To be fair

So those cards weren't made because I like drawing or anything (Ha!) - we had a print fair at the university. And it was a smashing success! The range of items on sale were truly perception-expanding; wrapping paper, paper dolls, cards, mini rosettes, etchings, t-shirts. We had such a great turnout and really the thanks all goes to some tutor called Leah who organised it or something.

Our UCA Illustration blog is worth looking at as is our Twitter stream too.

Anyway here's a few photos of the event, with my cards proudly on display.

CRAPMAS!

These took far more time than expected...but hey! This year, impress and guilt trip your friends by reminding them that they are among the richest 10% of people in the world! Laughs all around as you all remember with fondness the aggressive military-financial campaigns in place by your Western countries across the Middle East, designed to cement further the economic superiority of our glorious countries. And remember; consume!

Next week? Some Catalonian buildings important during the Barcelona May Events. Watch this space!

Life Drawing!

Peeps gotta do life drawing! Life drawing needs posters!

Standard Quay

This is from a while ago...anyway around May I did a project at Faversham's Standard Quay - a cracking place in Kent noted as a sort of home for the Thames Sailing Barge. Anyway, being a semi-public place, I parked myself down in the freezing February weather and sketched until my hands stopped functioning a few times a week. It's quite funny how the United Kingdom has a peculiar kind of beauty when under a freezing overcast sky and bare trees.

With thanks to a certain Basil Brambleby, I was able to gain access to the partially restored Sailing Barge Cambria, and some of the surrounding old shipwright houses. Here's some useful links that helped me with my little project:

Jon Henley's excellent introduction to the Quay in his article in The Guardian

A more politically-minded version of the Standard Quay website

Richard Fleury and Simon Clay's documentary about the future of the Quay

Penguin Book Cover

Now that all my projects are all handed in, I actually can get the blog updated. Firstly, this is my entry for the Penguin Illustration competition that I entered mid-April. Below are some of the more developed sketches for such a wonderfully colourful book.

Yet more Years of Solitude

Here's some muckabouts, roughs and colour tests for the book cover competition so far. In a word: Gauguin. I figure if I'm going to use colour, especially for a book like this, it should be downright offensive.

I'm not dead!

Just off the radar. The other week me and Ian finished our Animation project - I promise it'll be up soon! Just needs cleaning up and rendering for internet, and be warned; it's going for some festivals! Student ones, anyway.

We've got three new projects, maybe four, I don't even know anymore. Anyway, here's some background roughs for Penguin's book competition they're running for students this year:



Check out the Penguin competition page here:

http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguindesignaward/index.php

Very soon I'll have some more stuff up on the work I'm...working on now. Toodles!

V & A Student Illustration Awards 2011.

Here's my entry, so here's hoping!

http://www.vam.ac.uk/activ_events/events/illustration_awards/student2011/index.php?section=2&postIndex=175&postSearch=&category=&start=168&show=12

Ian and Callum's Anamatic. from Callum Jackson on Vimeo.

Right now, I've not long started my animation elective (second year running!) which this year has the brief title of 'Hybridity'.

I'm working on this one with Ian (remember him? http://ianosheagi.blogspot.com/) and we're 'responding', as they say in the art world, by exploring food. We're running with the idea of the English breakfast not being so English - a form of cultural hybridity. Anyway, this is the working anamatic.

Seven Champions Poster

When the Champs asked me to knock up a poster, I took the opportunity to rip off some of the beautiful 70's/80's style film posters kicking around. This also demanded that I practice my digital painting, too. Hoping an improved one will be made soon!

Stories Unfolding Part 2.

Right, I think I'm getting organised. Anyway, here's the second half of the Stories Unfolding project, finished late November 2010. I joined the Seven Champions Molly Dancers as a residential illustrator. The second lump of the project had me gunning down these themes:

- Costume of Morris Dancers (very interesting and colourful)
- Patterns (these were based on illustrated dance figures - quite complicated-looking)
- Poverty (which moved the workers to create Molly Dancing as a source of income on 19th Century East Anglia)
- Colour! (I said I do this - lots of paint-only drawings where I banned the pencil!)
- Print (We have some of the best print rooms in the country at the uni and I'll be damned if those lino presses and screen tables will lie idle)
- The Champs themselves (a stout bunch of chaps, pretty serious dancers too!)