

This Week’s Books

Hello! I apologise for it being over a week since my last post, I have been working hard on some secret little projects as well as some things of my own that I’m not quite ready to show yet.

So with an absence of original material, I’d like to talk about my shopping. Since the daylight is increasingly growing shorter up here I’ve been going on little book buying sprees, mostly art and comic books mind you but still worth talking about none the less.

Ok first on the list is ‘Lost Constellations’ which is the 2nd art book by Tara McPherson, one of my favourite artists.

In this volume you can clearly see how Tara’s work has progressed and matured since the last book whilst keeping her signature style and pallete perfectly intact. I’d definitely recommend this book to people who are interested in artists of today although one thing I would say is that if you own the first volume a lot of the same art appears.

Next on the list is the’ Juxtapoz Poster Art’ book,  as a big fan on the Juxtapoz art magazines when I heard they were releasing a poster art book I couldn’t help but scoop it up.

The book features art and interviews from hundreds of artists and illustrators and even from flicking through the first few pages I was left with a strong feeling that poster art is an amazing art form with great possibilities and shouldn’t be overlooked as just another form of advertising.

Ok, almost there, 3rd on the list is a comic by spanish illustrator Gabriella Giandelli entitled ‘Interiorae’. This is one of my ‘random’ finds, basically I don’t know where to start with comics so my usual approach is to flick through some things in the shop and see which pictures I like best, this one won.

It tells the story of a little old lady on a journey to her final resting place, and if not a bit sad I found it really beautiful, mostly because of the astounding artwork which has such a natural feel to it, top marks!

Right I’m almost done, Last on my list is Shaun Tans ‘The Arrival’ I’ve always been a huge fan of this guy ever since I read ‘The Red Tree’ which inspired me immensely.

What’s interesting about this is that it’s a story about immigration and about all the people in history who have journeyed to the unknown in search of a better life, it also has no words or text whatsoever, as if to help you relate with the books characters. But as usual what appeals to me most is the simply oustanding and painstakingly detailed artwork.

Well I hope you enjoyed that nosey into my shopping, I’ll be back soon with some new pictures!

Take care!

nx

My Little Black Book.

Being the arty type that I am, I usually carry about a little sketchbook, mostly for jotting down little ideas here and there,sometimes for writing down important information and other times it’s used as a journal/diary.

Its amazing what you can do with blank paper! :P

Anyways,usually when a friend’s close by they’ll ask for a flick through to see what I’ve been putting in it, so today I thought I’d scan in one of the more presentable pages to pop up on here for everyone to see :)

as you can see its all nonsense and scribbles but i thought I’d share it anyway!

take care.

nx

100 Days Of Monsters

Greetings spacefans!

Hope everyones doing good! I realise ive been blabbing about myself for a good while, so now’s about the time for me to talk about some other arty people that excite me.

I Cant quite remember how i stumbled apon Stefan Bucher, I think i was trawling through some comic forums and his name popped up, anyway, what i like about Stefan is he draws monsters every single day!

on his site there’s literally hundreds of them and a lot of the time poeple go on and write cool stories about them and its quickly becoming a little bit of a interweb phenomenon.

this guys my fav :)

Stefan uses a really cool technique of blobbing ink then blowing it about to make cool shapes before turning it into a monster, i tried it myself, obviously its not quite as cool but not bad for a first try?

He’s called tree boy, maybe someone could write him a story?

for more about Stefan have a peep at his site or have a swatch through his book,i got it from borders and its rad!

take care!

oops a wee edit here, i put a link to this on his site and look he got back!

amazing!

nx

Another one of my favourite illustrators

Hello! I’d like to share with you another one of my favourite illustrators.

Today its the ever popular Oliver Jeffers who not only is a fantastic illustrator but also a great story teller,who has written some of the best kids books Ive ever read (yea i still read kids books who doesn’t!)

This picture is from ‘lost and found’ a story about a boy trying to help a lost penguin!

It’s a very heartwarming story and i’d recommend it to anyone,even if your a grown up.
What i love about Olivers work is its so simple,and every picture tells the story so well,so well in fact i doubt the books even need words at all!
He’s also a master of watercolours which I’m very envious of.

*sigh* one day!

For more about oliver check out his site or even better your closest book shop to have a swatch for yourself!

have an osm day!

nx