An Ode to the Orange

For those orange oddities that dwell in the doorspace of Boots and Debenhams and prefer their fake tan to look as if it was created by Ronseal to blend with the complection of a carrot craving Umpa Lumpa.

This is a variation on this image I submitted to my deviantArt account. I saw a girl in Llanddudno a few weeks ago who smeared this slop on her arms so haphazardly that it looked as if she was caked in mud.

Ceri told me with horror in her face that it was probably the desired effect. I wanted to give the girl a flannel and tell her to get a wash.

Hello.

Here is that image I was drawing the goat for in the last post.

It's for a new book from Magination Press. The whole image except for that goat was drawn in pencil, inked over with PITT pens and then coloured in PS7.

This may be one of the last big images I colour in the old Photoshop. I'm moving colouring on to my new iMac which runs Snow Leopard and thus PS7 is too old to be supported and I need to emigrate to one of the CS versions.

Damn.

I'm not 100% sold on this image. I'm unsure if it's too 'busy'. I like simplicity in my work. Hard lines. Bold shapes. Bold colour. As much as I love and respect cross hatch, I don't feel such texture fit with my colour work.

But there is also a lot of colour here. Lots of different colours and shades and tones. Maybe everything is getting too complicated and I need to pare it back a bit. Go a bit more 'pop art' / 'screen print' in my approach.

Saying that. If this is what the client wants then this is what they shall receive.

Let me know what you think.

Best

Carl

Screen shot of the day!

How funky is a pink outlined goat? If only I could keep him pink...

Friday Oddity 002

I love Getty Images.

It's a fantastic reference tool for demanding deadlines and stuff I would never be able to get out and sketch first hand.

Editor- "Draw a giant deep sea squid"

Me- "Err... Okay..."

I love looking at the beautiful images on there when I'm feeling down. Type in 'beautiful seaside sunrise' and there goes the blues.

Getty is also one of the biggest inspirations to me for my work, after the movie Falling Down, which is ACE! But every now and then, while searching for something random for work, Getty throws out some complete oddities.

Check out these two. You search for astronaut or phonebox and you may get these.

Cheers

Carl

Dan Dare

I thought I'd add this image I did a little while ago of Dan Dare, the seminal British post war sction hero who appeared in the Eagle, finally settling his score with arch nemesis, The Mekon.

I love doing this kind of action retro sci-fi stuff. So much fun to come up with ideas.

The Mekon's suit was inspired by some of Frank Quitely's stuff and a little kinda Greek / Roman dictator look.

The ray gun was based on a 1950's toy.

Below is Frank Hampson's original. Brilliant!

Friday Oddity.

Also, because it's Friday, and Friday is my favourite day of the week, here is a little Friday Oddity. This was an image I did not too long ago for the FERALGARGANTUA art jam.

The subject was to do a historical character out of their own time. First thing that poppedinto my head: Aztec Churchill.

This was fountain pen on cotton paper off-cuts provided by my mate and old university tutor, Mark Moran, over at Blush Publishing and then spruced up in PS7.

I fear it's time to now replace poor old Photoshop 7...

This was an odd one for me. I had to draw something to show a kid addressing his own 'mountain'. His own struggle in life. His own, personal problems.

I thoght, it's all in his head so he should be confronting / overcoming his own mind. His own head (seeing as a giant brain would be too morbid, although that would be fuckin ace) in effect.

I thought the squishy groping of his own rubbery flesh was odd enough though. I like this one. It's a little barmy. Specially with the goat up their eating grass where there aint non.

I drew the small boy in pen on this one as part of a larger A3 image, but wanted to alter the large face significantly as well as adding more to it. The original was only half of his face but I wanted a full head. The answer was to draw the larger head digitally.

I don't usually like this proccess but when times and jobs demand...

Eerie school image.

Just finished this image the other day.

It's one for a new book I'm doing for Magination Press. I didn't know what I wanted to do with the background at first other than I wanted it to be rather barren and desert like. So I used an old photograph I took a few years ago of the dunes at Talacre Beach, near where I live, and this is the end result.

I'm quite pleased with it. The ripples in the sand worked better than I thought they would. I also think the ethereal / eerie green glow adds something to the colour composition and the sense of menace that the 'school' is meant to represent.

But the important thing is that Magination like it.

Carl

Unseen

Hello.

I'm starting to get used to the thought of what I can do with this blog.

I can put up found stuff on here and things that you won't find in my folio or deviantArt thingy. I'll stick photos and odds and sods on here.

For the time being, here is an image I did about a year ago. It was a very quick sketch for Atari when they aproached me to redesign their popular Back Yard Sports game series.

I hadn't heard of them before but imagine it's rather similar to Nintendo's Wii Sports things.

It sounded like a fun job but I apparently didn't get the gig, literally because I don't work in 3D cad type stuff. I never said that I did though. I mean, I'm an illustrator. I use pencil, pen and ink with various media for colour only.

They don't seem to have changed the material so far. I wonder what they are doing with it. Rather interesting process to experience first hand. As was working with Nickelodeon. You'll heard more about that soon.

Hopes you like.

Carl

Hello again.

Nice to see some of the Deviant dudes on here already. Just wanted to put a little note on here to ask you all to bare with me on this blog-thing. I'm not all that great technologically so if I'm slow or make some cock-ups along the way, I'm sorry.

I'll be adding images as I go along and this layout is not final by any means. I'm planning to make a purpose built banner for the top and change the colour scheme.

In the mean time, here's one of my old faves. Megasonic.

Keep watchin'.

Cheers

Carl

Hello

Hello.

My name is Carl Pearce and I am an Illustrator who works predominantly in the area of publishing for children. I've included a little sample of what I do above.

I will be updating this blog soon with more images, work and some thoughts on any old rubbish that takes my fancy, very soon.

If you would like to see any of my work in the mean time I can be found at the following places:

My Folio - My DeviantArt page - My Facebook thingy

See you soon.

Cheers

Carl