Tasty little Swallow

(original sketch, + then cut out in photoshop)


This is a sketch I did in the garden a couple of weeks ago in the glorious sun. I found a story online a while ago and it was flapping around in my head. It was called 'Little Swallow'; it is set in China and the main character is called Little Swallow. She is fond of all birds-having been named after a bird herself. One day, Chairman Mao announces that the Sparrows in China must be obliterated as they are a nuisance, fattening themselves on rice from the fields that is to feed the people. And so a sparrow killing spree commences..... Because the Sparrow population decreases the people are then plagued with an influx of mosquitoes and grasshoppers-the insects having not been eaten themselves by the sparrows, and rice crops get ravaged anyhow. I like the story but after reading the first page my personal feeling was that it would make sense to eat some of the sparrows-kill two birds with one stone (excuse the pun),thus keeping the population under control as well as providing a protein-based snack. Well anyway-that's where this image came from.


Vectorised in illustrator (so I play with it lots)





















I also liked the idea of the girl 'Little Sparrow' being eaten by mistake or something......or transforming into a bird herself and then getting eaten by her own father, yes I like that idea. It is just an ink sketch at the moment, I quite like the sinister look she has acquired due to me making her eyeless with way too much hair. I have cut it out in photoshop and then I vectorised it in illustrator to give me more freedom but that's about it so far. I have collected some feather images and patterns which I'd like to collage beneath the outline in some way.

New DoodleKaz products

some additions to my products available on RedBubble


Fishbowl Conversation (open)
This is the card design, I may include it in my 'Animal Gothic'. Originally the concept was based on a story I read; a young girl goes fishing to help her mother and a large fish jumps out from the river. The fish warns the girl that if she eats it she too shall be turned into a fish. Predictably the girl catches the fish and cooks it up, and as she swallows her first mouthful lo and behold a cold shiver runs through her and she is transformed. It then goes off on some ridiculous tangent involving a giant, a princess and a missing crown but it's the first few paragraphs I like. I haven't written it yet, but in my version of the story, the fish is in a bowl not a river, and the girl doesn't find a princess or get changed back again.



The illustration is a collage made up of an awesome wall texture I found, a sketch I did of a fish, a photo of myself manipulated in photoshop to make me look even more gross than I do naturally, and other bits and pieces I drew over the top. What I wanted to do but didn't really achieve was to construct a dress made up of the fish image, in a scale-like fashion, so I may come back to this idea. I started with the photo, I often do that and remove the photo altogether once the piece is finished-the photo acts as more of a starting guide than anything-but I liked the effect of it in this illustration so I kept it.

This is the tshirt version, I really like the black and white image on a plain white tee, this combination seems to be my direction at the moment-very Aubrey Beardsley but with a load of colour splatted on top.


























Harlequin Valentine (inverted)
This is a developed illustration from one I did a while ago called Jest. Both are odes to Neil Gaiman. He did a Graphic novel called 'Harlequin Valentine' In it the main character is the old clown of the italian commedia del'arte and he is in love with 'Missy' The Harlequin gives her a valentine gift by pulling out his heart and nailing it to her door....she is oblivious to his pursuit. My ode is 'inverted' because the female is the harlequin. The story is beautiful and grotesque and I will be using it as inspiration for an animal gothic illustration most definitely. The guy who illustrated this is amazing, he does what I suppose you could describe as Goth Sci fi. John Bolton







Again, the tee design is a developed version of the card, and looks best on white in my opinion.

Animal Gothic

Currently I'm working on some new stuff. The theme is Animal gothic (I find themes extremely comforting). I also really want to try and construct a children's illustrated book on the same theme but that is literally just a thought at the moment. I suppose I was originally inspired by an old book I had when I was a child called Willy the Wimp illustrated by Anthony Browne. There was a whole series about this character Willy-a chimpanzee that liked to read and listen to music but got bullied at school by the other bigger sportier chimps (just typing that description made me chuckle to myself) I'd always been fascinated by his mundane human world filled with these anthropomorphised gorillas. I guess the image above, of Willy in his little tank top feeling sorry for himself, found a comfy spot in my memory and remained. Check out his interpretation of Alice's adventures in Wonderland, was published yonks ago but you can still get it from the Alice shop in Oxford I think. Browne may also be the reasoning behind my obsessive pre-Burton Planet of the Apes phase.

A couple of other influences; a book of tales for children-I've been hunting for this book since I left home and my original got thrown/given away, but I vividly remember my favourite story was on the last few pages. It was called 'The man with the Horse's head'. and it was a morality tale I think about a prince that rebelled against the king's rules and was cursed with a horse's head for the rest of his years. Anyway, the story was rubbish but the illustration stayed in my mind. It was a double spread page, with numerous pictures, the text over the images. The first image showed a very well adorned prince sitting on a throne, and I think there was a princess by his side. The second image was his transformation once the curse had been inflicted; the prince running in despair, clutching his face. The final picture depicts the prince sitting stoically back on his throne but alone...and with a horse's head. The pictures were very well painted and I remember the look in the prince's eyes in this final picture, it was extremely melancholic...a nice touch that he was wearing riding boots too....

It's not a mythical C.S. Lewis fantasy of animal/human hybrid I'm interested in though, it is the appearance of normality skewed in a subtle way; for example-one idea I have is a series of illustrations portraying day to day events such as making a cup of tea, cycling to work, smoking a cigarette....but the tea drinker has a beak or the cyclist is a sea horse, things like that-just silly and random.But I also want to maintain a dark, slightly unsettling tone, I think that's where the gothic influence comes in. So a lot of black ink sketches, elaborate borders and patterns etc. but more Gorey than Giger. A guy I'd forgotten about for a while who is pretty awesome is Ian Miller, this was one of my favourite images when I was a teenager-yes I was a strange teenager.

Bang! Science

A little bit of catching up to do as I've neglected my blog due to being chaotically busy (always a good thing!) So firstly, here are some illustrations I did to accompany articles for Oxford's Bang science Magazine back in May. Was lots of fun and everybody working on it is lovely. You can view more information about the magazine here: http://bangscience.org/Staff.html

The Origins of Asymmetry:
































































Racehorse Bio-mechanics:




































































To Infinity and beyond:











































Diagram of eye:























































Radio Telescope:
























































Saturn's Hexagon: