Brave New World

Hey there, and a happy Saturday to you all! I figured its about time I had a waffle about a project/competition I worked on a few months ago. Late last year, I decided I was going to enter the House of Illustration's annual competition. This year's competition was to create 3 illustrations and a book jacket design for the 1931 novel, Brave New World (by Aldous Huxley). And so I gave it a go!

Front Cover

"And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim spectres of men and women..."

"Then the leader gave a signal, and one after another, all the snakes were flung in the middle of the square; an old man camp up from underground and sprinkled them with corn meal, and from the other hatchway came a woman and sprinkled them with water from a black jar."

"Now who wants a chocolate eclair?" she asked in a loud, cheerful tone. "Me!" yelled the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20 was completely forgotten."

I really enjoyed this competition, I liked the chance of reading a book I hadn't thought of reading before and interpreting it in my own way. I consider myself to be a bit of a book geek, and I have a secret desire to read every single book in the world (knowing this to be an impossible feat, I am content in just trying to read any book I can - especially any classics)! Brave New World is a really interesting novel and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone!

Unfortunately I didn't get placed in this competition (which I wasn't surprised at) but thats not going to put me off entering next year!

Although I did have a lot of fun with this competition, there are many aspects of my illustrations I wish I could go back and change! I didn't give myself a lot of time to work on this project, and so felt forced into drawing in a certain style that was comfortable for me, when I would have liked to have researched and experimented more, pushing myself to try something new. This is also true about the colour schemes and subject matter I chose for certain pictures. I just wish I had given myself more time to have a play with these things. But hey ho!

Heres a few photos of the work in progress. I'm a big fan of hand drawn images, so to me, that was the only route to take! (I think also because I work on a computer for most of the day, in my free time I like to take my eyes away from that and physically draw things for a change).

These are just a few of my initial (and hastily drawn) sketches - looking at subject matter, layout and the like.


I sketched my final images out and used a dip pen with black indian ink to outline them. Its in these stages I always prefer the look of my illustration to the final piece. I hate losing all the mark making (haven't used that term since college!) I made in the drawing phase...


... which is why I try to get those pencil lines back in the final illustration! To colour I use water colour paints and then watercolour pencils to get that rough sketchy feel back into the piece.
I sometimes wonder what the illustrations would have looked like without any outlines...and whether that could have improved them. Although for that sort of thing I need a light box - which I am looking into buying in the next couple of months.

So there we go, that was the Brave New World project I gallivanted with a few months back. You can go look at the 25 runners up for this competition by heading on over HERE.

Baking Cupcake Lady

A month or so ago, I was asked to draw a 'Thank you' picture for a friend of a friend. I was told the lady liked to bake cupcakes and had a fancy mixer that she talked about (I want one of those fancy mixers! They get the mixing done right)!
So here we go...

Japan - Tokyo (Day 2) Last day of our trip!

Its our last day in Tokyo and in Japan *sniffs* Our plane is not till the evening so we head out to Daiba (an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, also called Odaiba), on the recommendation of our Tour Leader.

This was the rather futuristic view we had on the train into Daiba - I thought it looked like something out of The Jetsons!


After crossing the Rainbow Bridge we arrive in Daiba, and are greeted with a whole host of quirky architecture! (Including a Statue of Liberty for some reason!)


We wandered into a shop and I found this really crazy keyring that made me giggle quite a lot (and I consequently bought):

And then I found an accompanying model:

I'm not sure what on earth it was all about...but there were lots of others taking photos so I assume it was a bit of a commodity!

After some further wandering we stumbled upon a giant moving Gundam! We just caught the end of his little show (his head and chest moved from side to side and he made lots of mechanical noises), and the next show wasn't for a couple of hours, but we still stared at him in his majesty.


Our last stop in Daiba was the labyrinth of a shopping mall called Venus Fort. It was decked out like an 18th century European city in twilight (kind of similar to the Trafford Centre, really)!
There was one section of the mall that featured a massive fountain and disco ball, accompanied by recorded music similar to that of G4, and the whole scene seemed rather over the top (but in a fun way!)

There was a vast array of shops there, (we did get lost a couple of times!), and we went into this cute kids shop were I wish I'd bought everything in sight!

Ooooh, everything was so cute in there! Why oh why was I so sensible, thinking about the weight of my bag and such?!

Anyhoos, eventually we found our way out of the mall, but we didn't have much time left before having to venture to the airport, so it was another futuristic train ride back into Tokyo...


