Brian Cox Would Be Proud.

This ad campaign for elegant departure store chain Brown Thomas in Ireland and commissioned by Irish International was to announce the forthcoming festival of beauty in the stores in October, with make-up items made to look as if they were formed from stars.

The job began with a 2ft square universe made of multiple ink colours and pencil, swirling them up over very heavy watercolour paper and drawing into them with a pencil, adding the stars using my magical technique then allowing it to dry to a crisp naturally (the woodburner is good at this but can dry things too fast and hard). The effect of such simple methods is very striking and I use it a lot, but not usually with such bright inks - this was a surprise! The piece was large enough to use a different section for each ad.

It took a while to get the constellations looking like constellations - which are of course always a bit vague (‘mmm yes…of course that’s a lion’) but the end result is a pleasant mixture of astronomical research and artistic licence.

The hand-drawn shout line was cut in the end, but that was compensated for by the use of pin-prick holes and LEDs on the bus-stop posters which lit up at night around the city. At times, the way the dusk fell on the posters helped to reinforce the effect:

Wish I’d seen these!

In-store, the galaxy found is way everywhere and became eyeball-arresting press ads too:

Thanks to Martin O’Neill of Cut It Out Studio for taking some of the photos for me while he was in the city!

Love In A Hurry

I love those super-fast jobs where you think you can't possibly squeeze it in, but you say yes because you love the sound of it, and THEN they bring the deadline forward to 'the middle of the week' rather than 'the end of the week'.

Sometimes the sheer speed I have to work at makes for a rush-job which, despite initial nerves about 'fitting it in', has the strange effect of making me a bit cavalier about the outcome. It's as if the brain says 'Well. They've given you three days, and you've already got ton of things to do, so you'll just have to do your best and they'll get what they're given'. It sort of...releases the tension, and relaxes the hands. Plus, there's no time to get nervous about it - I just have to bash on in.

Brown Thomas in Ireland are running this illustration for their Spring campaign, with window displays and ads, to coincide with Valentine's day. I'd been doing a lot of my more detailed work lately (here) and this job just happened to require exactly that. The letters are 8" high and all done by hand 'in one take' with no digital fudgery at all (except to change the colour to pink for the purposes of this blog!)

It also dovetailed nicely with an illustration for the Natural History Museum, coming soon to a blog near you.

This was, therefore, a joy to do. I made some of the flowers up but in the main, these all come up in Spring. On a dingy wet winter's day, this was just the tonic. Fine nibs, big paper, music on, tongue out...and relax.