Ballarat Botanical Gardens

Wedding illustration for Ramster Hall

Aldeburgh Carnival 2016

An Airship

An airship which I illustrated a year or so ago.  It's a popular design which has been used countless times for change of address cards.

Book Illustrations

These are some of my illustrations due to be published in a book by George Yerby.  It shows how the houses built during the late-medieval period contrasted with the symmetry of the great houses built during the later Elizabethan period.

It was quite a tight deadline and I think I managed to complete then all  (more or less) in a week.  I was offered quite a tasty job during that week from English Heritage but sadly had to turn it down.  Illustration work sometimes arrives like buses.  This was a good fun job though but I did start seeing some architectural details cropping up in my dreams.

Wood Fired Pizza Oven

A Kiln Illustration

Ever lain awake at night and wondered exactly what a small batch retort kiln looks like?  Well, hopefully the illustration below should help.

Monday's Illustration

A house in Hampshire.

Illustrated Maps

Our illustrations have just been added to new sign boards at Newbury Racecourse.  The colours and definition looks pretty good.

Illustration for a garden design company

I've just completed this design for a Brighton garden designer which hopefully should soon be on the front of the website.

More Dragon illustrations

Two new versions of an old illustration

A new card design

This seems to have taken months to finish but finally my vintage aeroplane flying across the desert, with accompanying camels is finished.

10 Years - Then and Now

I have just started uploading the illustrations we've done onto our Pinterest site and it has just become apparent that The Pen & Ink has been trading for 10 years.  Has much changed?  Not much but I do faff about a lot less and don't worry what the client might think when I send a piece of work off to them to look at.  I don't think a lot has changed with the illustrations and you can see below our first two commissions compared to two we have done very recently.

I have only updated the illustrations we did in 2004 and 2005 and there are well over 150 so plenty more to go.

The Dragon School, Oxford

For the last few years I have illustrated all the boarding houses for The Dragon School in Oxford.  It has taken a while but we are finally there.  These are used mostly for correspondence cards but some have been enlarged and printed on screens.  They are then used as backdrops and decoration when the school attends recruitment fairs around the country and in places as far away as Hong Kong.

The Miners' Church, Buninyong

I've just had an email from an old client (old as in the year 2005).  She and her husband own a church which was converted into a bed and breakfast.  It's near a town called Buninyong, north west of Melbourne in Australia and it was built to service the spiritual needs of Cornish miners who came to work in the area during the goldrush of the 1850s.

I designed an illustration of the church which now sits proudly on the front page of their website. http://theminerschurch.com.au 

Not only that but a large reproduction of the illustration adorns their van.

Eight years later and they've even got bookmarks.  Is there no end to the flexibilty of a Pen & Ink illustration?  So the moral of this is:  when you are next in Victoria and you are looking for a place to put your feet up, the Miners' Church should be your first port of call.  Relax in wonderful luxury and admire our illustration wherever you look.

A new design

This is a design I've been working on.  Its based on Kylie the merry-go-round horse (see below).

Lowestoft Steam Trawler

I have just completed some designs based on the steam trawlers or "Crownies" that used to sail from Lowestoft from the 1920s to the 1950s.  They must have been quite a sight (and smell).  Sadly none of these steam trawlers have survived and those that were not sunk or bombed in the war were scrapped.

They Draw Horses, Don't They?

An eclectic collection of horse postcards is currently being put together. Steve of Inky Solutions who does a lot of our printing is keen to explore the theory that despite their popularity, horses and ponies feature very little on or in children's illustrated books because they are not easy to draw.  Crocodiles, hippos, cats, mice and even camels are a doddle but for some reason our equine friends present something of a challenge to the illustrator's pen.

For this reason Steve has invited illustrators across the land (well predominantly they are coming from Brighton) to submit their horse pictures on postcards.  At the moment they can be viewed on Pinterest and hopefully their numbers will swell before the end of the month deadline.  The winner gets free hay and stud fees for a year.  Not really.  They get 500 free postcards; but it's the taking part that counts.

If you like my effort of Kylie then show your appreciation by "liking" the picture on the following link and any others that catch your eye.

http://pinterest.com/inkysolutions/they-draw-horses-dont-they/