1st Design in Store at Tesco

I started working with Tesco in May, and wasn't expecing to see any of my designs hit the stores until spring 2011 as thats what we were working on then. This one must have been pulled forward though. Its been a long time coming but its a real buzz to see my work at Britains' largest retailer.

Branding badges and repeat prints feature on Next Girlswear garment

This girlswear garment currently available at Next features graphics and repeat prints I created. heres the original artwork below:

New Watercolour Butterfly Designs for Next Girlswear

Here are two handpainted watercolour designs I have done for Next Girlswear available here. Its tricky to produce artworks which have a true watercolour quality that can be commerically outputted with standard screen inks. I've developed a way of creating this kind of design which gives it a true painterly quality while only requiring standard output process with a limited number of screens.

New Designs in Adams

A couple of my designs now available at Adams kidswear...

New Graphic T in store at New Look

Here's one of my designs currently on sale at New Look. I'm really pleased with how its turned out as it has managed to stay true to the original design throughout the production process in spite of the delicate nature of the design.

Nuts

I have been working on lots of lovely hand-rendered girlswear designs for Adams recently. Its nice to have an opportunity to incorporate some original illustrations. This is one of my sketches I have been working with:

New Strictly Come Dancing Girls' Clothing Range At Mothercae

I do all my licensed placement graphics via a third party, so I'm never sure where they could end up as the style guides containing my designs may be sold to anyone. Designs from the Strictly Come Dancing range I worked on last year have found their way to Mothercare which is a great retail platform for the collection.

New designs at next.co.uk

I've not blogged for a while as I've been completely swamped with work, and much of it consists of things that can't be released in the public domain yet, so I've not had much to share.

The new season collection is now online at next.co.uk, and here are some of my graphics that feature:

Tribal Rhythm S/S 2010 Toddler Girlswear Brief

I've had fun with this brief today. The palette and imagery are much more adventurous than usual for commercial toddler girlswear.

Its a complete contrast to the way I was working yesterday where I was given some images of samples the customer liked and asked to produce something along those lines. With today's project, I was given a very detailed brief with a numbered list of descriptions of designs required and lots of inspirational material for each.

I prefer working in the latter way as then the client gets precisely what they want. Working in the former way is great if you have plenty of time to get into the brief and develop an aesthetic direction, but thats extremely challenging in a short timeframe.

Paisley Park

A paisley design for the tribal brief...

Tribal girlswear butterfly print

I've been continuing with the tribal brief, completing the artwork above which will be a oversize front placement. I've been developing ways to create etherial painterly and photographic effects which are still solid colour and therefore viable for standard screen output and this butterfly is an example of this technique.

I'm off to Manchester now to visit some old friends and soak up some big-city culture (and no doubt get my Urban Outfitters fix)

Have a good weekend!

Working from home on a sunny day - tribal girlswear brief

I've been working on a great brief today for older girlswear 2010, incorporating some lovely tribal elements. There's been lots of hand-rendering involved at this stage so I've been lucky enough to sit outside and work in the garden and enjoy the gorgeous weather we've had today. The jolly pair above who started life in the sunshine will hopefully end up on a girls tee on the high street.

This has been my studio for the day:


My colleague is a bit lazy...


But the locals are friendly.

Britain's Got Talent brief nears completion & more work for Adams

Sometimes I'll enjoy a brief so much more than others and find it really easy to complete, and theres no obvious reason why. the Britain's Got Talent project has been one of these. Perhaps its a combination of a good client, who in turn has a good client, both really decisive and constructive. Above is a watercolour sketch design for boyswear based on the one I already did for girlswear which they loved

Hopefully this latest round of amendments and recolours is the last and the project will be signed off.

I had a lovely email from the designer at Adams with some great feedback on the recent watercolour designs I completed for her and a request for lots more work from me. Adams is another good client, with concise design briefs and clear design direction, and not too unnecessarily picky so I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks working with them.

Ikea fabrics

My crafty friend Anna has found the most fabulous fabric in a most unexpected place, Ikea. It has further fuelled my desire to get working on some repeat prints for a small run of fabric from spoonflower. If only I could ever get this Britain's Got Talent brief finished....

Watercolour designs for Adams

I'm back to the days of burning the midnight oil again. Which is no bad thing considering. This week I've been working on a real mixed bag, fistly some branding and World cup Ts for Tu Clothing, and today I've been splashing the paints around to create the watercolour print above for Adams girlswear. The rest of the week I'm back to Britain's Got Talent, the boys range this time. And there was I thinking that with the downturn I'd finally get chance to enjoy working on some self directed projects. Maybe next week...

I could do with more space

I'm not sure if its the best space for getting creative. It was always a squeeze but the lightbox has tipped the space-to-sanity ratio over the edge. Perhaps when I get my bike shed and finally give Fiona's MTB the home it deserves it might not feel quite so crammed in here.

You can see in the picture the development of a placement graphic for Britain's Got Talent. I've taken stills from the show and created a collage with some star graphics and roses, which you can see by the printer on the right. I've then traced the image in pencil, which is on the lightbox. I've also added some watercolour splashes and scanned all these in. On the screen is the coming-together of all of these elements.

Next Childrenswear designs in store now

Childrenswear designs I started working on for Next almost a year ago are starting to filter through into the shops. Heres a couple on the Next.co.uk website...

Its rewarding to see them finally on sale...

Branding for ITV's Rainbow Magic, Charlotte Allen & I ♥ Julia Pott

After a steady start to the year (compared to the regular 60+ hour weeks of last year that is) things seem to be gathering momentum, particularly on the nightwear and licensed side of things. I'm working on some exciting new projects for ITV in particular, rainbow magic garment branding images above.

I've also been inspired to try and find time to do some more personal work prompted by the amazing illustrations and animations of Julia Pott. I also have been inspired this week after visiting my friend Charlotte Allen who is currently working on a fabulous range of digital prints for her Fashion MA which incorporate her beautiful drawings inspred by nature and eclectic vintage pieces.

I count myself lucky every day that I get to draw pictures for a living, but all of my work is extremely commercial, great because it pays the bills, but by its nature quite limiting. I'm hoping to find time to work on some more self-directed projects over the coming months.

Lovely lightboxes

Well today was the first time in over a year of self-employment that the benefits of being an employee resonated. Oysters officially disagree with me, but theres no sick pay for me and the briefs aren't going to complete themselves.

I have managed to add quite a bit more to the gallery today too, and thanks to Tom at Double D Creative my lightboxes are fully functional, not just on my own browser! Menswear, surf and teen are starting to bulk out but its time consuming work going through an archive of thousands of artworks in an attempt to pick just a few representatives. Completion seems a distant dream. And I keep thinking of more sub-categories for the site; all over repeats... nightwear... embellishments.........

Brand New Phirefly

My new phirefly.co.uk site goes live after months (years) of talking about it. As much as I'll miss the jolly yellow phirefly and polaroid snaps about the place, it was time to present my work in a more professional context. There's no point paying all that money for hosting if I'm too embarassed to pass my site details to anyone...

I'll be working on adding some content over the coming weeks and will try my best to keep this blog updated!