...to catch another train to the ACTUAL Tokyo station (as it didn't seem right visiting Tokyo, and not actually going to the official station!)
We had a little walk round and saw some gardeners tending the trees outside the Imperial Palace...


And heres a little peep of Tokyo train station...

(That is one complicated train map, ay?)

So yes, thats pretty much the end of our time in Japan... I got photos of some awesome origami in the airport:

So cool!

But yes, so there we go! Japan done! It was an amazing holiday, and I would love to go back and explore more of the place, or at least stay in Tokyo a bit longer (you need a lot, I say, A LOT more than 2 days to see that city!)

I'm currently drafting out an illustrated diary of my time in Japan, so no doubt I will waffling on about that soon enough.

Incase any one is interested, I booked my Japan tour with STA Travel, and I went on a 9 day tour called the Japan Express: Osaka to Tokyo. The tour is actually operated by a company called G Adventures and I thoroughly recommend them! Plugging done! Oh, except one more thing... go to Japan! Its awesome!

Japan - Tokyo! (Day 1)

We're finally on our way to Tokyo! We sadly catch our last bullet train of the trip...

I got a little video of a bullet train whizzing past at the station, I don't think it fully captures the speed of it, but its still pretty cool!


I also found these cute chick stickers on a nearby vending machine (I miss those vending machines...)


After arriving and dropping our bags off at the poshest hotel I've ever stayed at (you can have a nose at it HERE), we jumped on a train to Shinjuku, to go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.

On the 42nd floor of this building is an observatory which is free for tourists to take a gander from. It had an amazing view:


We then caught a train to Harajuku and got some lunch. I had some beef rice dish with onions, it was pretty tasty! I felt my skills with the old chopsticks were improving as I finished my meal before everyone else! Although thats more likely to be an improvement in my skills of gluttony...Hooray!


After this we were left to roam Tokyo on our own for the afternoon, so firstly we ventured down the main street of Harajuku which had a rather humorous name...

Did ya see it? Takeshita Street! Heh! ...Anyhoos, yeah, Harajuku wasn't as ka-razy as I was expecting, it was pretty tame compared to the Fruits book I've got at home, which features a great many funkily dressed young people roaming the streets. Although I have been informed that the big day for the young people to gather is a Sunday, and we arrived on a Monday, so we just missed out, oh well!

Our next stop was Akihabara, or Electronic Town! We saw quite a few scantily-clad manga ladies (and quite a few pervy men in the "erotic" section of a manga store)! Avert your eyes if you're easily shocked!


Whilst we were in Akihabara we went to a little donut shop called 'Mister Donut', I rather liked their cute little logo...

And from the selection I saw, I think it could give Krispie Kreme a run for its money!

When we got to our hotel room, we sat and watched the sun set whilst Tokyo lit up in the night, we had quite a good spot, you could even see bullet trains coming into the station from across the road!


The group met up in the lobby for our last evening meal together. We caught a train to Shibuya (it was pretty busy with office workers at quarter to 8 at night! Apparently office workers in Japan work till quite late!) and we were able to see the famous crossroads (used in films and the like) and the hordes of people navigating them! It was a sight to behold, for sure!


Our tour leader took us to this super cool restaurant which was an 'All You Can Drink' (within 2-3 hours - can't remember exactly how long it was!), you ordered your food using a touch screen on the table and it then magically appeared before you! Obviously a lot of drinks were ordered as well, I had a tipple or two of some lovely plum wine on ice - its good stuff, I tell ya!

For my meal I ordered some kimchi (pickled stuff) and some noodles that came with a few takoyaki (octopus balls), it was very tasty!

Before saying goodbye (*sniffs*), our tour leader suggested we try a 'British Pub' that was just down the road, so on her final piece of advice we headed on there!

It was slightly surreal to experience what the Japanese thought was a British Pub! There were a lot of smokers in there, although I was able to get a vodka & coke (my drink of choice), so that was pretty good! But yes, it was pretty darn smoky, so we didn't stay long, and a smaller group of us went back to the hotel and visited the Sky Lounge. Basically a swanky bar at the top of the hotel with a stunning view! I had me a Baileys in there (to make me feel sophisticated), whilst reminiscing of our trip.


Woo! So there we go! One day left, baby! And then I'll never talk about Japan again! Thats a lie, I think I'll be waffling on about Japan for many years to come, plus I'm working on the illustrated diary of our trip, so look forward to blog posts about that in the future!
Next Japan blog post we visit the artificial island of Daiba, were we see the Statue of Liberty (huh?), a gundam, and a renaissance-themed shopping mall - it was bizarre.