The H&M Recruitment day poster competition

Below is my submission for the H&M recruitment day poster. The aim of the poster is to display the meaning of the event simply and explicitly. The image is however a rough design- further development would have mostly entailed font experimentation.

Etta's Kitchen

The situation of consumer buying patterns in this country at the moment is a pity. Its a pity that Large organisations and businesses are pushing the independent business to extinction. In return for the disappearance of these small businesses we get sterile and clinical supermarkets run by overseas companies sucking life out of  local economy and in my opinion further declining the sense of community spirit in built up areas.
Brixton Market is a short walk round the corner from where I live and that is one place I feel that the community is striking back. New tactics and measures such as the brixton pound and night time events are being employed to ensure that this is one local infrastructure that will not soon be a shopping mall, retail centre or a link in a conglomerate supermarket chain.
This was my inspiration for the Etta's kitchen project. Etta's Kitchen is a delightful Caribbean Seafood restaurant in the heart of Brixton Village. The proprietor of this business- Etta has not only a warm smile for all but a genuinely outstanding knack for authentic caribbean seafood.

Seeing and tasting this gave me an idea- to offer my illustrative skills to aid the progress of this quaint eatery.
Etta was keen and knew exactly what she wanted- for someone to design imagery for the window display of her shop.

  To help speed up the production I enlisted the help of good friend Will Flawn, having seen some examples of Will's work in big before I knew he was the man for the job, we collaborated on the first image of the fish on the window.

V&A Charity Art Auction

Recently I made a piece for the sun's 40Th anniversary art auction. The event was held at the Victoria & Albert museum and raised £15 000 for the charitable organisation- break through breast cancer. My submission was a mixed media art object which helped raise £600 for the cause when it sold at the eve

The piece itself is a parody on the regular newspaper column- 'The news in briefs'. The model pictured is Peta Todd, a current page three girl and radio presenter, chosen for her involvement in recent discussion about the controversial page three debate. The piece is entitled 'the news in briefcase'.

The aim of the piece is to open debate about the sun's "national institution" AKA page 3 using the contents of the briefcase as a metaphor for the contents of the tabloid newspaper- The Sun.

The production of the piece was a collaboration between photography, drawing and illustration. The exterior of the case was rendered through a process called photo emulsion. To complete this task I enlisted the help of some good friends of mine, Josh Horwood and Josef Hoyle who succeeded in exposing a photograph of the newspaper cover sheets onto the case, essentially turning the object into a photographic surface. The inside is a pencil portrait of page 3 glamour model Todd, underneath this image is a secret illustration- available to the buyer only.

myself and fellow collaborators

We're all Pawns Tube Poster

My piece "We are all pawns" is currently on display at London Bridge Underground Station(Northern line platform southbound).

 A couple of months ago I was given the opportunity of having my work displayed on the London Underground and I was certainly eager. This was a chance to try to visually communicate with the thousands of commuters that use London Bridge station. The deadline was tight but I did it! feels pretty good too. Below are images of the piece in situ courtesy of professional photographer Yumi Yoshinaga Thanks to everyone for the great response this received and a special thanks to Art Below for helping make this possible.  

Academics turned anarchists

Academics turned into anarchists over education cuts in student protests.

To view more photographs from the protests, click here

Hand carved candle holder

It took me quite some time to craft this but I think that it looks pretty good as a finished carving.
I chipped through the nostrils and mouth so wax oozes out then hand painted it with additional details

moleskins

 I always keep these pocket sized moleskin notebooks with me to make sure I don't forget who I am or where I am or what I'm supposed to do and so on. But they always get doodled on and I never really show anyone so I decided to stick some on here, enjoy.

custom suitcase

A personal project in which I had decided to make sure my suitcase doesn't get lost in the airport

These are a couple of rough t-shirt design ideas

Alter ego

Alter ego is a public art experiment. Our objective is to get members of the general public to produce art for an exhibition- proving that anyone can do it, regardless of their background/skill. All art produced was based on the theme of alter ego. you can view the pieces on this blog : http://www.alteregodraw.com/ . This provided the artists with a forum to open discussion about the work and their experiences with alter ego. the exhibition was held in Brixton market from the 26th of May and lasted for one week, here are some photos taken from the event.

penguin Book prize

This is my finished cover illustration for the penguin book prize competition (adult category). The brief was to design a cover for the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind, the story of a murderer who has an extraordinary sense of smell. The image is based on research of the olfactory system which is the part of the brain that deals with odour, it helps to distinguish one smell from another, can provoke nostalgia and even emotional trauma.

Odds and ends of things

These are self portraits done during my self initiated project on isolation. The main idea behind this project was to see first hand effects of isolation, I did this by locking myself in a room for 50 hours with nothing but rationed food, a sleeping bag, a toilet and a note pad to find out Joseph Boyce style what effect this would have on myself and my work. these three self portraits are a small selection of the final images that were produced.

Below are some images developed in what I would call a rather unstable phase in my approach to drawing. the aim was to pack too much information into the image so that initially the eye doesn't settle and the information is difficult to decode.

a few observational drawings from my trip to the Pitt Rivers museum, Oxford. A tribesman's scull, a Maurie painting and a face from an advert for Jamaican rum in the underground station.