Kevin February

Jerry Hoare

And finally..

Gary Redford

Produced as a limited edition Greeting Card, here is Christina Guitian typographic entry.

Ben Scruton

Garry Parsons

Wishing you a very festive Christmas!

Here is the first in a series of Christmas themed images sent in by our artists.

First up: Andrew Farley

Marjorie Dumortier created these beautiful illustrations for a recent episode of Cbeebies ‘Driver Dan’s Train Story’. Marjorie was commissioned to illustrate ‘ A Game for Gertrude’ her hilarious artworks told the story of a clumsy giraffe who struggled to find a game she was good at.

Paul Boston was commissioned by Computer Active magazine to illustrate the cover of their latest edition. Paul was asked to create an artwork to support their article on automatic fixes for PC’s. Paul illustrated this fantastic Heath Robinson type robot capable of fixing anything with a single click.

Garry Parsons was commissioned to illustrate the story for an episode of CBeebies ‘Driver Dan’s Story Train’ we were so pleased to see the results on screen last week we wanted to give you a sneaky peek into how the magic happens….

Garry is an awarding winning Children’s book illustrator. He has written and illustrated many books, which have become firm favourites in homes across the country, making him the perfect choice to illustrate a story for Driver Dan to read to the nations little ones.

Like all project’s, this one started off with a written brief from the Art Director at the production company. This brief was a little more prescriptive than usual given the very specific production requirements of the television series. Garry’s artworks needed to work as a traditional story book and as a back drop for live action filming.  There were various things Garry had to take into consideration, the most important being laying out the page with enough blank space for the live action film to be placed over the top.

After reading the story Garry’s first step was character development. Getting the characters right is key to a great picture book, so Garry created some pencil sketches of the two main characters to share with the Art Director.

Garry’s sketches hit the nail on the head first time so he then cracked on with creating rough sketches for each scene.  Garry was provided with rough layouts from the Art Director to help with the placement of the objects. He used these as the basis for his sketches and set about making the story come to life.

The Art Director reviewed the sketches and came back with a few small tweaks and comments, which Garry took on board as he began to produce the final artwork. Garry creates his artwork in photoshop, he works over his pencil sketches, refining the line work and adding in lots of lovely rich textures and colours.

Once the final artwork had been supplied, the production team worked their magic and several months later Drive Dan was reading the story to millions of Children across the country.

Click here to see Garry’s artwork in motion!