Geological Time

Educational and fun? Hopefully both with my new artwork illustrating Geological Time.  My image was created to help visualize how far time goes back in Earth's history from modern day to its earliest period.  It was nice to stick buildings and a petrol station at the top to help identify today and use perspective in the drawing to indicate how far things go down into deep time.

Geological Time 2013 (on Blue)

In geology, layers of rock are identified and dated by whats in them (finds of fossils or minerals) These layers of time are given names e.g. Jurassic, Devonian etc and they span from today all the way back billions of years.  

Holocene,Pleistocene,Pliocene,Miocene,Oligocene,Eocene,Paleocene,Cretaceous,Jurassic,
Triassic,Permian,Carboniferous,Devonian,Silurian,Ordovician and Cambrian 
(before that is called the Pre-Cambrian and divided into the Proterozoic and Archean)


Their is a a way to remember all those names and it might be something you recall from school. Here it goes: Camels Often Sit Down Carefully Perhaps Their Joints Creak (Perhaps Effective Oiling Might Prolong Perfect Health) 

Geological Time (On White)

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Lost for Words

One of my recently completed illustrations for an editorial commission to accompany an article about being prepared for a meeting.  

I played a little with the perspective of this image to give it a quirkier look and feel, distorting it to exaggerate to close up and faces of the two characters each side of frame.  The idea was to make the viewer or reader of the article feel they were the ones being eye balled as the people in the illustration are all paused waiting for the presentation or witty remark to be said.

Sure most have us have all been there at a meeting, pub or at home struggling for something to say.  We all hope when it comes to our retort or just plain answer to something it's relevant or witty, usually what we want to say comes latter sometimes much later.   Maybe when we're driving home it strikes or when we are talking about it later with a significant other or friend the once missing words flash into sight.

What you looking at?

Visit my website to see more artworks like this here.

Sketch Book

I'd thought I would write briefly about my recent sketches done while away in New York, in my last entry I talked a little about how projects I'd done set there and how my thoughts and ideas about the place had changed since my visit.

We were lucky to have time to get round some of the places we wanted to get to when we were planning, the sites, museums, boat tours and we wanted to get lots of walking done to places you would not get to on a tour or on the tourist map.  Thankfully living where we do in a rural area and with a dog we had correct and very sensible footwear for long hours on our feet!

Your need to move quick to see everything and like any city not if stopped and staying still get in the way of anyone, who in their mission to get somewhere quick will mow you down.   Stopping for a little moment to catch a breath, I was able to sketch a little and quickly get a few things down.

The Intrepid Air and Space Museum

Bloomingdales

Times Square

Staten Island Ferry

The Met Museum

The American Natural History Museum

I've a few more to add soon, to see more of my work visit my portfolio

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Self Initiated Work

Self initiated projects are an opportunity to draw something I do not normally get commissioned to do.  It’s good to fill gaps in my portfolio and expand the breadth of what you can do as an illustrator.  If its not in the folio a client will not commission you do do something similar, so its important to keep the work fit and healthy by adding new things and trimming the fat.

Their is no reason it has to be a chore it can be fun and you can get to draw things that are interesting.  I love dinosaurs and all things prehistoric from lost lands long ago, I've quite bookshelf on the evolution of life, fossils and lovely glossy picture reference books on the subjects too.  It is a wealth of material for the mind to imagine upon, so I decided to get prehistoric.

The below images show the Tyrannosaurus and horned Triceratops placed in a dummy layout to give them a bit of context. Both pen and ink illustrations are the kind of illustration that I hope is attractive to children’s book publishers.

The line art illustration is created from pencil sketches and then coloured on the computer.  For the Triceratops illustration I worked from the fossil remains shown in books only as a challenge and then put flesh on the bones and skin and patters from reference images of animals that exist today.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus, for this I placed my illustration in  a dummy  page layout  to  give it a little context.

The horned Triceratops in dummy layout.

You can see these images and other commissioned work by visiting my website 

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